Today I finally snuggled in the bed with my iPad and read the March issue of O magazine. Always looking for ways to be better organized, the cover title “De-Clutter Your Life!” captured my attention right away. As I swiped through the numerous pages, one line leapt from the screen. “One definition of Zen is simply ‘doing one thing at a time’.” I couldn’t tell you what the article was about because all I could think about was one of my client sessions last week.
My client, like most of us, had everything together until…well…everything fell apart. To him it seemed as if he’d woken up one day and noticed his financial life had been turned upside down. He had stacks of unopened (and therefore unpaid) bills, couldn’t remember the last time he looked at his checking account online, and was too scared to confront the man he saw on the mirror.
When he stepped into my office with three full bags of loose papers and envelopes, he could barely look me in the eyes. I quickly got a sense of how far off his financial path he’d gotten as he opened up about what finally caused him to seek counsel. After he expressed his goals and passion for wanting to achieve them, he plainly asked, “So, what’s next?”
When we’re ready to make a change (whether it’s our relationship with money, food or each other) we’re often stopped cold by that same question. Having the idea in our minds to be and/or do something different is the easy part. It’s the action(s) that need to be executed next that most often separates the doers from the talkers. As my client and I sat there for hours going through and organizing every piece of paper, he realized he’d successfully completed the first step!
Like he did, I pray we all have the strength to confront what needs to be changed in our lives by focusing on doing one thing at a time, one step at a time, one day at a time.
