Mind

Work-School-Service

Many people spend a great deal of their waking hours each week at work or at school. How we experience our work/school life can have a major impact on our wholeness and wellness. The questions below might help you assess your satisfaction with this aspect of your life. If you are retired, not working or in school, you might reflect on volunteer/ service work that you do. You might also reflect back on the work or schooling that you have done in your life.

• Is the work/schooling/service you do congruent with your values and beliefs?
• Do you have a sense of purpose in your work/schooling/service?
• Do you see how your work/schooling/service fits into the bigger purpose of your life?
• How do you relate to those with whom you work, serve or go to school?
• Are you comfortable expressing your needs and wants where you work/serve or are in school?
• Are you growing in your work/service/schooling?
• Do you intentionally seek opportunities for growth and learning?
• Do you see a connection between your faith and your work/service/schooling?

Organization

Being disorganized can be both a symptom and a cause of stress in our lives, whether it be disorganization of time, environment, finances or planning. Everything becomes harder and requires more time when we are not organized. A vicious cycle is easily established as we become more stressed due to not being organized, which in turn causes us to be even less organized, which in turn causes more stress.

So much for the “bad news.” The good news is that anyone can make immediate progress in becoming better organized once they set their intentions to do so, and once they ask for the support and coaching of others. Whatever patterns we have around organizing our time, money, “stuff,” etc. are simply learned habits, and like all habits they can be changed. Research has shown that on average it takes 30 days to form a new habit.

In The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Steven Covey writes about what he calls the “tyranny of the urgent.” By this he means that people often are so overwhelmed with all that they are trying to do that soon everything seems like it is urgent and they lose their ability to plan and prioritize. One of the symptoms of getting caught up in the “tyranny of the urgent” is that it feels like we are wasting time if we take time out to plan and prioritize. In the end, planning and prioritizing will save us time, and make our lives much calmer, but it is so hard to realize this when we are caught up in our constant busyness.

Take an honest look at your life and assess how well you organize all the important things in your life: time, calendar, finances, closets, drawers, meals/grocery shopping, work, errands, important papers and documents (wills, titles, etc.).

• Adults Assessment
• Parents Assessment
• Teens Assessment