My word for this year is LEARN.  

So it just makes sense to use this Year of Sundays to reflect on 52 of my most significant Life Lessons.   Some may seem more significant than others, but they’ve all changed how I live my life in powerful way.   I’d love to hear if and how any of these same lessons have surfaced in the classroom of Your Life.  

Having an empty e.mail Inbox each night works for me.

Several years ago, my friends Jo and Amanda helped me get more organized.  It was not a painless process.   And it’s not been painless to try to continue living from that organized place.

The process is a rewarding one for me though.   This new way of managing my e.mail account has been the most rewarding of all.  Like many of you, I receive what seems like a lot of e.mail  ~ between 100-150 daily.   In my B.O. (before organized ;)) days, I’d respond to,  flag, shift or even delete a few messages daily, as I could.  More than once, this method resulted in my moving hundreds of messages into a ‘holding’ folder – never to be visited again.  I’m not proud of that.   So if any of you sent me an e.mail that’s still unanswered, about four years, and are still waiting for a reply – might be time to let that go.  😉

Letting It Go.   That may be a theme you see often this year.   The longer I live, the more I’m learning to trust that I don’t need to live my life grounded in WHAT IF THIS/THAT/OR THE OTHER THING happens?  So I try to deal with what’s in front of me, based on the best data I have and let the rest go.  Sometimes that works like a charm.  Sometimes, it leaves me feeling like locking all of my doors and windows and hiding under my bed.

Now I live (at least in my e.mail world) by the four Ds:

1. Deal With It;
2. Delegate It;
3. Defer It or
4. Delete It.

And ya know what?  IT WORKS!   I’ve set aside a few times each day to check my e.mail.  When I do, I either reply immediately; share it with someone better suited to Deal With It;  file it away for later inspiration/information; or just get rid of it.  Whew.  And to lean back into last year a bit ~ wOw!

Who knows, maybe if I do this long enough with my e.mail, it might transfer into the rest of my life.  Baby steps are, after all, still steps.