Life Organizing: A Completely New Way to Flow with Time

So, you’ve made lists, prioritized your goals, prioritized your lists, and listed your goals. You’ve scheduled, compartmentalized, and tried to keep everything in its own little, neat box on the calendar. But despite all your color-coding and scheduling, “life�?doesn’t always work.

The issue is that life isn’t something to get “done,�?to check off a list. Life �?especially as we have learned to live it in the past decade -- has become much more fluid and complex. And, to be blunt, little in life gets done �?nor should it.

Do you feel a pull to be present, to embrace what is and even to live like the poet Rilke: “Let what I do flow from me like a river/No forcing and no holding back?�?If so, that means the old time management tools won’t work. In fact, the more traditional approaches to managing your life and structuring your days can hog-tie you, forcing you to relinquish the skills you most need in today’s world �?like intuition, emotional intelligence, creativity, and big-picture thinking

I’ve got an alternative. This process, what I call life organizing, is infinitely richer then plotting your days in fifteen-minute increments in your planner, but it does require swaths of trust in your own experiences. But one warning: the way I’m proposing can be frightening, especially at first. I will ask you, over and over, to trust, to loosen your grip on life. I will ask you to stop and feel, to tune in to what you really want and what you really know, to act with more boldness on your hunches and to track the outcomes of those bold actions. The rewards of your courage are limitless �?a life that sings, that moves with instead of against. A life that will unfold, a scene at a time, revealing the truth of your heart.

While a short article isn’t enough space to give all the knowledge, experiences, and thoughts I have about life organizing (I’d need to write a book to do that �?and, in fact, I have! It’s called The Life Organizer: A Woman’s Guide to Mindful Year), it is enough to provide you the basics. Life organizing works in two complementary ways, easily adoptable and adaptable:

1) A life planner that you choose and create (no more trying squeeze your life into someone else’s format). This planner will enable you to discern what you want week by week while gently tracking where your time and energy is actually going, and what might be getting in your way of living a life you love. The life planner’s core is four to six weekly mindful questions move you into a deeper mode of awareness and listening. These questions build on and refer to each, providing you with an ever-evolving map to your life. (For a free year of questions, visit www.lifeorganizerbook.com.)

2) A quick in-the-moment check-in that lowers your stress while allowing you to move beyond your conscious mind and respond with creativity and intuition to challenges and opportunities. The check-in consists of five steps and requires as little time as it takes to open the freezer, find the ice cream, and get a spoon. 1. Connect: Move your body �?breathe deeper, stretch your arms overhead, step outside and feel the breeze on your skin- anything that connects you with your life energy.

2. Feel: Tune into your heart, which can give you information your head can’t. Simply put your attention on your heart, perhaps by placing your hand there. Recall a time in which you felt loved and appreciated or loving and appreciative toward someone else. Linger there for a few seconds.

3. Inquire: Ask a mindful question. This opens up possibilities you literally couldn’t see before. My favorite mindful question: What do I need to know right now? (What if you really didn’t need to know more than the next immediate step?)

What do I want? (This is one of the most liberating questions �?and one of the scariest. Remind yourself that you don’t have to act on what you want, that wanting doesn’t mean getting, and that the ultimate in creativity is being in touch with your undiluted desires.)

What don’t I want? (Sometimes using the process of elimination can be a less intimidating way to inch forward than naming your desires outright. Desire and yearning are powerful forces!)

How can I be gentle with myself in this situation? (We can all benefit from asking this many times a day)

4. Allow: To allow is simply trusting that, by connecting, feeling, and inquiring, you will hear or see or feel or sense what your next step is—and only your next step.. Allowing is not about belief: it’s about noticing your experience, and opening to your next step, allowing love, allowing inspiration, allowing knowing to come into your body and heart, to inform and direct you.

5. Apply: Action is how you taste the fruit of this path and where the practical and results-oriented parts of you get their due. Without action, without decision, you remain in possibility, which is safe and beautiful but eventually enervating and boring. That doesn’t mean eating the whole elephant in one bite; small steps aren’t just okay; they’re encouraged. Taking small actions of trust builds your “trust muscles.�?

Life Organizing in the Moment in Action

It’s mid-morning, and several minor crises have already derailed you. Your plan for the day is in shambles, your to-do list feels like a boulder around your neck, and all you want to do is hide. You’re reaching for a Diet Coke in the hopes that it will give you the energy to decide which item on your list to tackle. Then you remember that there’s another way. You make the choice.

You feel your feet connecting with the ground beneath you. You take a deep breath and reach your arms overhead, exhaling with a huge sigh. You put your hand on your heart and recall feeling balanced and flowing, trusting the flow of life. Yu gently ask, “What choice feels the easiest in this moment?�?You visualize yourself bringing this question into your heart, and take a breath or two to infuse it with flow and peace. Perhaps a brief image of your sister comes to mind. Or maybe you hear a refrain of an old song, and when you focus on it, you realize it reminds you of your sister. Or perhaps you remember the feeling of your sister hugging you. You call your sister, have a lovely chat, and when you get off the phone, you have new energy —enough to move you forward to the next task awaiting you. Do you begin to see to get the picture of how this approach flows with life? I’m not proposing you sell your worldly possessions and move to the woods to live in an unheated yurt. I’m not recommending you consult crystals or the I Ching before moving a muscle. What I am saying is that when you think you’re lost, overwhelmed, and without direction, you do “know�?what to do to restore your balance and your direction�?but it’s a different kind of knowing, one you already possess, and need only be reminded of how to access.

Jennifer Louden is the bestselling author of The Women’s Comfort Book and four other books selling over 765,000 copies worldwide. She has appeared on Oprah, is a columnist for Martha Stewart’s Body & Soul Magazine, and is releasing her Life Organizing system through her newest book: The Life Organizer: A Woman’s Guide to a Mindful Year. You can share a cup of virtual tea with Jennifer at www.jenniferlouden.com and www.lifeorganizerbook.com.

Based on the book The Life Organizer: A Woman’s Guide to a Mindful Year © 2006 by Jennifer Louden. Printed with permission of New World Library, Novato, CA. www.newworldlibrary.com or 800-972-6657 ext. 52.