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.