Quadrant IV

I realised some time ago that holding onto past troubles wasn’t giving me an opportunity to fully embrace the present.  While it is hard to just ‘let go’, especially of things that have hurt and continue to hurt, it can be very freeing to give up on some memories that are only making you miserable.

I decided that I was going to try harder to forgive and forget many of the actions and events that were causing me to reflect negatively and while I haven’t always been so successful in this, I am finding that some of my relationships are really benefiting from the change.

Lifehack.org today has an excellent post on letting go of things that are causing you pain or not adding value to your life, including resentment, revenge and that really hard one; guilt.

I’m still a work in progress on this one, but I can attest that letting go of events and things that are causing you pain or problems now can make significant difference to your future happiness. 

In order to determine what kind of changes I wanted to make for 2008, it was necessary for me to do some serious soul searching as to the problems I thought my life was facing.  I had a look at some other people’s thoughts on this, sat down and looked at my life.

There were a number of things I identified that I wanted to change, including my health and fitness, however perhaps the biggest roadblock in my life at the moment is the balance between work and play.  While initially I thought this was a problem with work/life balance, I realised that it wasn’t as simple as that.

As I have a full time job, a part time job and am half-way through a Masters degree, the imbalance isn’t only caused by my ‘work’.  My full time job is, in fact, very contained and while I sometimes need to complete work after hours or check those emails during my holidays, it really isn’t the cause of the imbalance.

And it isn’t the part time job either.  That is extremely variable, but also quite flexible and has been less demanding over the past year.  The postgrad study is a different matter, but also still not solely responsible for the imbalance in my life.  I study one subject per semester and can generally find enough time to complete my required activities each week.

The problem for me was a combination of longish working hours, study and a number of personal habits and hobbies that were adding no value to my life but draining significant time.

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Just five days in and my bloglines and inbox are full of articles posted everywhere on things you can do to make your 2008 bigger, better, more productive, less productive, happier, gladder, more wonderful than last year.

I’ll update this post as time goes by, but here are a few that I’ve found interesting so far:

43folders – Death and Underachievement; a guide to happiness at work: amazing post by Ryan Norbauer on letting go and enjoying life

43folders – Re-evaluating your online commitments: cutting out those online apps and social networks that aren’t providing value to your life

43folders – Why are you reading all that news?: A wake up call for RSS addicts

Metafilter – Advice for clearing library clutter – some excellent advice in the comments that applies to clutter of all kinds and jump-started my house clearout

DIYPlanner’s 2008 Calendar Templates – excellent for those who live with paper rather than pixels

Lifehack.org – 14 tips for resolutions that stick in the new year

Lifehack.org – 20 questions to help you reflect the past year

Lifehack.org – 8 ways to achieve success in 2008

Lifehack.org – 10 questions to ask yourself to regain your work/life balance