Your ethical will: What is a good person?

Welcome back to Twelve essential questions to tell a life story. By joining me in twelve blog posts you will create what Rabbi Leder calls your ethical will.

By answering the questions your loved ones will get to know you deeper and you will understand yourself better. Let your memories bring meaning!

To join – read the blog posts, reflect on the questions and write your own answers. You are very welcome to share them in the comments.

Welcome on an interesting journey!

What is a good person?

Well, that is quite a question isn’t it?

I somehow hesitate to answer it, because, who am I to judge? Who am I to say what is good or bad or evil?

I often quote Shakespeare’s Hamlet: 

“There is nothing either good or bad

It’s only our thinking that makes it so”

The same goes for there not being either good or bad people. It is only our thinking that makes us consider someone good and someone else bad. 

As Alexandr Solzhenitsyn so eloquently wrote: 

“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”

Alright, now that we have concluded that there is no such thing as a good or a bad person (unless our thinking makes it so) and that good and evil cuts through, rather than between us…

What is a good person then?

One answer in Steve’s book goes:

“I never lie to my kids or cheat on my taxes. But if I needed to lie to protect my family, such as many Jews did during the Holocaust, then I would without question. And I’d still consider myself a good person.”

So what’s my answer?

What immediately comes to mind is the saying: 

Live and let live. 

One of my book releases had that theme. Maybe you were there?

Live and let Live is something I want to live by. It goes hand in hand with the quote by Hamlet above. Who am I to say what is good or bad, right or wrong, for someone else?

To me, a good person lives and lets others live in whatever way they choose. 

Another definition that comes to my mind are the 10 characteristics of highly evolved beings as described by Neale Donald Walsh. Out of these 10 I choose 3 to describe what a good person is to me: 

A good person treats everyone and everything with great care and respect.

A good person doesn’t bring anyone to justice. They do not punish.

A good person reaches out with love, knowing that only love heals all wounds and transforms people. 

Now, let me know what you think. 

What is a good person for you?

How to find time in May - give yourself enough sleep

Have you every stayed up late to finish “just one more thing”?

Have you put the alarm ridiculously early one day to get some work done before the rest of the family wakes up?

If you often give yourself less sleep than you need, you may be fooling yourself into thinking you are efficient, but you are really just increasing waste time while slowly wearing yourself out.

This month I help you make (not waste!) time by giving yourself enough sleep.

Find time in May by giving yourself enough sleep to be efficient, beautiful, and healthy.

Follow the tips in the video to create good pre-requisites to sleep.

Going deeper

To go deeper, you can read the book Why we sleep by Matthew Walker.  You can start by checking out the 9 min summary by Productivity Game on YouTube.

For Timefinder Academy members

(Re)watch the two webinars we dedicated to this important topic: 

Webinar 4: Sleep - how to make the most of it 

With sleep expert Camilla Gyllensvan who has created audio files that help people fall asleep in just 8 minutes as guest speaker.

Webinar 5: Sleep and evening routines where Timefinder Academy Members shared their tips and evening routines with each other.

I hope you will become efficient with your time and stay healthy by giving yourself enough sleep, following these pieces of advice!

Take care,
Annika

Your ethical will: What got you through your greatest challenge?

Welcome back to Twelve essential questions to tell a life story. By joining me in twelve blog posts you will create what Rabbi Leder calls your ethical will.

By answering the questions your loved ones will get to know you deeper and you will understand yourself better. Let your memories bring meaning!

To join – read the blog posts, reflect on the questions and write your own answers. You are very welcome to share them in the comments.

Welcome on an interesting journey!

What got you through your greatest challenge?

Since Steve Leder is a rabbi he is often the first person people call when their lives fall apart. He says he has learned 3 important things from his own suffering and from supporting others in theirs. 

• Denial, ego, fear or shame prevent us from facing our failures, making the consequences worse than if we had dealt with these failures sooner rather than later. 

• Pain is halved when shared with someone we trust

• We endure challenges and learn to live and love more fully because of them.

Thinking about and sharing how we got through our greatest challenge will help ourselves and our loved ones face future challenges. 

