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I CAN MANAGE
Friday Dec. 12, 2014
 
 
Managing.
 
Physical and mental health, food/clothing/shelter, making a living, making a life, making dinner and making it to appointments on time, to deadlines on time and still having something left at the end of it all – perhaps some time, some energy and some smiles. 
 
Managing our lives is a full time job without many days off …
 
Steps, we’ve read and been oft told, are beginnings.
 
Every journey begins with …. 
 
You know the drill.
 
Baby steps.
 
Little efforts, not giant leaps.
 
Incrementally important things that build up.
 
Far beyond ‘walk a block a day --- and call me when you get to Winnipeg’.
 
Minor shifts in what we do, how we behave are really powerful. 
 
A tiny bad habit or neglect, compounded, can be devastating.
 
A tiny good habit or improvement, compounded, can change lives, win medals, push people to gargantuan piles of achievement, esteem and sometimes wealth.
 
Yet those steps, increments and sea-change impacts – they become huge life-altering and empowering, are really quite minor when compared to little shifts in thinking built up in time like pearls in oysters, layer upon layer of empowerment. 
 
Ones that shift us.
 
From pessimists to optimists. 
 
From non-believers to believers.
 
From dreamers to achievers.
 
From not believing we matter to knowing that we do.
 
From being self-aware, staring beyond the mirror, introspective viewers of who we are. 
 
We know from where we’ve come. We know all our secrets, all our flaws, all our blunders – and they can so easily loom large in our being.
 
Baby steps.
 
Personal health plans, we get to manage.
 
Or they manage us …
 
 
 
Mark Kolke
column written/ published from Calgary, AB
 
morning walk:  4C/40F, overcast, mild breeze – slippery slick sidewalks nearly everywhere Gusta wanted to go so we rambled a bit ‘stepping carefully’ every bit of the way. In a way I prefer snow for both visibility in the dark and traction … but don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind the mild!
 
Reader feedback:
 
CHRISTMAS GREETING VIDEO
Enjoyed reading your dailies from Hawaii - lucky you to get away and miss the cold in November. I imagine you will have Christmas with your family - I will have my boys home so will be nice. Hope to see you again one of these days - in the meantime I am enjoying your writing. Thanks!, DL, Invermere, BC

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