Creating a more peaceful and productive life

Sally Bonkrude
GCN Columnist

2/3/2005 - How smoothly do you go through your life? I know many people, myself included, whose lives often move from crisis to crisis, the typical unrelenting cycle of crisis management. How much easier our lives would be if we prioritized what’s important, planned ahead and then just let go of the rest. 

  Take for example relationships. Often, the couples I see in therapy have missed important opportunities to develop successful relationships. Instead, they wait until it’s a crisis, divorce papers are ready to sign, and now it’s time to do something? Partner relationships require time spent daily to build connections and bonding love.

  Relationship building takes two people giving 100% every day of every year. Instead, many times what I see are couples, each going about their lives more from their individual perspective, rather than paying attention to their partner and the relationship. They may be thinking, “I know my partner loves me”, then they just take it for granted and let the days slide by, forgetting the need to nurture the relationship. Then, wham-bang you wake up and your life is falling apart. How much better it would be to make your relationship high on your priority list and take the time to create a great one? As you pay attention to the relationship you will be able to immediately see what’s not working and get help before one of you is ready to bail. If after attempting to work “it” out and you decide to split, you can do it with the knowledge that you’ve given the relationship every chance to succeed and it just wasn’t meant to be. Then the big question is, what was it to start with and why did you both believe it was supposed to be a relationship.

  Children! It’s so easy to miss the signs that children are headed for trouble, generally because we’re too busy to notice. But, what could be more important than spending time playing and taking care of our children? If you notice them getting off track, you can get them the help they need before they’re headed to drug and alcohol counseling or school detention, etc. Problems with children tend to spiral up. So, rather than wait until the phone rings from the school principal or the police, focus on them now. If you feel or find you’ve over reacted to a situation, no big deal, they know you’re watching and thus they know you care and love them.

  How about the home? Do you wait until the last minute to fix something, only to discover that the problem left unfixed has created yet another problem to fix or the problem has doubled in expense? Have you ever had to buy something simply because you couldn’t find it in your house? Organization and simplicity….it seems so easy. You would know where you’re keys are, have a plan for house maintenance and not have to dig thorough the laundry to find the “least dirty” cloths in the pile. Home can be a place of calm and serenity. It doesn’t have to be crisis after crisis. Be proactive. Be organized.

  Now, take a look at your job or lack of job. Why would anyone spend precious time doing what they hate? If it’s not the right job, why wait until you’re at your wits ends, in crisis mode and quit with no thought of next month’s rent? Are you running yourself into the ground with a job that doesn’t fit you? Again, why wait until the stress makes you sick and you become so negative that your family can’t stand being with you? 

  Even in looking at government spending, I find this lack of foresight and instead a crisis management mentality. Do we spend money for quality education, mental health and prevention programs? No, government generally cuts funding for these areas and spends for “issue management” after the fact. That old say, “closing the barn door after the horse is out”, is most appropriate when talking about our government’s various “wars” on social issues. This is why I was so excited to become a citizen representative for the Nurse-Family Partnership program. This is a program that helps people before they get to that crisis stage. It’s a volunteer program for low-income women who are pregnant and lasts for the first two years of the first child’s life. A nurse will help the new Mother learn about healthy living, jobs, how to take care of her child and give insight into creating a promising future for Mother and child. Some of the research shows that the use of this proactive program has produced:

(Statistics were taken from the Nurse-Family Partnership website.) This is an example of people taking action to avert crisis. Not only does taking action before a crisis save time and money, it saves quality of life and life itself.      

  Why live a life in a state of crisis? Put together a plan and begin creating a life complete with job, home, family and relationships (not necessarily in that order) that makes some sense for a quality life. With the best of planning, life brings with it moments of crisis and stress, but often times we ourselves create a lot of it. Let’s begin to examine all the areas in our life, from personal, to community, to world and begin to create a more peaceful and productive life without a self-made crisis frenzy.