​'m late! I'm late! .....for a very important date!  And so is everyone else apparently!  Everyone is busy, busy, busy and there continues to only be 24 hrs in a day.  Knowing how to manage your time is not about what everyone else thinks you should be doing.  It's about what you want to do with the time you have here on this planet.  For everyone, our 24 hr day should divide into approximately 8 hours of sleep; 8 hours of work and then EVERYTHING ELSE has to fit into the last 8 hours.  Shopping for food, processing it, eating and cleaning up from it.  Taking care of our bodies and the appointments, exercise and hygiene.  Taking care of our homes,cars and other 'things'.  Parenting children, visiting with friends, family and making memories.  Then, yes, self-care and down time.   It's hard to figure out how to juggle it all!  And what people often do is compare themselves to others or look to what society is doing to see what 'normal' is.  However, in today's society, with social media sites as the reality check it can be overwhelming for the person who doesn't have their own internal standards for how they want to prioritize things.  So to cope the first thing you need to do is know yourself and what matters most to YOU!  And be realistic.  If your neighbour decks out their house for Halloween because that feels creative to them and you don't then that's fine.  Do what feeds your spirit and creates positive energy for you and not what you think you 'have' to do.  And in terms of self-care, marketing will often tell you that what will make you feel happier is to take that week long holiday to wherever.  However, often, if you include the attitude of being on holidays into a 'Holi-day' then you can take a day off and relieve your stress because you are including those exploring, adventuring times into your life.  I like to do an exercise with people where they write down all of the things they like to do for self-care onto a piece of paper.  It could be going to a concert, checking out an art gallery, fine dining, whatever.  And then I challenge people to figure out how they can take the concept of that idea and break it down to a smaller and more manageable money/time frame.  So a concert could be putting the artist you like on YouTube while you clean house.  A break at work could include checking out art online.  Fine dining could be stopping at the grocery store to buy lobsters on the way home.  Remember, fun and positivity are things that you want to build into your daily life and it doesn't have to be a big thing to include it.  So let me end with adding the wonderful carpool Karaoke that I saw James Cordon and Michael Buble do and I trust that you will get creative about the ways that you manage your time to fit your values. 

 https://youtu.be/Kg7UWnNF_rA

​Fearmongering and hate.  There's lots of examples of it nowadays.  But how does it affect our psyche and what do we do about it?  Here are some thoughts from my brilliant admin support person, Cheryl Gordijk, who I could not run my business without!

​The past week has been hard for so many.  For our neighbours to the south, the week ended tragically for 11 Jews attending a Bris Ceremony .  They were executed by a man fearful of immigrants invading his country.  Fear of the unknown that is continually being stoked by the President.  Pipe bombs delivered to known political enemies of The President.  An elderly black couple shot execution style while grocery shopping because a nearby church attended by mostly African-Americans was closed.  A young black man stopping to help a ‘stranded’ motorist, gunned down, ambush style, as he exited his car to help. Fear of someone different; who looks different, who believes different, who speaks different is being utilized to retain power by those in power.
Fear is very powerful emotional ‘drug’.  Fear can help us avoid risky behaviour such as avoiding getting near a cliff’s edge.  Fear can also induce excitement as can be witnessed by the numerous Scream/Fear farms that entice thousands to be purposely scared.   Finally, fear can be used by those in power to disrupt societal norms to pit groups of people against each other.
For almost 3 years Donald Trump has continued to use rhetoric to alienate his ‘base’.  His followers listen to Fox News and listen to the President without questioning the motive behind the words.  This week alone Fox News is disseminating information that a group of migrants, on a perilous journey from Honduras, are bringing Chicken Pox to the US.  Chicken Pox has been eradicated since 1980.  By keeping his base ignorant of facts both Fox News and The President can continue to instill fear of the 'other'. 
Yet, when called out for disseminating lies, both Fox News & Trump say it is everyone else that is lying.  No wonder things can appear bleak.
But each day we see others outside of Trump’s base that continue to show that all is not lost.  JFK said “We should not let our fears hold us back from pursuing our hopes.”  This past weekend saw a group of Muslims start a GoFundMe page with a goal of raising $40K to help with the costs of rebuilding/repairing the Tree of Life Synagogue.  The fund has already surpassed that initial goal and is well over $150K.
Even those on opposite sides of the political aisle can come together to help and give hope.  This past month saw the House of Representatives and Senate unanimously vote to pass an Opioid bill that has the potential to save thousands of lives.
Make no mistake both sides of our border are seeing Fear used to pit neighbour against neighbour.  The US has Proud Boys and here in Ontario is a group called Ontario Proud. (Wikipedia states that "Proud Boys is a far-right organization that admits only men as members and promotes political violence.") Currently Proud Boys has been banned from Facebook, but Ontario Proud has not.  Both groups are using hate and fear mongering to keep us from seeing what they don’t want us to see or realize.  We are all human beings; we all do good and sometimes not so good things, we all laugh, cry and bleed red.   Shakespeare says “If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?”'

Thank you Cheryl.  What she is teaching us in this writing is to not forget to use our own thinking to discern what the agenda is of the person we are listening to.  Healthy, compassionate leaders will not try to use power over people.  They will walk with their power in a way that acknowledges the other person's humanity and they will want the other person to feel considered.  Now there's a funny thing that you should know about.  There is actually research out of Berkley University (http://www.berkeleywellness.com/healthy-mind/mood/article/how-power-corrupts-us?s=EFA_170119_AA1&st=email&ap=ed) that shows that power often corrupts people.  Here is a main point from the article....

• "But as they (people) gain power, they lose these good qualities and begin to behave in troubling ways. Two things change. First, when people get power, they tend to become less empathetic, less sensitive to what other people are thinking or saying. Second, when people feel that they have power, they tend to become more impulsive. People are less interested in what others think of them, more focused on their own desires, and they tend to act more impulsively."

The ones who don't abuse power are the ones who stay rooted in who they are as people and in their values re: how they want to treat people.  

https://www.facebook.com/NowThisNews/videos/1299478183526536/?t=0

Please watch this video of how the Muslims of Pittsburgh raised over $200,000 for the Jewish people of that community and offered to provide security for their synagogues.  It is heartwarming and the most resilient response ever to such horror.

Take time to grieve and be angry.  Then think clearly about where people are coming from re: what they are saying; and then choose to respond from your values about who you want to be in the world and do something to make it different.  That's resilience!