Give Me 10! Find Balance and Reach Your Goals.

"I am honored to have the opportunity to write on your blog. Your blog does all that is best about the internet -- unifying a far-reaching audience and creating a community. While I am not affected by NF, I will pass along a little about what I do, in the hopes that it is useful for you. I started a blog called Give Me 10! The 10-minute solution to find balance and reach your goals. The point of it is that we all have very busy days, pulled in countless directions, giving to so many. But there are ways to sneak in a little personal time into the brief (and all too infrequent!) free moments of the day.

In the midst of stressful times, it's easy to put personal time on the back burner. But we all deserve at least 10-minute for our own well-being -- 10 minutes isn't long enough to feel guilty, it's too short to feel frustrated, and it fits into the nooks and crannies of the day -- you don't miss a beat attending to the other obligations.

Too often, we feel guilty taking time for ourselves -- taking a bath, reading a book, laying down for a few minutes. But knowing that you're giving yourself a time limit makes it feel less like an indulgence. The same goes for the less savory tasks that are important to us but overwhelming -- cleaning the garage, getting our finances in order. We delay even taking these on because we know we feel like we need a whole weekend to handle them (and when do we have that?) and we don't know where to start. But if we wade into the job for just a few minutes, we realize it's not as bad as it seemed, and we can chip away at the project little by little.

The point of Give Me 10! is to simply "advance the ball" on our own personal goals just a little bit every day. Just getting out of our day-to-day for just a little while can really inspire calm, confidence, perspective. Somehow it soften the edges a bit on the rest of life.

If you want to get started, here's what I'd suggest...

- Pick a goal or two (think right brain/left brain; mind/body/spirit; think of the times you've said, "One day I'd like to..." or "I wish I had learned to..."; or tackle an item that's been on the to-do list forever)

- Write a mission statement for your goals (this is not meant to be work! It's just meant to help you clarify what you would like to happen -- it can and will change as you get into the work.)

- Think of what you'll do for 10 minutes on the goal today and tomorrow (this will help build momentum; and by the way, it doesn't have to be a big "to do" -- it can be "find the file" or "set up the card table" -- sometimes just finding the materials and creating the space is the hardest part)

I give some suggestions of ways to find the time for your goals on my website: http://www.GiveMe10.info/, and readers share their tips and tricks, too. I'd love to hear if you try it and how it works for you! Be well..."