At the time I thought organizing my life was an important matter and I still think this is the case. I have always been good at organizing my life so that the �important� things got done. The bills got paid, I remember important meetings and birthdays, I am fairly competent at the basics of organizing my life. I have been a bit of a pack rat at times and I�ve hung on to some items far to long so a de-cluttering exercise was also in order. I find that highly organized people have are very decisive when it comes to keeping and discarding things. Everything they have has a purpose and everything they have has its place.

I know a few people who appear to be super-organized and efficient at what they do and I thought if I was better organized, that I could become more efficient myself. If I was more efficient, I thought I would then have more time to do some of the many other things I want to do and things I should do. So, I started looking for helpful planners, and I started thinking about what I could throw away. I got myself a neat little Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) which has helped keep track of my life and it has, become a valuable tool in organizing some parts of my life. My de-cluttering process has started, but it is going slowly.

I was then recommended a book I had heard about before titled; �The seven habits of highly effective people : restoring the character ethic by Stephen R. Covey.� Without wondering too much about the sub-title, I thought this book would teach me things about efficiency that I did not previously understand. I was wrong about this book, it is not simple a book on how to organize your life, it is a self-improvement book of the highest order and it has left me with many lessons to ponder and self evaluations to make.

For me, the necessity of improving and maintaining my physical health is a �no-brainer.� I have always felt that good physical health greatly improves the quality of one�s life. For most of my life I have maintained an active lifestyle. I have always felt more vibrant, confident and capable when I have been fully involved in physical activities of various sorts. I would like to live a long, healthy, full life, so maintaining my physical health is very important to me.

In my quest for good physical health, I plan to participate in a wide variety of activities. At the moment I am heavily involved in a sport called triathlon, which consumes much of my recreational time and energy. This sport is actually three sports; swimming, biking and running, which provides me with a variety of activities within the one sport. I enjoy this variety a great deal and I think it helps keep my body from wearing out as fast as it normally would if I did only one of these sports. Granted I do these three sports a great deal, but still it is probably better than only running or only swimming. To support my triathlon training I will at times also participate in yoga and Pilates to help me with my flexibility and my core strength.

I will not be able to do the sport a high level for all my life, but I plan to keep going even if my speed slows down and my endurance is not as extensive as it is now. My interest in sport does not stop with these three sports. I have played the following sports in the past and I still maintain an interest in doing them in the future: Cross country skiing, basketball, volleyball, and golf. I am interested in almost any sport out there and I�m willing to try most of them. I�m also interested in activities that are not necessarily sports, but they also provide one with some good physical activity: Hiking, boating, dancing, gardening, skating, and snow-shoeing.

A second important component in maintaining one�s physical health is diet. I feel that I have always eaten a fairly good, balanced diet. I have my weakness for sweets and some other foods that are not necessarily so highly nutritious, but I try to control how much of those items I eat. For example I buy only one two litre container of ice cream a month and one bag of chips (corn or potato) a month and one container of crackers a month. This helps me limit my intake of foods of questionable quality to a low level. I try to eat a wide variety of foods and I try to eat less refined foods as much as I can. I eat lots of fruit without much prompting, but I am trying to get into the habit of eating a salad every day of the week. This is harder on the weekends I find. Whole foods tend to have more nutrients than highly processed foods and that can only be good for an active individual like myself. I also need to eat enough food to match my activity level. No more, no less. Although vitamin supplementation is not necessarily the best way to get all of the nutrients you need into your body, it may be necessary for someone who does activities that are punishing on the body. I take a daily supplement.

For good physical health it is also necessary of get enough rest. Time spent resting is time spent healing in the athletic world. Skipping sleep does not make us more productive, if anything it makes us less able to do anything we do. I find I need a bit of a nap after lunch. A twenty minute session with my head on my desk ultimately makes me sharper in the afternoon. If I don�t nap I am prone to nodding off, daydreaming and loosing my concentration. I sometimes also, stay up too late at night for the time that I rise in the mornings. I should set a time to go to bed and go at that time every night. I find setting an alarm to go to bed is a neat reminder of this point.

Finally, I will monitor aches and pains and my senses and not ignore general health issues that are also important to my physical health. I will monitor closely the health of my eyes and teeth with regular check-ups and I will not hesitate to go to the doctor if I suspect another problem with my health. If I feel exercise related pain I will seek help for that pain as well via physiotherapy or massage. No denial allowed!

