The
tales of Lewis Carroll have
always intrigued me because many universal truths lie within their
pages. Many
of us are like Alice in Alice in
Wonderland: We
struggle with which
path to take instead of struggling with the more important question:
“Where is
it we want to go?” As
the Cheshire cat
says, if we have no specific destination, then any road will get us
there.
Many of us have
difficulty
articulating our “wants.” We might be
used to expressing our needs, but we do not give much thought to what
we truly
want from life. We think about getting
from this day to the next, or about improving our immediate future, but
we lose
sight of a bigger vision that rejuvenates and inspires us.
Let’s do something fun to break out of this
mold – let’s make a crazy list.
I
stumbled onto the idea of a
crazy list early in 2004. I
had just
finished telling someone why I couldn’t do something.
I can’t remember the exact thing to which I
was referring but the sentence was, “I don’t have enough time to
____________.”
(and frankly, it was a lousy excuse – it even sounded lousy when I was
saying
it.) However, since
many of us are so
talented at making excuses, it can be easy for us to actually begin to
believe
them.
Later
that night, something
within me stirred and said, “Wait a second…why can’t you do
that?” Whenever I find myself engaging in a negative
pattern, I challenge it as quickly as I can.
In this case, within minutes I was creating a crazy list of all the
things I would like to do before I die.
The list contained many things – get my pilot’s license, climb Mount
Hood, go on a safari, paint a series, run a marathon, ski in Colorado,
skydive,
learn calligraphy, spend New Year’s Eve in Times Square, start a
self-esteem
group for girls, on and on and on the list went – some of the list
items more
challenging than others. As I created
this list, I found it easier to begin articulating the “wants” of my
life.
These lists had
no
limitations. Money was not an
object. Time was not an object. Location was not an
object. These were indeed Crazy Lists.
I
didn’t stop and ask, “Is this
realistic?” because something had started to occur to me during this
process: I
think many things become unrealistic simple because we deem them to be
unrealistic. For
example, I might say, “I
don’t have an hour a day to devote to that…it is unrealistic.” The truth is, I actually
could find an hour,
and I just choose not to find it.
I
choose to make it unrealistic.
Our minds have great
power. We must be careful with what we deem to be
realistic versus unrealistic.
Your
Turn: Start a Crazy List for the
year. Spend at least ten minutes this week
brainstorming ideas for the year. Tuck
this list inside your daily calendar.
Today’s Affirmation: I make time to reach my goals –
even the
crazy ones.
