Wisdom on the Go

I started listening to an audio book the other day called Atomic Habits by James Clear.

We all have habits of things that we do every day. Some of them are bad, some of them are good. Some of them carry us towards our goals, some of them away from them. The reason they are called "atomic" is that even small habits can have a greater boom to them over time.

I haven't gotten far into this book, but the little I have heard has had me re-evaluating how I spend my time and the net effects it is having in my life. One bad habit I have gotten into is to read facebook in the morning when I am having my breakfast coffee. I can spend up to an hour there and sometimes it extends into my work day if I don't have a client booked first thing. This is productive time that I could use in other ways, especially as my brain is sharpest in the morning.

Some of the things I could be doing in that time: 15 minutes of working out or going on my vibration platform (which is the equivalent of an hour at the gym), reading a book, or working on something that I know will impact my life in the right direction.

A while ago a friend I admire for their maturity and wisdom suggested I consider writing out the book of Proverbs by hand. I had worked my way up to chapter 16 and then let it go by the wayside. So, with the above ideas of small habits making big impacts in mind, I laid aside FB at breakfast, did my 10 minutes on the platform and started writing Proverbs out again. This led me to the following verses today:

Proverbs 18:19.20

A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city, and contentions are like the bars of a citadel.

With the fruit of a man's mouth his stomach will be satisfied.

I used to have a friend and I recently discovered that they were actively discouraging my clients from coming to see me and were directing them to someone else. I also discovered that they were offended with me. To this day, I have no idea what I did to offend. Then the other day I saw another former friend who pretended to see right through me. We both have this offended person in common and in fact they were close friends. I know I had expressed a low opinion of how this second friend had handled a few situations and I had said something about it to my first friend. It's not hard to see that whatever I said got repeated to them, hence the cold shoulder. Anyhow, this was a good example to me of several things that are spoken of in Proverbs:

1. Offending people makes it as easy as breaking through the bars of a prison to reach them.

2. The things you say, especially if they are unkind can come back to bite you in ways that you don't anticipate in the future. It is very seldom that I regret NOT speaking. Many things are better left unsaid.

3. A good reputation is better than money in the bank. In fact, it is often one of the things that leads to money in the bank. A lot of our reputations depend on the things we say and do.

4. Don't despise the day of small things. When they are all added up together, they become something much bigger than you ever thought possible.

5. Guard your thoughts -- they lead to what comes out of your heart and mouth -- often uncontrollably. It's out of the abundance of what you think about that you spout off. And, like it or not, they are about the issues of life in some way or shape. I have fences that need mending and I am going to work on fixing what I can and hopefully move forward with a whole lot more wisdom than I have had in the past. What kind of small habits do you have? Are they moving you towards your stated goals or away from them?