Organized: Seeking Sanity (Part 1)

What does it mean for someone or something to be organized? (Insert dramatic pause...)

Do you have a source of stress in your life that seems to be a result of absent or poor organization?

When most people hear the word 'organized', they think of neatness, which is good and important but DIFFERENT.

Organized means to 'arrange into a structured whole; ordered.'

Most of us would be happy to have our lives described as WHOLE. Instead, we often feel as if we have fallen into a hole and are scrambling to get out!

So, a journey towards being organized is a holistic journey. It means our physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual selves work in coordination.

So, where do we begin?

As the British proverb states: "Begin as you mean to go on!"

To organize or become organized, we must begin with where we want to end.

When did you last consider your priorities and whether your life choices reflect those priorities?

Or what you would want written in your obituary? I think we would all agree we don't want it to sound like this.

So, here's the first step to becoming organized: figure out what is really important to you and why.

The "why" is what will keep you moving forward on the hardest days.

A few ideas for figuring out what matters to you:

1. Write a personal or family mission and vision statement.

2. List out priorities.

3. Set some life goals.

4. Set aside some quiet time to reflect. A weekend, a day off work, a few minutes a day for successive days. Keep mulling and pressing until you find some clarity. Record your decisions and thoughts so you can return to them.

I'd love to hear if you had any "Aha" moments while pondering where you want to 'end.' Share them in the comments!

Here's the links to the rest of this series Part 2, Part 3