Good morning from New York City. I have attempted to start this episode five times already and I’m tempted to give up but I’m forcing myself to stay still. This has been my go to strategy over the last two weeks. In case you hadn’t heard from past episodes or don’t follow me closely, I’ve started a new project and I’m very energized by it. I’m learning new things, but the tendency is to have a racing mind. So, I’m often very tempted to skip my morning practice and those are the days when I double down. I find myself saying to others and also to myself out loud when I’m alone, slow and steady wins the race.

Anyway, one of the things that I want to talk about today is this idea that outer order brings inner calm. Outer order inner calm was the title of a book I saw years ago and I’m thinking about it because one of the main things I’m tasked with right now is to create order. You know, when we are immersed in our lives, and getting by just fine, the temptation is to fail to zoom out. When we zoom out, we see things like our wills that are not done or our health proxy that have been on our list of things to do. Or things like changing our insurance carrier or changing the tires on our car – all of those things that we carry around in our head. Anyway, everyone has their own list, and the list can go on and on.

I’ve been reminded of a few things over and over, and I want to share them. While I may be stating the obvious, I think they’re worth sharing because I’ve felt the energy that comes from taking care of business. So a couple of things, I’d start with this. You don’t have to do everything right away, but you do need to put them down on paper. When we carry around these lists of things in our head, we’re using up our energetic RAM. There’s like a drag on our energy when we have those lists in the back of our head, and the best first thing you can do is just simply get it out of your head and put it down on paper.

Now I know for myself I’ve struggled in the past with lists of things to do because I felt like that was an old way of working. I would look at the list and it would shut me down because there were all these things that I didn’t want to do. That’s another subject in and of itself. I’m talking about the things you don’t want to forget. It’s so important to get them out of your head and on the paper not only to free up that energetic ram but also because once you get it on the paper it acts as a sort of directive to your subconscious. Oftentimes you find when you go back to that list, even a couple of weeks later, you’ve actually done many of the things on the list. So the first thing is get it out of your head and onto the paper. By the way, you can actually do a mind map and put a big circle in the middle and then make little arrows off of it with the different things you want to remember.

The other thing I’d say is choose just one thing to do. Either the thing that is most pressing urgent that you’re avoiding or the easiest thing on the list. It doesn’t matter. It’s truly astounding how doing just one thing can create that momentum. As boring or banal as this may seem, one of the reasons I’m sharing this is because one of the people I’m working with said to me, I’ve been procrastinating for so long. I heard the self-flagellation and I said to her, listen, everyone does. These are painful things to get started with. But once you do the floodgates open and action begets action.

So if you’re one of those people that has that list in your head or if you’re actively avoiding something that’s never far from your thoughts, consider this your loving nudge to make that list and to do just one thing because outer order brings inner calm.

I’ll leave you with that for today. Until next time, from my heart to yours.