There is nothing like spending time with small children to make you realize the value of “just being”.
Just sitting on the floor and laughing. Just walking in the snow. Just eating cookies you baked together. Just hugging and cuddling. Or just watching everybody else around you.
I am an over-achieving self-professed workaholic (who has claimed on several occasions to have broken the addiction – unsuccessfully). So I measure every day by what I have accomplished toward my daily to-do list, my monthly “successes”, or my annual goals.
I can list more time management methodologies than you thought existed. Each has a process for identifying the tasks or projects that need to be done, prioritizing them, and tracking when they have been completed (or better yet – not relevant or necessary any more).
I wake to alarms on my clock-radio and my Blackberry, and have numerous ones that go off throughout the day and evening, all intended to keep me on track to getting the important and the urgent done each day.
I know how to get things done! (My successful career and family are evidence enough.)
But what I am not very good at is “just being”. Fortunately, I have just spent four days with the grandchildren who brought me back to that space again.
As I sit here and think about writing a grocery list and menu for the week, scheduling a series of meetings over the next few weeks, taking a course on Photoshop, and setting my goals for 2014, I am extremely grateful to the grandchildren for reminding me that sometimes it is acceptable to “just be me and be in the moment”.
So I have decided that in 2014, I am going to find more moments where I can do just that – even when the grandkids are not around to help me…

What helps you – just be “you”?