One of the answers in the book resonates fully with me, I agree with every well written word in the following paragraph. 

“Know the difference between adversity and disappointment, a heartbreak and a bummer. Keeping a sense of perspective has always been what has gotten me through life’s challenges. It is difficult to count our blessings when we’re in the midst of trauma, but there are alway blessings. Give yourself time to grieve, to lick your wounds. Never discount your real feelings of pain and loss, but also don’t lose yourself in them.”

When I thought about my challenges, I found it hard to select one. We all experience several challenges in life and ranking them can give the faulty impression some of them weren’t that painful. When I think about the different challenges I have experienced, I find two things that got me through them. 

The unwavering belief I will get through it. There simply is no other option than “getting through”. Like Winston Churchill said: 

If you're going through hell, keep going. 

That’s what I do. I keep going. I don’t even consider giving up or getting stuck in despair with my feet burning. When I go through hell I keep going. 

The other behaviour that helps me get through tough times, is looking beyond the misery. Finding the light in the darkness. This is one of the many wonderful things I learned from my mother. No matter how dark it is, there is always a light somewhere. 

As Elvis Presley sings in If I can dream:

Out there in the dark, there's a beckoning candle

That beckoning candle guides me out of hell. 

So my advice to my loved ones when they are facing difficulties is: 

Keep on walking. Hell has an end. The beckoning candle in the darkness will guide you out of it. 

If you want to read more about how to get through challenges, you are welcome to read some of the blog posts I have shared over the years on this topic. 

I thought I was prepared mum

Secure a happy ending

Of course it will work out

Tragic things will happen - and it will be OK

So much love, so much pain

Only life knows its length

How to find time in April: Use business cases

Do you ever wonder if you use your time well?

You can skip the guesswork and the endless discussions in your head.

There is a straight-forward method to making good decisions about your time.

This month I help you choose how to use your time by using Business Cases.

Find time in April by creating business cases for activities you spend time on.

List the values and the costs and then ask yourself if the business case is a good one.

If not – get creative and find new ways.

The business case concept is an important part of the Courageous Time Management method, step 1: Create your Foundation for Holistic Time Management. 

Use business cases whenever you feel you are not using time the way you would like to. They will give the clarity you need to use your time better. 

Your ethical will: What was your biggest failure?

Welcome back to Twelve essential questions to tell a life story. By joining me in twelve blog posts you will create what Rabbi Leder calls your ethical will.

By answering the questions your loved ones will get to know you deeper and you will understand yourself better. Let your memories bring meaning!

To join – read the blog posts, reflect on the questions and write down your own answers. You are very welcome to share them in the comments.

Welcome on an interesting journey!

What was your biggest failure?

Hmm, isn’t this a strange question? What is a failure anyway, isn’t it just a lesson?

Maybe.

In my experience a failure can hurt even if we learn from it. I know the failure I will tell you about still saddens me even if I have learned from it and things turned out alright in the end.

As Steve Leder writes:

“Failure is a great teacher, attacking arrogance while inviting humility, painfully yet fortunately forcing us to take a cold, hard look at our own dysfunction, its roots and its thorns.”

Let’s have a look at a touching failure shared in the book:

“My greatest flaw, in my view, is I could not accept my dad, who was an uneducated man damaged by his poverty-stricken upbringing, a survivor of the Holocaust who lost his first family. He was not the flawed one, I was. I just wish when my dad had dementia and said at the age of ninety-three that he didn’t think I loved him, and I said I did, that I meant it at the time. I do now!”

 

My biggest failure was letting go of Russin, a wonderful labrador-border collie mix. I grew up with dogs and never thought I would ever need to give one up. My Springer spaniel Lotti and I even won prizes at obedience competitions.

Sure, I noticed early on Russin was more insecure than my previous dogs, but we were convinced we would be able to raise her to become a stable dog, just like we had our previous dogs. When our first child came to our family, Russin didn’t know how to deal with him. As long as he was too small to move around it was alright, but when he started crawling and standing she saw him as a threat. Then, suddenly, Russin started attacking Lotti, our other dog. They had been great friends up until then. Their fights were not just skirmishes, Lotti got badly hurt and the fights were hard for us to break up once they started. We lived in a war zone, having to keep the dogs apart and worrying about Russin possibly hurting our baby one day.

