My Love Affair with the To-Do List

My relationship with the To Do list is rather complicated, and it goes back a long way. In the olden days, and I am talking about sixth grade in the early 1960’s, I created a poster-sized chart with lines and places for stars and check marks. I taped it to the back of my bedroom door to be reviewed every day. On it were dozens of  tasks I had to complete, including brushing my teeth, homework, cleaning my room; a wonder it didn’t include breathing and eating. This was the first stark evidence of my inner perfectionist taking charge of my life.

This vague fear of not doing my life well without constant scrutiny has been a constant companion, the creation of driven parental modeling and messages; avoiding the dreaded curse of “not living up to her potential.”

At times “the list” creates as much angst as it relieves. This happens when I don’t take the time to clarify what is truly important, and treat weed the flower bed with equal fervor as write for pleasure. I think I want to create a list in order to prioritize it. But a friend nailed this fallacy eloquently: “The big issues are SO large, it’s easier to focus on the small stuff.”

What is it about the To Do list that still triggers a shock of enthusiasm in me? Any sane person should want to crawl under the covers after creating a staggering catalog of “undone important goals.” But for me, I feel a thrill when I fill a page of neatly organized boxes, and new energy arises as I take up the gauntlet now thrown down, “I dare you to try to complete this list of twenty tasks!” Hercules must have felt the same way when told he had to check off his picayune list of three deeds.

These days, I recognize this long-held internal conflict of inner voices and Selves, and I tend to favor my inner organizer. She sees me as marvelously intelligent and capable of major accomplishments. However, my inner sloth deserves more embracing: she regards me as perfectly fine just the way I am; a message I can use a great deal more of. I think it’s time for me to go read a novel. That must be on a list somewhere.

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Confidence is Based on Competence

People often ask me about how to increase self-confidence so they can try new things. They imagine confidence to be a magically acquired inner quality, and that successful people are naturally fearless, willing to try new experiences, managing to look cool in the process. The real path to self-confidence is to develop COMPETENCE with practice, trial and error. To dare to follow your dreams requires the willingness to look foolish, to risk failure and rejection. Our mistakes are requirements for wisdom and true confidence. Of course, His Holiness manages to say this with much more elegance and simplicity.

Dalai Lama

Warm-heartedness reinforces our self-confidence – giving us not a blind confidence, but a sense of confidence based on reason. When you have that you can act transparently, with nothing to hide! Likewise, if you are honest, the community will trust you. Trust brings friendship, as a result of which you can always feel happy. Whether you look to the right or the left, you will always be able to smile.

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Love is what we were born with….

Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here.  As stated by Marianne Williamson

Is this true, that we are all open to giving and receiving and being pure love when we take our first breath, and soon after the lessons begin to convince us that we have to be perfect to be loved?

This fits, I think, when trying to cope with my own fears of rejection. When I place my guilt/shame/anxiety in a crucible, and cook out all the what ifs, what I end up holding is the fear that I have blown the chance to be accepted and loved. I know, I know, that “no one is perfect, everyone makes mistakes.” Yet, it is much easier for me to forgive others than to accept my own imperfections, because rejection is the greatest fear, tantamount to death our ancient DNA structure.

Marianne stays consistent with The Course in Miracles core teaching that we have two choices: love and fear, that to give energy to complicated variations of feelings only prevent us from reconnecting with Divine, with our own Best Selves.

Can it be so simple? That we can choose to focus on love rather than fear? I didn’t say it was easy, but perhaps it helps to simplify.  Today I wish it so for me, and for you.

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