Finding the good stuff

The stock markets have the jitters yet again, with harsh worldwide implications. A lot of the news seems overwhelmingly bad at the moment. The smiles on optimists` faces may be faltering a bit while pessimists are feeling a bleak sense of satisfaction.

We are entering the second half of the year with our teeth grimly set through all the stock market wobbles, currency fluctuations and fraudster exposures. People may be forgiven for asking where all the fun is. And this is precisely the time during which we should not lose sight of the good stuff.

Change is hard to come to terms with and each change that we undergo brings with it gains and losses. Having to deal with lots of change all at once sometimes means that we are not able to sufficiently mourn the loss of those things that were valuable to us. It is also true that gains can sometimes be significantly greater than the losses, and that each gain has the appearance of a double-edged sword.

Although the technology that envelops our lives should theoretically save us time, the time that is saved only really allows us to do more work.

Jill Hamlyn, MD, The People Business

Take technology, for example. We gained a whole new market sector and hardware and software that has revolutionised the way we live our lives. We gained new values and ways of working. We shrank the world and created an infrastructure that allows us to communicate with someone continents away as if they are next door. On the one hand, we gained lots of time, while on the other, we lost it too. We gained access to information that is a click away, but which creates overloads and bottlenecks if not managed properly. Knowledge and intellectual capital are the watchwords of a new generation.

Probably one of the biggest losses we have had to come to terms with is that of time. Although the technology that envelops our lives should theoretically save us time, the time that is saved only really allows us to do more work. In this day and age, we have to run simply to keep up.

In line with the "hurry, hurry" mentality, there is an ever and ongoing search for the quick fix. For all the ills and maladies of this day and age, from unhappiness to lack of love to being overweight to the common cold, there are thousands of lotions, potions and gurus all offering a way out of the mire. There are between seven and 100 steps that anybody can take in order to improve anything from the state of one`s bank balance to the state of one`s soul - the quality of our lives expressed numerically.

Sometimes there are no quick fixes and sometimes there are. Who we are and how we live are as much defined by processes that we undergo as small moments that change the way we look at everything. Sometimes all it takes is knowing about the six or seven or eight or nine steps to eternal happiness and sometimes it is a little more complicated than that. Most of the time, though, it is all about priorities.

A number of years ago, the Reader`s Digest ran an article about prioritising. This was perhaps before we were promised that we could have it all. The gist of the article had to do with prioritising and its close relative, compromise. The writer took a clear-headed view about the fact that we cannot always have it all, so in order to make our lives both workable and liveable, we need to decide what is most important to us and then focus on that.

So, if spending time with your family is more important than work, the obvious path to take is not one in which you find yourself in a job that demands all your attention for the major part of your day at the expense of your family life. If you live to work, then go right ahead and do so knowing that you will probably have to compromise on some of your relationships. The point about prioritising is that the choice we make is not right, wrong, good or bad (unless it severely infringes on someone else`s rights or space or happiness), it is just something that is right for us and the way in which we choose to live our lives. And at the risk of sounding glib or facile, most people have choices in at least some areas of their lives and this is where opportunities to prioritise present themselves.

To come back to the primary injunction of this column, the command not to lose sight of the good stuff, there is good stuff all around us. It is sometimes obscured. However, as cream rises and plants push their way through the cracks, the good stuff will out.

This is one area in which we all have a choice - we can choose to change our viewpoint to accommodate the good, or to actively seek it out, or we can choose to dismiss it. Neither is wrong but one is certainly much more pleasant than the other. We can also choose to make a difference - or not. We can choose to change the things we do not like or that we see as wrong or bad or harmful - or not. We can choose to find the good stuff in each and every day - or not. We can also choose to make the good stuff in each and every day - or not. These are just some of the areas in which we do have a choice. That in itself is good stuff.