Of course we thought we could fix it. Of course we tried. The alternative, giving up a dog was at first unthinkable. In my head that was what bad dog owners did. People who gave up too quickly, irresponsible, uncaring dog owners. Surely we weren't like that?

In the end we realised the best for the whole family, Russin included, was to find her another family. We did. They loved her and sent us photos of her life with them for many years. 

While we tried to fix the situation we got to know great dog trainers and became more intuitive dog owners. By letting go of Russin there was eventually space in our life for Jaspis, the best possible dog for a family with by then three children.

Still.

Despite all the learnings and all good things coming from this situation, I still hurt when I think about Russin looking at us through the rear-window of her new owners’ car.

To my wonderful Russin, now in heaven since long,

I am sorry things didn’t turn out as intended even though they did turn out well in the end. Love you forever.

Matte Annika

How to find time in March: Plan what fits

Do you mostly get all the things you plan done?

If not, do you blame yourself?

Don’t.

Blaming yourself reduces energy and joy and increases waste-time.

This month I help you get out of the feeling of always being behind.

 

Find time in March by planning only what can fit in a week rather than what you think you should get done. Remember, you simply cannot fit 300 hours of work into a 168 hour week.

When you fully accept this and dare to say no to yourself and others, you will focus on what you can get done and to your surprise you will get more done than when you freak out about the things that do not fit.

To dive deeper into how you can set yourself up for success with realistic plans, watch the Timefinder Academy webinar >>> Balance your week <<<.  The webinar is accessible for Timefinder Academy members.  You can sign up and get access immediately >>> here <<<.

I hope you will find the courage to say no to the things that will not fit in your glass of time, so you can focus on and enjoy the things that do!

Your ethical will: What makes you happy?

Welcome back to Twelve essential questions to tell a life story.

Join me in twelve blog posts and create what Rabbi Leder calls your ethical will.

By answering the questions your loved ones will get to know you deeper and you will understand yourself better. Let your memories bring meaning!

To join – read the blog posts, reflect on the questions and write down your own answers. You are very welcome to share them in the comments.

Welcome on an interesting journey!

What makes you happy and what life lessons can be drawn from that?

I hope you, like I, have lots of answers to the question about what makes you happy. 

If I would have answered this in my youth, the answer would have been dancing. I loved dancing, being part of a show dance group, teach kids how to dance, prepare the choreography… I loved all of it. 

Another thing that immediately comes to mind is driving my motorcycle. I loved it as soon as I sat on the back of a motorcycle and I have been driving since I was sixteen. The freedom, the roar of the engine, the smells that reach me through the helmet… I love all of that too. 

Then of course the things that have always been part of my life. Walking my wonderful dogs, being with my family, travelling and exploring. 

Working also makes me happy. Solving difficult problems with skilled people. Hearing from my clients how I have helped change their lives. Of course that makes me happy. 

Last and far from least. The reason you are reading this is because I love to read and to write. 

When reading about Happiness in the book For you when I am gone, I see I differ from Steve’s description of happiness. His conclusion is that happiness is togetherness. 

Hmm… 

Several of the things I mentioned above I do alone. Riding my Gladius, reading and writing. Maybe I enjoy the togetherness with my motorcycle, the author of the book I am reading and the characters in the stories I write. 

Or I am simply a person who finds happiness both in togetherness and solitude. 

There is another description in the book that I understand better. 

 

“We tend to think about happiness as a singular event or a spontaneous moment in time caused by external factors we do not control - a sort of lucky surprise, like winning the lottery without buying a ticket. But in most cases real happiness requires a process and is the distillate of mindful living day after week after month, and even decades of intention.”

My advice for my loved ones - do what makes you happy. If not every second, then at least every day. That is the only way to live life fully. 

Now it’s your turn!

What makes you happy and what life lessons can your loved ones draw from that?