Elegant Elephant Eating

Here is it the beginning of a new year and not much will change unless I improve my skills to keep up with my life’s goals. My first challenge has to do with my "elephant-sized" goals. They are so big and I’m so small and I don’t know much about how to eat them elegantly. However, I wish to share some ideas (mostly for my own edification).

All elephants, just like all big goals, are really made up of smaller parts. Elephants have about 140 bones. Can my goal of learning to speak conversational Spanish be broken down to 140 parts, doing one small task approximately every two days? Yes, I can take that big "elephant" and break it down to learning one new word on Mondays, listening to two pages of literature in Spanish on Wednesdays, and learning a simple phrase to share with others on Fridays. Suddenly, my big "Spanish" elephant is becoming a smaller, easier meal to nibble.

There are 4,000 muscles in a elephant’s trunk. Sort of sounds like the number of "extras" in my house that I should be sorting, sharing, and/or storing. I can handle this overload by writing upon my calendar the drawer, cupboard, file folder, or closet shelf to clean out each day. Yes, it will take me more than a year to finish and then I’ll just have to start over again, but it wouldn’t be an overstatement to say there are probably 4,000+ overstocked items in my life I need to shed. Time to conquer my "cleanout" elephant one muscle at a time. (I think I will do this whenever I find myself on the phone.)

And what about elephant’s ears. They weight about 110 pounds each. Just like over-sized goals, they are too much to handle unless I break things down into one-pound sections. I have large "elephant ear" projects that need attending to like updating my Master Menu to better fit two people, preparing my 2009 calendar with appropriate notations for this season of my life, collecting ample birthday cards, restocking my secret gift shelf, and finishing up my other undone projects. Yes, I bet there are over 100 pounds of undone projects in my life. Part of every weekday needs to be focused on that "finishing" elephant.

So, I will focus on three skills for elegantly eating away at my goals:

1) Break the big down into the small with a written plan,

2) Assign specific projects to convenient times in my daily schedule and note my goals on my calendar, and

3) Know that as I eat at my goals with all the elegance I can manage, I will be better off, happier, more at peace, and at least be somewhat in charge of my life.

With all that is upon us, may you find better and easier ways to eat your "elephants" with elegance and grace. Remember, one bite at a time!