Every now and again, my father, comes out with these wonderful gems of knowledge.   This one was just awesome and life changing for me.

He was a manager most of his career…  He shared about how the key to managing too much work as a manager is to delegate your monkeys and then refuse to take them back and to enforce the responsibility given to others.   

All day long I have been taking back or worse, stealing monkeys from my various family members.   How terrible to realize that not only have I been in ungodly order in stealing my hubby’s monkeys, but also that I am taking on those terrible imps that driving my family members or I am enabling them in my “helpfulness”.

What does this look like you might ask? 

1.   Every time I do something for my children because it is faster, more convenient etc than encouraging them to  do it themselves (of course only the things that they are really capable of) I have taken back a monkey.

2.  Every time I make someone else’s problem my problem.   Example.  My hubby is building a sandbox for the children.. Bless his heart, in his quest to build the ultimate sandbox he must have spent 3-5 hours researching on the internet… He travelled many grueling roads including considering whether a jungle gym (one was called the metropolis and weighed in at a mere $8000, which was nothing compared to the $19,000 model) to arrive back at our original destination of a somewhat oversized covered rectangular sandbox with seats built in (fyi if anyone knows where one can buy such a thing let us know as he still hasn’t found a distributor).   Instead of letting him do “his” thing,  I got involved, found myself spending time on the internet looking, found myself reconsidering that which I had dismissed months ago in my mind (we live 2 doors away from a park and really a big jungle gym would be such an over the top indulgence and would take up and some real estate in our backyard that would be better used elsewhere) and yes, I let that old dog steal a couple of hours of my precious time on Sunday…   Oh those monkeys are so easy to take on.

3.  The worst kind of taking on of the monkey for me..   is simply worrying, fretting, dreading etc things that are entirely in the domain of another person and that person’s choices.

So today I am making another choice..   I am praying for eyes to see these elusive and yet oh so alarmingly present and numerous monkeys and for the ability to reject each and every one of them as they tempt me to take them on.

I am reading a new book and came across this acronym which is oh too perfect for what God is saying to me lately.

Burdened Under Satan’s Yoke

I am slowing down and simplifying.    Hence the month’s worth of reading courtesy of Psalm121.ca/year3.html

Turn out that yes almost in every case, the things that I have been on my hubby’s case for I was myself doing.    Eg 1.   Working from early in the morning to late at night (human striving accomplishes nothing.. how can I know this and still fall so completely and utterly in this snare over and over again)

Eg 2 Taking on more than I can handle… for me this looks like starting a ton of little projects and leaving them unfinished creating a low grade “have to finish/clean up/touch up that project list” in my head and essentially overcommitting my time and stealing time out of my tomorrows…  turns out that if we focus on dressing the kids, making our bed and eating our meals… we can handle that kind of day kind of seamlessly.    I will be adding to our activity level slowly and focussing on finishing what we start.    Oh my, yes meaning breakfast dishes done before we go on to the next activity etc.

Eg 3 Taking on someone else’s monkey.. such a neat concept I will give it it’s own post