A Meaningful Life

What do you do when you have a lot of things you want to do but don’t have the time to do them? I have started asking myself this question since leaving the bank. My focus has shifted back to my business and my family. I think my strategy will be to follow a simple 3,2,1 rule. I will spend 3 hours on the most important and urgent thing on my list, 2 hours on the next most important thing, then 1 hour on the 3rd most important. The rest of my day can then be used for any other miscellaneous stuff that isnt critical but is probably still important long term. Having 4-6 hours up my sleeve outside this initial 6 hours allows me to deal with all the froth that exists around the bigger issues and the business in general.

Sometimes I get very excited, almost euphoric about the business I’m involved in, Saasu.com but one big catch is that it’s like climbing mountains. The higher and harder the climb the more of a rush you get but the risk of falling increases.

At present we are pushing ahead on some crucial feature releases plus we have three strategic announcements so it is breeding anxiety and stress within me. Last night I realized how most of the anxiety and stress is in my mind. Fear and its symptoms stress and anxiety are created by the mind, they are not real. The only true and valid fear is the one that exists just before you are about to face a life threatening circumstance, something that might actually kill you (thanks to Landmark Education for this insight). All other fears are well overstated and over-rated.

A doco on the Hubble Space Program last night helped put my anxiety and fear into perspective. The Hubble had taken a picture of the end of the universe. Pictures taken by Hubble are very old because they are looking back in time, the vast amount of time taken for light to get to Hubble from the edge of the universe. When the universe was young it was made up of neat and tidy galaxies. Now the universe is older it’s gotten quite worn out and messy. A lot of the galaxies have mashed into each other (photo above care of hubblesite.org). Millions of galaxies out there have hundreds of thousand of stars, each of which might have their own planets. These most probably have their own life forms. These galaxies collide and decimate each other. Jeepers, whole galaxies are being created and destroyed. In context, my existence isn’t even a blink.

As an aside, if you believe we are alone in the universe you probably also don’t believe something until you see it, you think you will win lotto one day and you chose to refute basic mathematical principals around statistical probability. The maths that we are alone is: 1 planet out of 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 known stars and associated planets in the universe.

So why get mentally worked up about such relatively small things in one persons life, my life. Release 5.0 of Saasu is hardly a Galactic Crush. Not even close to being a micro-second of universal existence. It really does highlight how inward humans can be if not slapped with an occasional reality check. It also highlights the selfishness of fear for ones problems and existence.

Fear is obviously an effective genetic defensive mechanism that is very difficult to suppress but going forward I’ll try save my anxiety and fear for my kids and wife.

For tips on overcoming fear the Buddhist faith has it covered… tibetonline.tv or try the odd discovery channel doco… discovery.com