I will now deal with category eight and then head off into a completely different direction. I have added an environmental and ethical section to my self improvement project, because of a sense I have of being part of a bigger world around me. My desire is to contribute to making the world a better place. I also want to put the smallest burden I possibly can on the environment, because it is impossible to have no impact at all. I will make some comments about the environmental component of this section and then on the steps that I am taking to leave a smaller footprint on the environment.

I will then move into my section about ethics which is not really so much about ethical topics as it is about the ongoing development of my thoughts, attitude, principles and values. This is what I consider to be my ethical development. I may hit upon various ethical topics in this section, but it is not strictly about those ethical topics. In this section I will introduce several exercises that I have undertaken in my personal ethical development.

Both of these sections have played a big role in the development of Rodney as a person lately and I will deal with then separately. I will change the sub-topic ethics to attitudes and values and add it to the end of my list as number 12.

I look upon our planet and its natural wonders with a mixture of awe, gratitude and pessimism. I am in awe of the beauty, complexity and the grandeur of the natural wonders of our planet. I am grateful that the environment of our planet has provided mankind with the basic necessities for our existence and with so many other resources that we have been able to thrive. I am pessimistic that mankind can mange the resources of our planet in such a way so as to ensure our continued existence in the way we have become accustomed.

I consider myself an environmentalist! I have probably been an environmentalist since I was young and when I would go hunting, fishing and trapping with my father and from my time gardening with my mother. I think the time I spent at these activities lead me to appreciate the riches that nature provides to humanity without my suspecting that I was learning these lessons. Later when I entered university in the early 1980�s I gravitated toward science courses and I found the courses related to biological topics most interesting. At university I was also introduced to the idea that humans can cause real and lasting damage to their natural environment.

The relationship between man and nature has been ongoing for thousands or millions of years. Most recently, however, mankind has developed the ability to exploit nature on a grand scale and this has at times created ecological damage on a massive scale. If we do not treat our environment with the respect it requires, then it will change and although we are a very adaptable species, we may not be able to keep up with those changes. The natural environment is our most important source of air, water, food, shelter, knowledge, and many other resources of various kinds. In many cases, when these resources are gone, they are gone forever and we have lost the benefit of the product or knowledge that they supplied to us. Man�s success at surviving on this planet is remarkable, but the growth in our numbers that this success has allowed, has I feel left a precarious balance between mankind and our environment. If we as a species are responsible stewards of our resources, then we will not destroy so much of our natural habitat that we destroy ourselves as well.

That�s enough of the preaching! This is meant to be an outline of one of values that I consider to be strongest and most developed in my mind. I am also trying to become more proactive, so I will try to focus on dealing with this issue in a positive way, rather than just complaining about it. I have disappointed myself lately with my lack of self discipline at reducing the impact I make on the environment. Since I have found full time work, I have found some security in owning things! I now own a house, a car and lots of other things that modern day man owns in North America. The house is large, old and not very energy efficient and my car is small, but I have tended to use it much more than is necessary in the last few years. I have recently re-examined my impact on the environment and found that these are two of the biggest ways I have impacted the environment and I�ve resolved to reduce the impact from these two factors in my life. I will also touch upon a third factor that I consider has a large effect upon my environment and that is my eating habits. I am giving serious thought to becoming vegetarian and I have made some steps in that direction.

First of all, I have been using my car a great deal less than I have in the past. I now walk or bicycle to work most days and I try to plan my other activities around walking, or public transportation. If things continue to go as they have for me and my car recently, I may not need it except for some planned trips or weekend excursions. This may mean that I would be able to sell my car and rent one when I have a need or a desire to use a vehicle for a short term.

The next thing I have done is to order an energy audit for my house. With this audit, I hope to identify what renovations I could do to my house to reduce the amount of energy I waste. These renovations will go to the top of my home improvement to-do list projects. This work is dependent on my ability to pay for this work. I am interested to see what recommendations will be made for my house, I suspect my windows need replacing and maybe some insulation will have to be done.

