Welcome to Race from the Rat
2008 was a very difficult year for me and my family. It was hard mentally, physically and financially. Life needed to change in many ways or the future would be bleak! I realised that action was needed and started on a journey that is being captured on this site, sharing the resources and lessons learnt ...
I have often talked about the difficult time my family and I had in 2008. This was the turning point where we decided action was needed to turn our lives around. The first step was me moving to work in Munich, Germany, as a contractor. But we also decided that this change needed to be the catalyst for other far more reaching changes.
So far this blog has covered the art of Getting Things Done. We embraced the techniques in a big way having a skip outside the house for three days as we sorted out the junk built up over several years! The whole family enjoyed it. I have applied the GTD techniques to my life in Munich also, trying to keep ‘control’ of both my UK life and my German life!
This is the point where I realised that changing your life is not as easy as it sounds!
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If you have followed my last post about making a start with Getting Things Done, you will now have a stack of paper with one line of writing on each piece. Yes I know it’s a bit of a waste but believe me it helps you to get a clear head! So what now?
Well now we need to work our way through the pile reacting to each, making sure that none get slipped back in as ‘I don’t know yet! In order to get really organised we need to sort out everything. If we leave remnants behind our mind will still have things to worry about!
Let’s start by making some categories in which to place each item …
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One of the problems with our lives today, and the main threat to the calm and tranquility of our life interfaces are the thoughts that rattle around our heads every day. Because we lead complex and fast lives and do very little in the way of organising, our heads are full of the ’stuff’ that we need to remember. Our brains daren’t take a break in case we forget something. The result of this is that our brains can’t relax - ever gone to your bed at night and been unable to switch off? This leads on to lack of sleep and stress, that never relents!
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We all know that in order for us to live and thrive, our bodies need to interface in some way with the world around us. The amount depends on who you are, where you live and what you desire from life. At the most basic level we must interface in a way that gets us just the correct portions of food and water to live!
The sad fact of life is that even this basic existence needs some kind of payment, usually money! How do we normally get money - we work! To work we need to interface with our colleagues, we need to travel, we need clothes, we need training etc. Most of us need to lead fulfilling lives, have material possessions, live with a companion! Oops! What just happened - we joined the Rat Race! We just increased our need for money. But to achieve it we sacrifice our souls! We become hassled, irritable, sad and at worst depressed, stressed, ill and DEAD!
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