Spirituality

Recently I found myself on tour in the Toronto airport, itching for a book to read.  I’m kind of a self-help motivational junkie, and the newsstand had a small book that jumped out at me called “How to Save an Hour a Day, Guaranteed” by Michael Heppell.

On first blush, it looked like a quick reference for this type of thing, and I felt “well I have read all this before, but I’ll use this as a quickie reminder.”  I figured for the $20 I’d spend, I’d make it back in saved time.

I needed a little “kick in the pants” and thought perhaps there would be at least one good idea in the book.

Actually, I am really knocked out by this simple little book.  Some organizational books are a real “geometry project.”  With those books, I find myself getting drawn in and then have a hard time following through with the full setup – even if they are more comprehensive.

This book had some quick, but real game changing ideas…here are a few:

1) Define why you want more time. This is a very clever way to get you on track with what you want.  This is the positive pre-cursor to eliminating negatives.  The stronger the motivation with the end in mind, the better you will do.  Hint – don’t skip this step!

2) For a week  track what you do every 15 minutes on a spreadsheet or some type of graph.  I’m 4 days into this, using Excel.  Like a diet, you see where you produce good things, and where you waste time.  The time sheet won’t lie!

This alone for me immediately translated into less time spent online.  The constant “blood letting” of checking email and Facebook got limited to 3 times per day, and I have got a TON more accomplished as an result.

3) Do a deep “clutter clean.”  I remember when I moved in to my place how organized and clean it was – I felt great, free and limitless.   Also, when I go to a hotel room on the road…I can THINK because I don’t have every loose end in my life staring at me.

I highly recommend a deep clutter clean…

• Anything not used in 6 months…throw out.  Business cards you’ll never enter in the PC or Mac – throw out!!!  Old magazines, clothes you never wear (donate), crap in desk droors, coupons, all of it.  Be merciless and throw it all out.
• Big things standing in corners?  Get em into a closet so you don’t look at them.
• Things you use all the time?  Find a home for them, and take em out when you use them.
• Instruction Manuals?  They can all be found online as PDFs…throw out!

And so on….

4) List your “Time Bandits”.  As I became aware of mine,  I “woke up” immediately and found I had more time. I set the phone to vibrate, put the computer in airplane mode, just to start.

To Sum it Up…

My whole being has simply melted and relaxed into a profoundly peaceful place since doing this.  (Mainly due to the deep clutter clean & purge) I feel it especially as a physical sensation in my solar plexus.  It’s not just “nice” – it’s profound.

This may sound odd, but musically I have grown since doing a deep clean…getting rid of crapola helps one (me) be clear and creative.   Suddenly new music ideas have the space to “pop” into my awareness.

It’s as if I am letting old things go to make room for the new, now that my environment is reflecting that.  Yummalicious!

There’s more in the book, but for now I highly recommend it….and hey – he offers a money back guarantee if you feel the book didn’t help you!

Lastly, the book is written in a way that is easy on the eyes, good subheads…he suggests skimming and scanning, so it need not be read cover to cover (even though I did).

Thumbs up for ” “How to Save an Hour a Day, Guaranteed” by Michael Heppell.

Greets Gang! I’ve just returned from an uplifting week teaching at the Swannanoa Gathering in Asheville, North Carolina.

It was exhausting, but it feels great to inspire students and be around a large group of people all fired up and excited about music.

The topic of how to deal with nerves in performance up in a few conversations, and somehow I found corollary to quantum physics.

People asked me if I got nervous. Sometimes I do – but these days it’s less and less. I myself wondered, “why am I less nervous than I used to be?”

In quantum physics, there’s a nifty experiment called “the double slit” experiment.

Physicists became awestruck at the fact that when light was shot at photograhic paper one photon particle at a time, it still printed on the paper as if it were a wave, not individual light particles.

[youtube=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1YqgPAtzho”]

What this raised in my mind was the idea that any singular event in our life may look like a “particle” but is really part of a larger “wave.”

If you don’t perform on stage very often, it may feel like a very important singular event (a particle) of your life.

You want everything to be perfect – the sound, your performance, and so on. There’s a lot of pressure there for that one particle of time to be perfect!

When you perform on stage 100 times, you naturally encounter things such as:

• the sound wasn’t perfect
• the monitors were not loud enough
• the guitar was out of tune, the lights blinded me
• I botched a few notes

But on the positive side you will experience things like:

• wow that was a great performance
• they loved it
• the soundman did a great job
• everything fell into place just right
• man it felt really good, etc.
• I got offered another gig at this one

I am illustrating the following – that over the course of 100 gigs (or any semi large number) you will experience a host of scenarios, ups, downs, good, bad – and by gig number 101 you feel all the gigs to be a “wave” of events.

Each gig is still important, but now each gig is part of of a whole, and you can actually enjoy yourself more because there is less pressure on any single gig “particle” for everything to be perfect.

The same holds true for anything you do regularly whether it’s practicing your instrument, exercising, meditating, eating right, and so on.

The more you do it, the easier it gets because the behavior becomes a “wave” of activity in your life rather than a singular “particle.”