It’s Coming – Tax Day

Last weekend my husband sat down to do our taxes. Yes, it’s that dreaded time of year. Some of you might have already filed them – I know many people who do it within in the first month or two of the year, eager for the refund. Then, others put it off, searching through mounds of random papers looking for all the receipts and other relevant information. From what I see, whether you’re relatively organized or not, it’s not something any of us look forward to. Despite this, if we can be organized, it can reduce the stress and anxiety associated with this process.

I’ve always been a big proponent of making a specific place to hold all the tax information – a place where you can put it over the course of the year – knowing where to get it when it’s that time to deal with taxes. This can be a file or a box, it doesn’t matter as long as you put the papers there consistently and avoid putting other papers in that same place. I’ve made files with upcoming years on them so I don’t even need to think about making another file and every time I get to filing papers, I put them in their correct spot.

There’s one exception to this for me – the medical expenses. In years past, I’ve had an envelope that lives by other frequently used papers in a desktop file sorter, where I can add to it easily. Then, before my husband does taxes I pull out all those receipts, divide them into categories, and add them up – giving my husband that grand total on what we spent on doctor visits and prescriptions. Because of the way I’d set it up, I’d need to add the numbers multiple times, making sure I’d not entered one (or more) of them incorrectly. Toward the end of this year, I decided to make a spreadsheet for medical expenses; columns for the categories and let the computer do my calculations. I still need to make sure the numbers are entered correctly, but I make a little effort throughout the year, and it’s that much easier when it’s time to do taxes.

Do you have papers that are important for taxes yet also relevant for other activities? Although not everyone has this to deal with, businesses and those who volunteer extensively are commonly faced with this. It might be “easiest” to make duplicates – then you can have one copy with tax information and the other copy with the other relevant papers. Even I cringe at that – who really wants MORE papers to deal with?

As with any organizing, the bottom line is being able to find it when you need it and having a system for tracking what you need. If you file those papers with the relevant papers and forget that at tax time, you’ll be unhappy. Also, as with most things, there’s multiple ways of dealing with these dual use papers.

When will you use those papers next? Are they something that you’ll need next in September? Put them with the relevant papers. Rather, will use them next for taxes? Put them with the taxes. After you’re finished using them for their next purpose, move them to the next place they’ll be used. Part of how this can work is to make a note for yourself and put in the opposite place from where they’re stored, telling you that these papers are important and then where to look to get them. Once taxes are completed, papers you’ll refer to for their other purpose can live with that related information. You’ll only need access to them from a tax standpoint in case you’re audited.

If you’re computer savvy, you can make a file – spreadsheet or document. If you just need the totals of your different receipts, it can be easy to enter that information and even track it from year to year. It’d be more concise and immediate to have just that information you need in a computer file. This does mean that you’d need to be consistent in adding the information into the file.

It’s not too late to decide on and create a system for handling all the tax documents you’ll need for next year. Think about where you struggle – what papers do you waste time searching for? Why those papers? Brainstorm ways to cope with how they interfere with your system. Let it evolve. My medical receipts lived in an envelope for years before I decided to add them to a spreadsheet throughout the year, making my life and the taxes easier.

Work Smarter, Not Harder

Let me admit something – I frequently struggle with wearing myself out. I’ll wake up one morning with plans of all that I’ll get accomplished and it falls flat. I’ve exhausted myself in prior days and my body and mind demand a reprieve. Often I blame this on having a chronic disease and how it can be unpredictable. The truth is that although this might be part of the picture, I also have a tendency to overdo things. As a professional organizer, I feel like I should be better about this not happening, yet I’m human as well as I recognize it and am working on it.

Somehow, many of us strive to just work harder. As if that’s the answer – “If only I could work harder and faster, then I could manage…” This is not the answer. We only have a limited supply of energy, whether you have health issues or not. We all need a certain amount of sleep to re-energize ourselves. The truth is that we need to work smarter.

I was fortunate enough to get into the expo of ASTD (The American Society for Training and Development) last year and was intrigued with a booth there: The Energy Project. Although I found the people manning the booth to be rude, I was captivated by the ideas presented. Since a year ago on coming across them, I’ve been fortunate enough to attend a few webinars they’ve put on. Eventually I buy his latest book and read that to get more in depth information.

