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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Derek Olsen, my allergies have won the battle, I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I share my thoughts on making space for new things.
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What I Learned Yesterday:
Things are changing rapidly in my life right now.
With a six month old, a business to run, a book to finish, friends and family to keep relationships with, and the daily chores, I feel like I’m running a marathon. Everyday goes by so fast. I sometimes feel like my life is running away and I can’t catch up with it.
I’m usually pretty good at saying no to things that I don’t have time for. I try hard to stick to the priorities that my wife Carrie and I have defined for our life. We’ve set boundaries around every area of our life to protect ourselves from unwanted intrusions. These boundaries keep us from being overly burdened with things that aren’t healthy for us or don’t support our vision for our life.
When life gets too busy to keep up with everything, something has to go. I would rather do a few things really well then a lot of things poorly. I try to intentionally choose what gets cut out from my life. If I don’t choose carefully what stays and what goes I’ll end up cutting things that should have stayed and keeping things that should have gone.
There is no room for new things when life is full. New things need new space. New space is only created by letting something currently in your life go.
For example, right now we are looking at buying another car. But we can’t afford a new car unless we sell our current car. We have to sell it first to make space for a new car.
Another example goes like this. My wife and I used to lead a small group at our church. We also wanted to lead a table at the pre-martial counseling class. With our new baby and life be ing crazy we knew we couldn’t do both. It was a tough decision but we stopped leading our small group so that we could make space in our lives to lead a table instead.
We thought about this decision for months. We looked at where we wanted to invest our time and energy and leading a table at the pre-marital class was more important than leading a small group. It was tough, but we had to do it.
So, here’s what I learned:
Anytime we want to bring something new into our lives we have to make space for it. With a full life, anytime you bring something new in, something old has to go.
It can be hard to let things go. I sometimes feel like I’m letting someone or something down. But If I never moved on or stopped doing something, I would never be able to pick up something new, join a new group, or have a new experience.
It can actually be cathartic to shed the skin of your life every now and then.
Making space for new things is a tricky thing.
It can be difficult to let go, but letting go is the very thing that allows you to reach out.
I’m Derek Olsen and this has been stuff I learned yesterday.
I’d like to give you a free ebook. It’s called 4 1/2 Conversation Starters. T
his little book is perfect for married couples who want to start talking about money. Visit derekandcarrie.com to grab your copy right now.
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