Do you ever feel like you have been busy all day, but accomplished very little?\u00a0 Do you ever feel like you have been working hard to complete your day to day tasks, only to wake up tomorrow and feel like you are trapped in the movie \u201cGroundhog Day\u201d where each day seems to just repeat itself over and over, as if you are simply walking in circles?\u00a0 I would guess all of us have felt this way at one time or another.<\/p>\n
As I was contemplating why we go through the feelings of going around in circles and getting nowhere I came across a perfect article that put it all into perspective for me:<\/p>\n
\u201cHave you ever heard the old saying that people who get lost tend to walk in circles?<\/span><\/p>\n Jan\u00a0L. Souman, a German psychologist, wanted to determine scientifically if this was true. He took participants of an experiment to a large forest area and to the Sahara desert and used a global positioning system to track where they went. They had no compass or any other device. Instructions to them were simple: walk in a straight line in the direction indicated.<\/span><\/p>\n Dr. Souman later described what happened. \u201c[Some] of them walked on a cloudy day, with the sun hidden behind the clouds [and with no reference points in view]. \u2026 [They] all walked in circles, with [several] of them repeatedly crossing their own path without noticing it.\u201d Other participants walked while the sun was shining, with faraway reference points in view. \u201cThese \u2026 followed an almost perfectly straight course.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n This study has been repeated by others with different methodologies. All returned similar results.<\/span><\/p>\n Without visible landmarks, human beings tend to walk in circles.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 _Dieter Uchtdorf<\/span><\/p>\n After reading this I realized exactly what the problem is \u2013 so often we get busy doing important things each day but we forget \u201cwhy\u201d the things we are doing are important and we forget what it is we are trying to accomplish in the big picture.\u00a0 We forget the long term goal we were aiming for that made the tasks important in the first place.<\/p>\n For example, we work every day to earn a living but the long term goal is to be working ourselves toward a goal of financial freedom.\u00a0 If we kept that goal in mind each day as we went to work we would probably approach our jobs differently.\u00a0 We would far more entrepreneurial in our decisions and attitudes because we would be trying to work toward the long range goal of financial freedom.\u00a0 And that focus would most likely help each of us to get ahead more quickly in our careers.<\/p>\n Another example, we clean our homes to keep them clean, but the long term goal is to be creating a more peaceful environment for our families to enjoy together.\u00a0 If we remembered that long term goal we would recognize that we shouldn\u2019t obsess on cleaning so much that it ends up stopping us from having any time to enjoy our families.\u00a0 And by keeping that in mind we would clean to make it feel nice in our home but never let it cut into family bonding time.<\/p>\n It seems like such a \u201cduh\u201d thing now that I think about it.\u00a0 We would be so much better off if we could start keeping our long term goal in mind as we do things day to day so we don\u2019t find ourselves starting to walk in circles again!\u00a0 I LOVED this reminder and it came at the perfect moment in my life for me.\u00a0 I love it when the lessons you need the most come at the perfect time in life.\u00a0 So I am going to make a huge effort in my own life to keep the long term goal \u2013 my far off landmark \u2013 in my sights at all times and then walk vigorously ahead toward it!<\/p>\n Have a great day!!<\/p>\n ~Amy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Do you ever feel like you have been busy all day, but accomplished very little?\u00a0 Do you ever feel like you have been working hard to complete your day to day tasks, only to wake up tomorrow and feel like you are trapped in the movie \u201cGroundhog Day\u201d where each day seems to just repeat […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2576,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1002,251,1627,599,1638,1637,1634,1010,41,1635,364,76,1628,55,180,1032,463,1636,1630,1626,545,349,134,1631,1629,1633,1632,1187,78,54,1639,250],"class_list":["post-3516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-accomplish","tag-balance","tag-busy","tag-career","tag-circles","tag-clean","tag-dieter-uchtdorf","tag-distance","tag-entrepreneur","tag-entrepreneurial","tag-goal","tag-goals","tag-groundhog-day","tag-happiness","tag-happy","tag-history","tag-home","tag-house","tag-jan-l-sousman","tag-landmark","tag-move-forward","tag-peace","tag-perspective","tag-psychologist","tag-repeat","tag-sahara","tag-scientifically","tag-tasks","tag-time","tag-time-management","tag-walk-in-circles","tag-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3516"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3520,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3516\/revisions\/3520"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}