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News and Notes!
Dr. Allan will be a guest
presenter for the Naked
Truth Alliance in February. More information will be in
the coming issues.
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Greetings,
This is a bit of an downer way to start off this issue, but I had a
friend die this past week. Don was a classmate in my doctoral program
who graduated last year. He was diagnosed with Creutzfeldt Jakob
disease, a rare (affecting only one person in a million per year),
degenerative, invariably fatal brain disorder. In fact, he was only
diagnosed within the past month. It is amazing to me how fragile life
really is.
It is my
prayer and hope that each of us take the time to enjoy life while we
have it. The spirit of this issue is just that. Focus life on what
matters. It's worth it.
Keep
exploring!
Corey
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Tips
to keep the marriage rockin'!
Each week
there will be some tips, suggestions, or ideas intended to help keep
your marriage rockin'.
This week's
tip:
Date your spouse. Don't assume, ask
them out.
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How to
unplug from the cyber world and plug into marriage.
There are many things
of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Reading, after a certain age,
diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads
too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of
thinking. ~Albert Einstein
If you are like me, you spent
a good deal of your day with your computer on, Outlook (or whatever
email server you use) running in the background, several browser
screens going throughout the day, as well as a Word document or two and
maybe even some Excel spreadsheets thrown in for good measure. Yet,
even with all this “work” open, I can waste a day with the best of
them. Oh, I almost forgot to mention that I will also have music
playing and/or the TV on as well. I am thoroughly immersed in noise and
distraction. And most of this noise is negative and overblown. Don’t
believe me, watch your local news and tell me what you see.
In 2008, I am committing to an
information fast. I am going to unplug from most of the information
sources I have sought and seek to spend more time with family, friends,
or outside. This actually started on a smaller scale about two months
ago, which was the last time I watched a local news broadcast.
What I am proposing is an
information diet. This starts with employing some selective ignorance.
When I take more charge of my personal life and my family life, I don’t
need to know as much about what others are doing. I become more
concerned about what I am doing. This produces action. Many times my
wife and I have had the discussion about not enjoying a particular
season or phase of life. What breaks us free from this gloominess is
action. Life and relationship design is about massive action.
If you are interested in producing
more action as you design your relationship and unplug from the cyber
information world, here are a few suggestions:
Take an inventory of the information
and noise sources you consume each day. Rate them each as necessary,
irrelevant to your goals, negative, or beyond your concern. Be honest.
I will bet that much of the information you consume is in the latter
three categories.
The next step is to unplug from all
but the necessary. Focus on consuming only the information important
for you and your family’s goals each day. Then pull the plug on these
sources everyday at a set time, say 7 PM, in order to spend time with
your spouse and family. This includes business and personal emails,
phone calls, time wasting TV shows, etc. Let voicemail do its job. Save
your correspondence until the next day, then take a focused hour and
get it all done. With the time you will free up by unplugging, do
something together. Go to bed early, talk, play legos with your kids.
Trust me, the information you may miss when you unplug isn’t that
important anyway. If there is something that is truly an emergency,
you’ll hear about it. But the time you spend with your family and
marriage is worth it. It will produce more action, which will generate
more energy, which will allow more freedom to design the relationship
and family you desire.
When it comes to information, less
is more. Focusing on what matters and what is in line with your values
and goals then will change your life.
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God Bless,
Marriage
Fully Alive® |
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