Friday, February 24, 2012

Being Prepared – Blessings from being OCD

Being prepared cannot stop life's challenges and tragedies from knocking on your door, but it can lessen the impact they have on your life when they do.  The biggest part of being prepared falls back to planning.  Planning relies on looking ahead, paying attention, and learning from your past experiences.
I am a planner by nature.  The joke around my house is that I can't go to the restroom without a plan.  By my very nature and by virtue of my OCD tendencies I attend my life by a strict schedule.  I am flexible and can change my plans, be spontaneous, and change my plans on a moment's notice, which allows me to have OCD tendencies but not be crippled because of it.  Technically my wife says I have a mild form of aspergers with OCD tendencies, not that it matters.
When you plan ahead for even the littlest things in your life and prepare for them as much as you can it will make those things run smoother.  As larger things appear on your horizon, try and anticipate the things you can do before hand to prepare ahead of time and again things should run smoother. 
I see too many times those who do not plan ahead for anything getting into situations that could have been predicted and planned for.  Worse yet are those individuals who enjoy and delight in skipping over, around and under problems like some fairy tale creature singing, "You can't catch me."  Sooner or later we all will get stuck or tripped up by something.
When I run into problems I try to attack them and deal with them head on.  Unpleasant or not, they get handled as best I can.  Then they are done, I learn from the experience and continue on my merry way.  The skippers get caught and all the other problems they have been successfully avoiding come crashing down upon them.  Oh poor me.  Life is so unfair!  I have all this stuff to deal with NOW. 
How much of the situation is actually stuff that could have been handled in your not so distant past, or dealt with before you got tripped up.  How much easier would it be to only deal with parts of a problem than multitudes of problems all at once.  How many of these people don't learn from their past and when they get past a crisis go right back to avoidance again, instead of dealing with stuff or God forbid some preventative maintenance in the form of planning ahead.
Start small, little lessons.  When you go to the restroom, see if there is toilet paper before you do anything else!  Lay out your clothes the night before.  Maybe make a menu for the coming week before going to the store.  Get gas in your car before the light comes on.  Get a vitamin organizer like the old people use and load it up ahead of time.  Put an empty folded up trash bag in the bottom of the trash can the next time you change the bag.  Plan out the chores you do weekly, monthly and seasonally, and then schedule them into your week so you make sure they get done and you won't be rushed trying to do them.  Put a little money back for an emergency.
I don't suggest people get nuts about it but a little advanced planning, preparedness can make life so much smoother, happier and less stressful.  Frankly, life is challenging enough without our help in making it more difficult.  It's your life, you only get one, live it with purpose, enjoy even the mundane and seemingly unimportant parts as if they were the most important.  Handle things as they come up or before the small problems become big problems and you will be amazed at how much smoother and happier things will be in your life.
May God Bless You.  My writers – surfing time is over get back to work on your masterpiece!

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