Breathe more, do fewer stupid things

The New Year is well beyond being a new year anymore. Life is on its way and, for some, the long lists of resolutions have found their way to the same curb as the discarded trees and boxes from the holiday season.Like many others, I took time during the final weeks of last year to reflect on the past and then to ponder the future. I did not make resolutions for the New Year. I purposely waited, letting the hype of the holiday season settle and the year reveal itself slowly.This weekend I made a list of resolutions. I gave it a lot of thought and wrote down a load of nonsense I knew I would never do. I then scratched it out and tossed the balled up paper at the arch shaped window in my home office. It hit the center panel spot on. Fun. I crunched up more paper and, using up an entire dead tree, had a glorious game seeing how many of the other panels I could hit with one attempt. I’m not good at ball games so I won’t tell you my score. After picking up the mess, I got serious and made my list. Here it is.

• Breathe more

• Do fewer stupid things

That’s my list of resolutions for the year. For me, it’s profound.

Life is for living and to fully live we need to breathe.

In this post-modern world of ours, we rush. We fret. We make incessant noise. We hold our breath, wondering when the other proverbial shoe will drop. We forget to breathe. There is a life that is uniquely ours but we lose sight of it in the clutter of projects and plans. We will, each one, be more productive, be happier and probably be less of a pain in the rear end if we breathe deeply and focus on less, not more. Warren Buffett inspires me with these words. 'The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say “no” to almost everything.'

Do fewer stupid things 

I read an article where a guy said that as a consultant, there are times when he just can’t get people to not stick beans up their nose. He sees them doing it, he tries to tell them not to but for some reason they have a bean, they have a nose and the two are soon joined. He of course makes a lot of money helping people get the bean out. I can testify to the fact that I have stuck a bean up my nose a few times. If you’re honest you will admit that you, too, have done stupid things. We need to do this less often.Here’s the thing, if we breathe more deeply, focusing on less not more, we will probably do fewer stupid things.  We won't stick beans up our nose and we may even find that we have the clarity of mind to figure out where the bean should actually go."The fruit of that righteousness will be peace; its effect will be quietness and confidence forever." - Isaiah 32:17