Observing Your Schedule

Sometimes we get blown around in life like a plastic bag in the wind breakups, lack of motivation, distractions, and demotions. Each person that we meet has their own personal opinion and judgment of who we should be. This means that if you talk to fifteen people in the day: a significant other, manager, CEO, secretary, bus driver, car mechanic, waitress, minister, tax accountant, investment counselor, your kids, your parents, the trash man, the guy at the grocery store and many others. With all of these different opinions it will be difficult to find a clear path.

Each one will have their own unique view of the world, Each one of their views will be absolutely, positively correct. They all know that you should be acting and thinking just as they do. If you do not know what your passion is, you will be swayed to follow others' attention. Just like the plastic bag you may be blown from one side to the other, out to sea, never to be seen again. Discover the routine that is your passion. When you pursue your passion, you will be focused, stronger, and able to handle crazy people! What do you choose to do with the 24 hours of time that you have everyday? 

Let’s take one paragraph to notice how scheduling can affect our ability to perceive the world. At this moment, will you observe your breathing. Will you notice if the breathing is coming into your nasal cavity, in through your mouth, into your belly, or into your heart.  When you breathe what is the process of your breath, do you first hear it in your nose, or is it a concert of many parts of your body. Take a few cycles of breath to observe this.

Everything that we do, we need to figure out why we are doing it. The reason that we breathe is because the experience of living as a human, we will feel that the body desires to inhale and exhale. Once we figure out why we are doing something, then we can figure out how, then we can figure out when we can do it.

This schedule will not be about 7 Habits of Highly Successful People. This schedule will not be about a size 7 shoe for a size 9 foot. This will be a schedule that is customized for you, flexible for where you are at today. This schedule will also be adjustable when life changes. We are learning about how our schedule is, and how we can change it to fit our lives better. 

The two types of routine that we have in our lives are conscious and unconscious. When you are enjoying what you are doing or suffering pain in what you are doing, you will be conscious. When your heart beats most of its beats throughout your life you will usually be doing this unconsciously.  

There are two good ways of developing a routine. The first way to develop a routine is to discover when you are doing things repeatedly. The other way is to identify when you do something awesome in life, and do it again.  These lessons are designed to help us decide on a routine that is going to suit our personalities, lifestyles, and our passions. We will look at the routines of successful people in similar situations... and contrasting situations… have found success. This includes self discovery / meditation / observation of our own lives. We will be prioritizing the most important things in life to be taken care of every day.  We will be scheduling a routine that will fit our passion. 

We will not be giving you a routine, we will help you find one that works for you.  This is going to take a while as this will be a trial and error to find the routine that suits you best. Only by setting a routine, finding problems and making changes will you learn what works best for you. 

The wonderful thing about writing down your schedule is that this act helps your brain produce a chemical that makes you feel really good. This chemical is called dopamine. Dopamine is the "I did it!" neurotransmitter. Whenever you accomplish something you get a hit of dopamine. By writing things down you get a dose of dopamine, and by crossing things off you get a super big hit of dopamine. This is the way that everyone works. The more that you do this, the more effective it will become. Notice how you are already using dopamine in your life, tie it to your passions, and you will find that your motivation in life will grow. Experiment with little steps at first. 

Another fear of scheduling is that most people believe that they need to get everything on the list done. You will feel like you are in a straight jacket.  Your schedule should be a map of your day that has mountain climbing, roller coasters, and finding dinosaurs. Your schedule should not be seen as your drill sergeant, a police officer or your warden. Your schedule should be a friend, a guide, and a butler.

Write down your current routine. Hour by hour for the last 24 hours. Then write tomorrow's routine with as much detail as possible. Do this for the next seven days. If you have no plans between the time that you wake up and the time that you go to bed, write "wake up, when I wake up." "Be awake, until I am sleepy." and then "go to bed, when I need to go to bed." then "sleep until I wake up." Eventually you will get bored of yourself and have the desire to do more. By writing down your routine, you are becoming aware of what your schedule is, and what you will need to be in order to fulfill your passion. 

What is your routine for nutrition? Do you have certain foods that you eat in the morning? Do you have special foods that you eat for lunch time? Do you take supplements? What are they and when do you take them? Why do you take them? Do you have prescription medication that you take, when do you take them, and why do you take them? What is your routine for dinner or after dinner snacks? All of this needs to be written down for future review. 

What is your routine for exercise? Do you have one? Is this done first thing in the morning? Is it done last night? Do you have a special day set aside for exercise? What is your goal for exercise? Is it to become strong, or good looking? Or is it to receive admiration? Does exercise help you think clearly? Are you confused on what to do for exercise? Journal as much as you can for future review in later lessons. 

What is your routine for learning? Do you have a time of day where you are best at study, contemplation, or meditation/observation? Do you only learn when you are run over by the bus? Is your schedule to learn once a month, once a week, once a day, once an hour, once per second? 

What is your routine for social time? When do you spend time with your friends? What do you spend time doing with them? Is this every week? Is it once a month? Is it every day? There are no wrong answers. We are only assessing what is. :-)

What is your routine for work? How many hours do you spend working? When do you work? Why do you work? Do you work for money or for enjoyment? Do you enjoy your work? Do you find fulfillment in your work? You will need to be writing all of these answers down, so that you can access them later. You will need to evaluate these to make sure that this is really the amount of time that you wish to spend working every week.

What is your routine with your family? Do you only eat breakfast and dinner with them on the weekdays? Does everyone have a cell phone in front of them, and they say "Yea" or "What's that?" or "Whatever?" Are you a Soccer Mom or C-Level Dad? (We will have future lessons on what Soccer Moms and what C-Level Dads are.) Do you enjoy spending time together or is this a dreaded, forced schedule? 

What is your schedule for hygiene? What do you do to take care of yourself? How often do you take care of your teeth, skin, nails, eyes, nose, brain, mouth? In order to remember to take care of yourself, you need to keep this in your schedule no matter what your passion is.

Finding balance in all of these things means that you rate them in order of importance and include them in your schedule. This is your yoga routine or Sadhana. Some may be very important, but may only take a few minutes a day. Others may have less importance to you, but consume several hours. Only by writing these down, and examining them can we adjust our schedule to make our lives the life we want to live.

In the following videos we will have interviews of people that discuss how they make their schedules fit their passions. Before you watch these videos, make a temporary schedule for yourself using the ideas of this article.