One of the things Tony Schwartz, the CEO of The Energy Project, says is that we have 90 minutes maximum of focused attention before we lose that energy. After that, we need to take a break for renewal. He recommends doing this throughout the day, after 90 minutes of focused work to build in intermittent renewal breaks, as we have cycles like our sleep cycle. He says how long those breaks are depends on you and what will help you renew your energy although it can be as little as 5 minutes – it’s about the quality of the renewal, not how much time we spend. If we can implement those renewal breaks throughout our day, he says that we’ll be even more productive.

This makes sense to me. I also know that I’m notorious for getting so absorbed into something that before I know it hours have passed. This is not healthy – I want to be conscious about what I’m doing and how I’m spending my time. I found a Mac program that helps me address this issue for when I’m on the computer for long stretches, Dejal Time Out Free. It fades the screen for me at the intervals I’ve set – for resting my eyes and reminding me that 90 minutes have passed with the option of postponing the break or even skipping it altogether.

I’m still practicing applying this when I’m not at the computer. I know what I need to do; I just forget to set the timer! I’ve talked before about how using a timer (Time I & Time II) can help us get control of our time, and now we can use it for our energy too. I’ve my timer handy so that I can use it both for the focused attention as well as to track my breaks. It’s been amazing how refreshed I’ve felt at the end of the day when I’ve applied this process during the day.

As an entrepreneur, I could always be doing more work. That’s not including my other roles as wife, friend, daughter, or the various values I hold in my life and I want to spend time on. This is not any different from anyone else as we all have many roles and values that we need to attend to in order to feel we’re handling things well. If we can use this 90 minutes cycle to focus on those various aspects, we’ll find more balance without the exhaustion from overextending ourselves. It’s a process and we can train ourselves to stay focused and then enjoy the break before digging back in.

We Must Always Change

One of the reasons I moved back to Wisconsin was the seasons. In southern California, I could appreciate the buds appearing in the spring, but I missed the bright fall colors in autumn and the snow in winter. If you were in one of the many states hit with the recent storm, you might be thinking I’m especially odd right now! Yet even with the blizzard we got locally, I appreciated the snow. As I walked around the next day, I was amazed by the textures and shapes created by the snow and wind. It was beautiful.

Drift of snow in our backyard

Beautiful texture in the snow

The evening when it all started my husband and I were sitting there listening to the wind howl and gust. We talked about being a little anxious about whether some damage might happen, yet we both knew there was nothing we could do at that moment, the storm was here and we just had to wait it out. As it turned out, there was no damage. We did have snow in places that went over his 6-foot head as well as a buried garage door.

Change is inevitable. One of the reasons that I adore the changing seasons is that it’s a constant reminder that things change. We might wish it and even try to minimize those changes. The truth is that there are transitions that we’ve adapted to already. If you’re a parent, as your child grows, there are more changes in a year than you’re counting. When you pause to think about it, you’re amazed by how big they’ve gotten – and not just their size. “Nothing is permanent except change” Heraclitus

Attempting to control change is useless. Change is about moving from a known place –where you are right now – to a place that is relatively unknown. If clearing the clutter is the change you want to make, you might have ideas of what that will look like, but the reality is likely to differ from your imaginings. The truth is that as you begin, your vision can change and better ideas will emerge, like the buds in spring.

Life happens in the meantime. You’ve created great plans, you know just how you’re going to handle your time and stuff. Then life happens. Someone else interferes with your schedule – those unforeseen things happen. It’s here that I personally struggle the most – not from other people changing things, but rather from expecting too much of myself! Except this is what life does, and finding a way to go with the flow minimizes our stress.

Embrace opportunity for change. It’s too easy to be hard on ourselves. We’re hyper-aware of how we’ve failed and ignore the opportunity to improve things. I’m always on the lookout for things that aren’t working the best. I’m even eager to find ways to simplify and improve the way we do things. It’s easy to put on the blinders and ignore things. It takes time and energy to figure out what needs to change and most importantly, in what ways it needs to change. Frequently only parts of the system aren’t working, so scrapping the whole system isn’t the answer. Yet, if we can be eager to change, we’re open to how to improve.

“When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one that has opened for us.” Alexander Graham Bell

Change = Growth. Maybe not immediately, but eventually! Each time we make changes, we learn things – sometimes only what NOT to do, but nevertheless, we’re learning. Often it’s painful and the changes can be the opposite of what we want. Yet, it’s still movement. As frightening as change can be, stagnancy is terrifying. I don’t know about you, but the last thing I want is to be stuck anywhere.

