We’ve talked
about the importance of budgeting our time, our goals, and our resources. Now, I need to get to the core of our being,
because no matter what we decide to do on the outside, we have to have balance
in our core. I’m talking about budgeting
our hearts, minds and souls.
What exactly is
a budget? A budget is as system itemizing
something we have, want, or need, and breaking it down into increments of
debits and credits, incoming and outgoing, supply and demand, etc. It’s assessing what we have and developing a
system to gain what we need. If we don’t
make an honest assessment, we can make erroneous decisions that will cause us
to over-budget or under-budget and fail. To reach success, we have to clearly
see the path to that success, and then be faithful and committed to the budget
we set to reach that desired success. We
could get lucky, but luck always runs out. We’ve got to take control of our
life, our choices, and our successes and failures.
Other resources
we often overlook when we make a budget for our lives are those intangible
resources, but happen to be the most essential in our success or failures of
all other budgets. Just as important as
budgeting our money, we have to budget our heart, our mind and our souls. We can over-extend ourselves, or
under-utilize our potential by ignoring these resources. These are essentially that define who we are –
the core of being a human. These are the elements that directly lead to our
successes and failures, our happiness or depression, or our love or
indifference.
Heart – We have
to budget our hearts. We have to set a
limit on the things, people, and focus we allow to affect our hearts. We can set our affection on the wrong things
or people that will hurt us, destroy us, and even break us. We can also put too much focus on our heart,
letting it lead us blindly, become obsessive over something or someone, and it
will unbalance us. Balance is key. YES, love!!!! Oh, Mylanta, allow ourselves at
times to get lost in our emotions. Enjoy the euphoria or pain of it, but we
must keep it in balance. We can’t get
blind and stupid by love to the point we lose sight of everything else,
especially what we want and need, and who we are. That’s unhealthy and it
becomes detrimental to any dreams we’ve planned or hoped to succeed. We also
can’t chase our dreams without love, without using our hearts. If we close our
hearts because we’ve been hurt, or we have failed before, or we are too afraid,
then we’ve already failed. It means nothing.
We can gain the world, but what good is it if we are indifferent? Indifference means not caring at all or
feeling nothing - which is worse than hate. Hate is at least passionate. Indifference is void of passion. Indifference is cowardice. Without
heart, we will give up, because it is our love for ourselves, for the dreams we
have, for our family and the people we care about, that pushes us, inspires us,
and gives everything we do meaning. Even God says that there are three
essential things in this life – Faith, Hope and Love, and of those three, Love
is the greatest. We can’t choose to love everyone and everything, nor can we
choose to love nothing or no one. Protect our love. Protect what and who we set our affections
toward.
Mind – we have
to budget our minds. If we set our minds
to too many things, and not balance it out, we will spend too much of one of
our most valuable assets in the wrong area, on the wrong thing, or the wrong
person, and not give the attention and focus we need to our goals, dreams, and
aspirations. We have to protect our
minds, protect what we focus on, what we allow to distract us. We can ‘check-out’ sometimes because life is hard. Many times, instead of focusing on what I
needed, I allowed myself to be distracted by the wrong things or person to
avoid thinking about the hard things. I’d
“check-out”. I’ve also allowed myself to
focus too much, to the point of obsession, and neglected to focus on other
areas of my life. Neither was healthy or productive. There has to be a balance. We have to budget
our minds and limit the things we focus on, allow distracting us, or taking up
our time. Write out a list of what we
want and need, and then protect our minds and do what we need to keep and
maintain a balance to our focus.
Soul – this one
is the part of us that we often neglect most.
It’s that inner-being, and many of us can’t even recognize it. We try to
numb it, ignore it, or control it. We
can’t. This is core of who we are, and I
believe this is the being that continues beyond our existence, beyond this
physical plane, beyond this life. We have to budget for and with our souls. We
have to make time for this part of us. What good is it to gain the world, but
lose our souls? To allow life, people,
circumstances, guilt, pain, and all other bullshit to come in destroy our
souls? We can lie to the world. We can
lie to ourselves, but our souls know who we are, what we really want, what we
really need. We have to protect our
souls – cut the vampires out of our lives, allow love into our lives, let love
fill us, and then through our souls, let that love back out into the world
around us. There are soulless people in this world. There is darkness and evil.
I’ve seen it. I’ve experienced it. This
world is so full of hateful, mean-spirited, selfish, awful people, but we don’t
have to be one of them. It’s so important to protect and nourish our souls.
These are the
keys to success – in EVERY area of life. We only get one. We only live
ONCE. We only have a tiny portion of
this existence to make a difference, to be counted, to have purpose. WE control what those are by how we budget
our lives by the choices me make. Make good ones. Choose love.
Till next time,
~T.L. Gray
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