Opening the LOG JAM

Over the past year and a half or so, my life has been a fairly scary white water trip, sometimes even to the point of paralyzing me mentally and emotionally. As a woman of Faith, I have diligently sought the Faith and Love of God to dispel the fear. Sometimes, however, life has felt simply overwhelming and last night I was particularly paralyzed.

At the suggestion of a dear friend I had begun reading Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen . His techniques help people in the task of “unsticking their work flow”20. I certainly felt stuck. The heavy burden of life’s many tasks on top of my already overly stretched mental and emotional health left me paralyzed in my abilities to tackle any of them. I felt like a wild river overflowing its bank with a huge log jam. However, working on faith in Allen’s principles of productivity, I put up a wall of inactivity, a mental dam. The logs needed straightening so they could continue to flow. Putting up a wall would prevent the dangerous explosion down stream as the log jam began to straighten out.

Piece by piece I straightened out the jam. I addressed each project and other mental pieces that blocked my mental & emotional flow and my productivity. I assigned each item a »”next physical action” and a category on my Palm Pilot14. I also assessed my long term, short term goals and “my intended successful outcome” for each action14. Then I slowly raised the wall for the logs to flow smoothly downstream.

My river of life is still an incredibly crazy and stressful one. However, when I regularly review each »next physical action, my goals, and my intended outcomes, then I can keep my faith flowing rather than feeling paralyzed in fear, and love in my heart rather than dangerously exploding emotion.