Just a personal note from Pam.
We live in a very small town with a railroad going through it. There's a sidetrack just out of town and a train has been parked there for several months. At first I didn't notice it was sitting still (sometimes it's hard to tell when you're driving past a stopped train if it's moving or not) but as time went on I realized it wasn't moving and noticed that it was covered in graffiti.
It made me think about the SHEs I know and love who read our books. When we get overwhelmed our graffiti shows up in stacks and piles, sinks full of dirty dishes, unmade beds, backed up laundry, fast food, bulging garages and such. In addition to that graffiti there's inside graffiti and it's far worse. It collects as guilt, shame and anxiety.
Those negative emotions are harmful to your spirit and are as useless as a shower curtain made out of toilet paper, especially when you've decided to change your ways. Why would you feel guilty or ashamed because you lost your direction? That doesn't make any more sense than graffiti.
Finding direction is like being lost at the zoo and seeing the layout map of the whole place with a nice, big, red dot that says, "You are here." We used to get lost in our homes as far as knowing what to do next. Direction came in the form of our get organized system, using 3x5 cards. That system was so simple and fun and in six weeks we were lead out of the jungle of chaos into the pleasure and liberation of being organized.
The acronym SHE has stuck after 41 years because it describes who we are; women who love our homes and families, who tend to over-produce everything from a kid's birthday party to a Christmas gift for Uncle Fred, have the best of intentions and a love for life that creates more ways to be sidetracked. Little did I know that the acronym SHE would be on the cover of a book we would write that would sell more than a million and a half copies (we think 750,000 SHEs bought it and lost it and had to go buy it again).
Thank you to all of you who are keeping my acronym alive! Go SHEs. (Of course GO is an acronym for Get Organized.)
If you're thinking about getting back-in-the-box (that's the term we used for sidetrackers who were using the 3x5 cardfile system and quit for a myriad of reasons and wished to get back-in-the-box) "Sidetracked Home Executives: from pigpen to paradise" is now available as an E-book. In a matter of days you could be back-in-the-box and back on track! See you there! Just click on the cover to purchase.
Love,