Before long, the snow will melt away and those buds will arrive. Change is all around us, whether we look for it or not. It happens whether we want it or we don’t. It is inevitable. Nevertheless, it can be something for the better and the more we can embrace what life brings our way, the happier we can be.

“We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise we harden.” Goethe

Contagious Clutter

Have you ever heard of kipple? “When nobody’s around, kipple reproduces itself. For instance, if you to go bed leaving any kipple around your apartment, when you wake up there is twice as much of it. It always gets more and more.” Philip K. Dick in his book, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (which was made into the movie Blade Runner) said this. Sometimes I feel like this is not some futuristic possibility, but the reality we all face today.

It’s not independent of our behavior though. When I was in my first apartment, I would often need to spend a day or more picking it up and cleaning to be ready for my dad to visit. (See, I wasn’t always an organized person!) I’d plan that it’d never get that bad again, yet in that tiny studio apartment, one area would slowly start to collect clutter. Before I knew it, the other areas would be infected with other clutter.

Some of that was that there was nowhere in there that you could not see the rest of the space. When just a little bit of clutter starts to accumulate and you let it sit there, you are less likely to avoid dropping more clutter around. Just the sight of a little clutter lowers your response to adding to it. “It’s just a little more – and I’ll deal with it quickly later.”

And so it starts.

On some level this is unavoidable. We all have the pending stuff we’re trying to deal with – it can’t get put away completely yet, so you set it off to the side.

Do you then see the piles begin to build up? Whether it is from yourself or others in your home, it’s human nature to get a little “lazy” about adding to the piles. Some of the most organized people I know struggle with this phenomenon – and often they berate themselves for it.

The multiplying kipple can be that much worse for those who share their home, with a spouse, children, even a roommate! We all organize and manage our things differently, these differences can lure us into allowing the clutter to accumulate before our eyes and before we recognize it.

It comes down to maintainence. I’ve accepted that a certain number of piles will appear over the course of a week – though the sizes vary. What matters is what I do about it and what I tell my clients to do – make time weekly or even daily to deal with it. I also make a point to evaluate what is getting piled – What types of things are there? Do they have a home? Do they need a home? Am I frustrated with the things (and therefore not dealing with them)? Is there a better way?

Do I wish that there were never any piles? YES! We are not perfect, and at least according to Philip K. Dick, kipple is unavoidable. Therefore, I’m determined to limit the kipple and encourage others to keep their own kipple under manageable levels. ☺ Good Luck – don’t look away for too long since it does multiply when you’re not looking!

Schedule Your Resolutions

Picture this: me, as a young girl, I’m sitting down to make a list. No, I’m not an organized child – it’s New Year’s and I’m writing my resolutions for the coming year. Fortunately, I was not encouraged to make a huge list, though often had around a dozen items. I had big dreams for all the things that I could change in that year. If only making the list made it happen. We all have faced the reality – it’s not that simple.

Creating new habits – changing our behavior – is difficult. We’re creatures of habit, and cannot decide on a “complete overhaul” and expect that we’ll pull it off. We need to train ourselves. That means that we need to start simply – with a very limited number of things. I’d even say that maybe even only one thing at a time. You can work on multiple things; though try to make it for different times during the day. If you want to try changing three things – choose things that are done throughout the day – one thing for the morning, one thing for the afternoon, and one thing for the evening.

Like any skill you want to have, you need to practice. You cannot learn to play an instrument overnight; you need to start with something relatively simple and then practice. And practice and continue to practice. Then you can move on to the next step in the process – and then practice some more. Eventually you’ll have the skills. It takes time and work to cement those skills for yourself.

Don’t become a nagging parent to yourself to practice whatever you’ve decided to work on. Hopefully you’re setting goals that you’re passionate about, and therefore want to succeed with. Yet, you’ll need to figure out when it makes sense to practice them. Put them into your schedule. It’s quite a phenomenon that when we put something into our schedule that we want to do, we more often actually do it.

If you’ve decided to make time to exercise, look at the next week (or two weeks or month) and decide when you’ll do it. The frequency is up to you, maybe you want to start slowly, and two days a week is all you can manage. If you have a schedule that allows you to block the same time on the same days, it makes it easier. If you have a more erratic schedule, just make sure you put time into the schedule. Don’t “play it by ear” waiting for the time to appear for your exercise, doing that just makes it more likely this goal will fall by the wayside.

