化繁为简艺术.docVIP

化繁为简艺术 　　We live in a society where our worth seems to be 1)validated by how large our network is; how often our 2)Blackberry goes off; how 3)worldly we are from our travels; or how many 4)awesome Facebook pictures there are of us, proving to our friends we live the good life. Not to mention, as we grow older and wiser, there is a constant learning 5)curve on how to gracefully handle evolving responsibility. 　　 　　So, we resort to multi-tasking, a term I’m all too familiar with. For the past three years I’ve adopted wearing several outfits: the banker, the weekend real estate agent, the writer, the board member, the six days a week fitness 6)guru, the social planner…The exhausting list can be 7)rattled on, but these were my 8)staple outfits. 　　 　　I was this determined, full-of-spirit person during the day when interacting with colleagues at work, friends at lunch, clients during the evening, friends on Facebook, yoga acquaintances in class. But, by the time I stopped moving late at night, by the time I 9)shed all the identity of these outfits, I was dizzy and hardly 10)good company. My husband received the residual affects of my true, 11)underlying feelings of being 12)overcommitted, without focus, and having this ability to “shoot off stress 13)beams”, as he puts it. 　　 　　I have been raised on goals since the age of four like they were a serving of food every day. And, apparently, sometime during my mid-20’s, I also began to acquire goals as if they were 14)collectibles. I had so many different identities that, in order to keep myself from confusing who I was and what I was doing, I literally had six email addresses to separate the different responsibilities. 　　 　　I understood this problem and finally decided to 15)reason with myself. I’m a fan of variety who loves dynamic people and a dynamic lifestyle, but it’s impossible to do everything and be good at it all. It’s not fair to my marriage, my ongoing success, and the sustainability of how I live. This l