The List: Finding Your Purpose, from Boredom to Fulfillment

Nearly every day someone tells me that they don’t know how to fill their day.

Making a List: Finding Purpose in Daily Life

Even after learning about unconditional love, they simply do not know what to do next—evidence that the Imitation Love in their lives has finally lost its attraction.

Often I instruct people to come up with a list of things to do in a day, NOT for the purpose of proving their worth, but as an opportunity to express and practice who they are. For more about this subject, see this blog, Natural Power.

I suggest that we sit down and simply write a list of things to do, in no particular order.

Recently a woman, Hannah, gave me the following as her list (just an early beginning):

Read a spiritual book
Clean the house
Write to Real Love mentor about how day went
Fix the whatever (routine maintenance of doors, seals, plumbing in house)
Make a healthy meal
Shop for ingredients for a healthy meal
spend time with Karen (best friend)
Text kids to touch base or invite to dinner/lunch
Go for a walk
Spend time with Richard (homeless person)
Making Real Love calls to get loved
Offering to Real Love® people
Church
Exercise
Making calls to people to listen to them and love THEM
Visiting Margaret (elderly person with no family)
Pray
Listen to music
Cigarettes
Mum
Read the Bible
Organizing house
Paperwork
Banking/finance
Dancing
John (possible relationship)
Group
Volunteering

Creating Your Own Roadmap with Lists

She had never done this before, and she was excited to begin working off this list.

I suggested that she make the list even more useful by dividing it into functions, frequencies, and priorities.

Daily (the things you want to do every day)
Calendared (things that must be done on or before a certain date and time)
ABC (the things you want to do in an order of priority)
A, do today
B, do this week
C, do whenever
Relaxation and entertainment (things to do to unwind)

The Power of Lists: Organizing Your Life and Goals

Let’s see how these sub-divisions clarify Hannah’s random list above.

Daily
pray
read spiritual book
Read from the Bible
cleaning something in the house
exercise

Calendared
17 Mar, 9:30 am, Dr. Semenko
24 Mar, 10:10 am, physical therapy
Sunday, 10 am, church

Prioritized
A    Text Michael (oldest son) and invite to dinner this week
A    Tighten the set screws on the front door handle
A    Make a healthy meal

B    Richard.
B    text mom
B    text and call Karen
B    go to church
B    meals to elderly
B    Go to Real Love group.

C    fix sink washer
C    plant grass seed
C    get tax receipts together in monthly folders
C    offering to rl people to act as wise person
C    Read Real Love and Freedom for the Soul
C    organize the garage
C    balance checkbook
C    visit mother
C    organize photos from years past

Relaxation and entertainment
swim across the river
calls to get loved
Listen to music
smoke
See the natural history museum
Go dancing

This is a minimal example of what lists could look like, and again I emphasize that these lists primarily exist to focus expression and practice of who we are, only secondarily to “get things done.”

Many other examples of things to do can be found at the following blog, Things To Do When You Just Can't Quite Find Happiness.