Ideally, you’ll want to make time to review how you’re coming on your goals. If you’ve faltered along the way, you can consider what went wrong, make some adjustments, and begin again. On the other hand, if you’ve made good progress, you can think about whether you want to add some new goals.

It’s remarkably easy to dream big – you’re determined that you want to do this and that, ad infinitum. We want to stay on top of those regular tasks and have time to also do much more. At this time of year specifically, it’s traditional to evaluate the things we want to change and make resolutions for the transformative powers of the New Year.

When you examine your goals and priorities, don’t overwhelm yourself by a long list – whether you think about it once a year or many times. If you want to succeed, limit the goals to a small number. Then the challenge is – you need to put concrete steps into your schedule. You need to plan specifically what you are going to do. This applies to everything you decide to work on, at any time of year. ☺

Making Time Means Setting Priorities

I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who thought they had enough time – at least at sometimes. It often feels like it just disappears. You’re working on something and think it will only take 20 minutes and before you know it, an hour has gone by. Often it’s just that there are many demands on your time – you have a family, a job, a home, and any number of other responsibilities. There just does not seem to be enough time in a day to do everything you want to do. We all have the same amount of time to manage and the bottom line is making priorities that fit your values.

First, a story about time that I really like and which has circulated the Internet.

The Bank Account of Time: Imagine there is a bank that credits your account each morning with $86,400. It carries over no balance from day to day. Every evening it deletes whatever part of the balance you failed to use during the day. What would you do? Draw out every cent, of course!!!! Each of us has such a bank. Its name is TIME. Every morning, it credits you with 86,400 seconds. Every night it writes off, as lost, whatever of this you have failed to invest to good purpose. It carries over no balance. It allows no overdraft. Each day it opens a new account for you. Each night it burns the remains of the day. If you fail to use the day’s deposits, the loss is yours. There is no going back. There is no drawing against the “tomorrow”. You must live in the present on today’s deposits. Invest it to get from it the utmost in health, happiness, and success! The clock is running. Make the most of today. (I took the wording from here.)

In the previous blog, Take Time to Plan, I talked some about the importance of making time to plan and schedule things. This is an important part of the process of setting priorities since we all have limited time – and we need to try to be realistic about what we can accomplish.

The other part of this process is actually figuring out what your priorities are – and this means being aware of what your deep down values are. We need to align our priorities around the values we hold. Stephen R. Covey in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People says, “Organize and execute around priorities.”

We all have many priorities – you cannot just focus on one thing and ignore everything else. All the time you spend with family at the expense of your job is not realistic or even desirable! When you make time to consider your schedule and set some realistic plans, you’re aiming to make the most of the time you have. You’ll know that where you spend your time is where it’s best spent.

Often this requires that you alter some of your choices and often avoid immediate gratification. It also means thinking about the long-term and figuring out how to focus on the important things amidst all the demands that seem critical along the way. There are things that you will need to set aside, as you – or anyone – can do it all!

You’ll need to consider a chunk of time – this very day is too limited and this month is too large – so examine this week. Don’t over-schedule, this is not about filling every moment with an activity – but about setting aside to work on things that matter to you, to help you reach goals. You also want to make sure you include yourself in the plans – time for rejuvenation and growth. Most importantly, you need to make time to do this each week.

As such a complex topic, this is only the tip of the iceberg, yet starting even with this, you can take control of your time and spend it in meaningful ways. Each week offers you another opportunity to improve and learn more what you need and want from your life.

Stop Inadvertent Multitasking

We’ve all done it. We may not even really been aware that we’re doing it. Or we might be aware, yet keep doing it, unsure of how to stop.

Are you wondering what I’m referring to?

We have a box, drawer, or some container filled with random stuff and we decide it’s time to deal with it. We reach in and pull something out – sometimes we even shuffle the stuff around first, reaching for something “easy.” We look at it.

At this point, one of two things often happen after we look at that chosen item –
1. We put that very thing we pulled out – back into the container or next to us with no clear intention for it or
2. We hold that item in one hand while we use the other hand to shuffle items in that container, looking for something else to deal with

This can lead to putting the item down just to get it out of our hands, yet not where it needs to go and easy to forget where it ended up.

This is a hard habit to break; it’s frequently unconscious so we’re not even aware when we’re doing it. Which just takes me back to the idea of trying to “be in the moment” while you’re working. We can all work to catch ourselves when we’re doing it and stop. Then we make efforts to avoid continuing those behaviors.

