Palm trees and margaritas
(empowered living)

Welcome to the first edition of this free e-newsletter about life, the universe and what really matters.  No it is not a cover for a Christian organisation and absolutely no redemption is on offer.  Think of this as a five minute ‘time out’ each month, just to pause and reflect about how you are doing in the scheme of things.  Hopefully, there will be the occasional smirk or even giggle in it too.

I am at the beginning of the second half of my life, all going to plan.  I am 41.  With three kids at three different schools, football five times a week,various music lessons, medical appointments, a house to run and a career as a speaker, consultant and writer, I figure I know the ‘balls in the air’ life as well as anyone.

I have always been an optimist, sometimes excruciatingly so, and I try to find the gold lining (forget silver) in everything.  What can I learn from this?  How can I see this as a gift?  I did say it could be excruciating!  But my stage of life means – sadly – that my peers are getting medical problems and living with them or dying from them. Some have nothing wrong with their health but their ‘just coasting’ approach to life means they may as well have.

There is no gift in the disappointments of life or the failures of the human body other than the clichéd reminder to ‘seize the day’.

Life can’t be all palm trees and margaritas, but there are worse game plans.  It doesn’t have to be all work and no play – to use another cliché – either.

This monthly missive will be tips, stories and reflections on seizing the day, or not, and on punctuating your life with palm trees and margaritas,whatever that means to you.

Let me know and feel free to forward ‘Palm trees and margaritas’ on to anyone you think might like it.

Karen Morath
karen@mpowercct.com
July 2006

TIPS

Ensure you take time off from work or parenting duties or both.  This really can be done, even in small doses, but you need to schedule it in advance for large chunks of time.  Or think about how you can spontaneously react to the circumstances of the day.  If you have a slow afternoon or even a spare hour, get up from your desk or leave the house, office or whatever and use it for personal pursuits.  A walk in the sun or the rain, a trip to a coffee shop or a book shop, or my personal favourite, window shopping at the travel agent as it is a heap more satisfying than idle googling.  If you work for yourself, make a deal with the boss that if you work really hard till 2pm, you can take the rest of the day off.  It really is amazing what you can get done with a deadline and an incentive.

Check your diary for how many days or weeks you took off last year and plan to ensure you increase it this year.  If whole weeks off are a challenge to your elite sporting training or your omniscience in the caped crusader industry, then mark out afternoons off, sleep-ins, wild Wednesdays or long weekends.  Then next year, increase it again.

STORIES

There is an ad on TV for something at the moment that says – ‘it’s hard making time for the things you love’.  It can be done of course and people with consuming passions are those that best demonstrate that by always finding time to see their football team play or to play golf once a week or to have regular manicures or massages or to go to the gym five times a week, collect things, climb mountains, become aficionados of food, wine, film…..

The risk of not ‘making time’ as you build your life is that you get to a place where you have the time, or you have learned to make it, but nothing ‘you love’ to do or not enough of them.

If you are not actively developing potentially ‘consuming passions’ then what will your life look like when work and/or parenting no longer define you?

REFLECTIONS

Why is it that the people who work in the shops that sell the things I like don’t bother to acknowledge or engage me and those who work at shops I loathe (think supermarkets and chemists) attempt both with dazzling hopelessness?

Is it normal to get increasingly disturbed by the news of the world as you get older or are we supposed to be able to more maturely ‘compartmentalise’ famine and failings and just get on with things?

Copyright 2006.  Karen Morath

Karen Morath is a consultant, speaker and writer.  Her company M Power works with individuals and organisations to identify and fulfil their needs.  Visit www.communicationempowers.com 

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