Shuffling items just makes more work for you. You will have to try to deal with the items over and over again. It will make it feel that much more tedious, and it is already probably a tedious task! Then the idea of multi-tasking – it takes time for our brain to switch from processing one thing to another and one study says we lose 20-40% of our productivity when we do.

Ideally you want to just grab the first item, regardless of what it is. If you grab something that is supposed to be easy, make sure you then follow the steps too. Look at it and decide what you want to do with it. Unfortunately some things are challenging and you might be unsure what you want to do with it. Putting it back in the container does not actually solve the dilemma; it just reminds you that you feel stuck about what to do with that item.

This is a great place to use the O.H.I.O. principle I’ve talked about before. Handle the item only once – by making a decision about the item: loose category or place it belongs. Therefore you aim to make a decision about each item you handle and deal with it, even if it means putting it into another pile!

One way to handle these “loose” items is to have multiple containers to sort into, and then when you are finished with that area you can see what needs a specific home. Yet, it requires making decisions – both in the moment of picking it up and categorizing it and then later figuring out where it needs to live.

As usual, I think there are times for “pending” items. For instance with papers, many people believe that there needs to be a minimum of 3-5 papers before it’s worth making a designated file for an item. You cannot always know whether you have enough of a thing to make a special place for them until you can see everything you are dealing with.

It’s not easy to stop these unconscious habits, yet it serves us well if we can – whether we stop it entirely or just improve how frequently we slip into it. It’d make your life so much simpler and the more you can practice this, the easier it becomes each time you need to handle a similar task.

Make It Fun

Is fun missing from your life? I know I feel sometimes that life has become more drudgery than anything else. And the truth is that you need to find ways to bring real fun back into your life. Although I might be able to help inspire you to find some fun in general, right now, I want to talk about bringing a little fun to the various things that we need to do in our homes. If we can make our chores less tedious, we’ll be more likely to get them done.

I encourage you to brainstorm your own ideas for making things more fun. Therefore, to help get those creative juices flowing, I’ll share some of the ideas I’ve used and ones that have worked for others. Use them for yourself if they interest you.

I’ve mentioned before that I am not an avid cleaner. I also record TV shows to watch at a later point, often enjoying the ability to fast-forward through commercials. I now use those commercials as a perfect time to get some vacuuming done. I look up periodically to see when the show starts again. That is my cue to stop for the moment. I then use that time to move things either out of the way, or back into place. Our rooms are small, so the whole room is easily vacuumed within two commercial breaks. It doesn’t necessarily make it fun, but it does help it feel less tedious. It also stops the task from feeling overwhelming; I work at it for a limited amount of time and then stop for while.

Teamwork is a great way to make tasks more fun – even having company can help tasks feel more fun. This can work in several different ways – from the actually doing the work with someone else to simply working in the same area on different tasks. Another way to apply this idea is to have a phone buddy. Before starting anything, you talk on the phone, sharing what you’re each going to tackle and agree on a time to call back. You then hang up and begin your tasks. You can imagine what they are doing and can look forward to talking later. The key here is that if one of you doesn’t actually work on those tasks, you wait to talk.

I often play music while working on the various things around the house. I’ve heard back from clients that this has helped them as well. (It of course varies depending on the person.) Going through papers are one of the most tedious tasks, and surprisingly draining. One woman found that if she had music playing, she could sort papers for longer periods of time as it made it more enjoyable. As my music tastes are quite eclectic, I vary the type of music – considering my mood as well as my task.

Be sure to have different tools for bringing fun to your tasks, so that our fun things don’t become routine! Then it’s not fun anymore. Mix it up, have alternatives, and explore what works for you.

Of course, anytime we can make our tasks enjoyable, the more likely we are to get them done and feel good about it. I hope you will find ways to make your tasks fun – let your creative juices flow in finding ways that work for you. The holidays are here, and if we can employ ways to make the things we do more fun, it can only help us enjoy the holidays even more.

Only Handle It Once

I’ve spent time cringing at promoting this to most people! If we take the idea literally – when you grab the mail, you will spend time attending to each bill and making separate trips to the filing cabinet or shredder each day as you deal with each piece of mail. Doing a web search on those terms several hits talk about the myth of Only Handle It Once (O.H.I.O) while others talk about how helpful and important it is. Yet all of these articles, whether “debunking a myth” or using the system, really boil down to the same thing – it’s really about your level of efficiency.

It requires that you don’t try to apply this literally to every situation. There are times to handle something only one – junk mail and spam e-mails are good examples. Is there really any reason to have this cluttering up your space and not getting it into the trash (physical or electronic) quickly? It does also rely on your definition of junk and spam – for example, if you are in the market for a new credit card, those offers might be worth examining.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are plenty of things you aren’t going to handle only once, at least in the literal sense. If we think about “handle” more loosely, as in moving the item to a temporary “home” until it is time to attend to it, you can eliminate any worries it could cause by knowing you will complete later. You are handling it once – in that you are moving it along in your system.

Therefore the key piece here is to have some systems that work for you, where you’ll put the things in the meantime. It needs to be the same place each time and not cluttered with unrelated items. This means that you can create different areas for phone calls, bills, scheduling (parties, social events, etc.) and focus on each one independently of the others, or if it works for you, keeping this all together. Regardless of how you choose to set it up, you need to use it and make time to deal with those items.

If you are able to make a specific home for things and when the time is right, focus on them, you are still handling it only once since your brain is not continuing to “handle” it between when you got it and the time when you need to deal with it. Sometimes this is where things break down for people; they don’t have working systems. This is a different issue, as it isn’t handled only once.

This applies to e-mails as well, if you deal with it promptly, you will not keep re-reading them over and save yourself time. In truth, it applies to many things. If your dishwasher is not actually getting your dishes clean the first time through, you have to handle them repeatedly – hence why some people will almost wash the dishes before putting them in. If we can streamline the laundry and get it put away, we’re not handling our clothes over and over again.

The truth is that even I still struggle some with thinking about this phrase as not literal – when I hear it, when I talk about it – I still cringe inside. I’m afraid people cannot take it more figuratively – and from much of what I’ve seen and heard, when people talk about it, they use it literally. Yet, if we can shift our thinking about the term handling to being about moving things along in the process, we’ll become more efficient. As well as we’re simplifying things in our lives.

Find Your Curiosity

I’ve talked before about dealing with that other person or persons in the home that just can’t seem to be organized. It is naturally a complex issue and I’ve written some on this already in “Help, My Partner is a Slob.” Since this isn’t simple enough to be covered in one sitting, here is another piece of the puzzle. Can you get to a place of curiosity? Really curious, not pretending so you can complain and dictate how things need to be?

If you’ve recently been frustrated with how “they” don’t actually put things away, this is not the time to do anything other than process the feelings. After some time has passed though, you might think about asking some questions as long as you are approaching it from sincere curiosity. Do they know why they don’t put those things away? Can you brainstorm together to see if there is a solution that would work for both of you?

I worked with a woman who was annoyed about how things did not get dealt with by others in the home. As we worked on an area, there was a place I mentioned we could leave empty, with the idea that she could observe what ended up there. Knowing what items were problematic would help start a talk about what the struggles were. Was it that the item had a “bad” home for that person? Was it just sloppiness, it was easy to drop it there, so it was thoughtless? Was it a reminder for them that they wanted to act soon? Her response was “nope,” and she piled some items up there so nothing could be put there at all.

If you can actually find a way to be curious about what is going on for that other person, you might discover that there is a simple solution that works for both of you. Or you might find some additional compassion for that person and be willing to step up and do certain things. It can be amazing what a difference understanding what happens for the other person can make in how you feel and react.

I’ve applauded the book, Crucial Conversations before, and they spend some talking about curiosity also. There are challenges and when we can be and stay curious, we might find out what is at the bottom of things. The key is that we need to be genuinely curious. Approaching things with that sincere curiosity, it lessens the possibility the other person will respond defensively, and therefore that understanding can be achieved!

This can apply for us as well. Do you ever stop to wonder why you do something in that particular way? If you avoid the place of blaming yourself, and approach even yourself with curiosity, you might find answers. Just like with dealing with others, if you are berating yourself, you’ll likely struggle to find why those challenges exist.

As I stated above, dealing with others, whether they are our spouses or our children (or even our parents!), is a complex issue. I’ll probably be writing more about this again! In the meantime, if you can find genuine curiosity for why the other person is that way, you might be able to start a dialogue and make some discoveries that can lead to less frustration. It can be extremely challenging to find that curiosity – especially if it’s been building for years – yet if you can, you’ll be open to hearing about them, and that can lead to solutions and that is always a good thing!