Finally, I will write some about my eating habits. I have made steps toward, becoming vegetarian. Why would being vegetarian be better for the environment, than being omnivorous? Farming is one practice that has had the large impact on our natural environment, but it is also one of the practices that have allowed humanity to grow and flourish. We regularly eliminate thousands of acres of natural areas to plant crops or raise livestock that we then eat. I admit that farming is necessary for the present human population, in order to help us maintain our good level of health, yet, there is a great deal of waste in many farming practices. Eliminate these wasteful practices and farming could be changed to become more of a soil builder with the introduction of organic principles rather than being a soil destroyer. Since farming is so destructive to the environment, the less farming that has to take place on my behalf is, therefore, a good thing. To raise a pound of meat, fish or poultry, it takes hundreds and possibly thousands of pounds of vegetable matter and much more energetic inputs of one sort and another. If I simply ate more vegetative sources, then all of the extra energy and food needed to maintain livestock would not be necessary and I would save an acre or two of forest by consuming food in a wiser fashion. One can use a pyramid to illustrate this dynamic that exists between energy use and the food we eat. At the top point of the pyramid you will find the small amount of meat produced from the many inputs below it right down to the base of the pyramid. Eliminate these extra inputs and we would enjoy a great improvement in efficiency and thereby cause less harm to the environment.

The question now remains; will I now become vegetarian? I am still eating meat, because I have some in my freezer and sometimes it is not easy to find a vegetarian dish on a menu in a restaurant. Here is what my practice is at the moment. On alternate days I consider myself vegetarian, so I don�t eat meat. On the opposite days, I will work on cleaning the meat out of my freezer until such time as there is none left and all of my days will become vegetarian. Today, when I eat out, as I often do, I try to order a vegetarian dish no matter what day it is and if I get a side order of meat with my dish, I will give it away or I will not eat it. When it comes to animal products on my plate like eggs and cheese I will not be so strict. The best case scenario in my mind is a completely vegan diet, but I would have a very hard time eating out in that case and cooking at home, be much more of a challenge and possibly a waste of my time and energy.

To conclude the environmental portion of this section I would like to say that I think my footprint has become smaller the last couple of months, with my efforts to use my car less and by becoming vegetarian. I am interested to see what an energy audit reveals about my home and then I will have some more decisions to make regarding making my biggest asset � my home - a smaller energy consumer.

I have been struggling with the topic of spirituality and religion all my life and it has taken me some time to straighten out my thoughts on these matters. I think this is an important topic or I wouldn�t have included in my personal improvement plan. Most paragraphs in this essay are disjointed ideas I�ve had over the years and some newer thoughts that I�ve had about spirituality. One day all this stuff may coalesce into a firm belief, but right now it�s fairly disjointed and not a firm coherent single belief.

I don�t consider myself a religious person. I was brought up in a Christian family, but it was not a healthy experience for me. God was something that was pushed at me and used as weak threat of not having a place to go after I die. Without going into too many personal details, I would say that religion was always a negative in my life and most likely in my family�s life as well. Religion is not something we freely speak about in my family and it is not something I plan to speak much about in this essay. I will speak about what I will call spirituality here instead of religion, because I am on a personal spiritual quest. My quest for spirituality is not urgent, but more of a casual affair which I will give myself a lifetime to work toward.

A label I would use to describe my spiritual belief is the term agnostic, because I do not have a strong belief in a God. I do, think it is important to have beliefs in spiritual matters, because they help stabilize you. Your spiritual beliefs provide you with an anchor. Just like other values and principles you may have, spirituality gives you direction; and understanding of powers that guide mankind and this planet on it path through time. Your spirituality provides belief and trust in a power greater than yourself and a power whose ultimate aim is for the good of all life on earth. You can tap into this power for reassurance in the goodness in life and to ultimately make yourself a better person.

Do I believe in a God or gods, prophets, sages, or ancient wisdom? I remember feeling very uncomfortable while being at a Christmas service once that was heavily laden with praise and prayer for a God that I had little conviction for. I don�t as a general rule have a problem with Christmas and I like the general vibes of kindness, peace and good will that are promoted at this time of year. This service was highly religious and spoke more about a power I was not willing to have faith in, rather than a message of peace and good will. Depending on how you look at it, I would have to say that I don�t believe in an established religion or belief system, but I do share some of the views religions or prophets may promote. Various religions share some basic moral codes which seem to be universally adopted. These basic moral or principles are probably common to the majority of mankind and are instinctively understood by all regardless of one�s religious affiliation. Weather attributed to a god, a prophet or wisdom of the elders or ancient ones, this knowledge often form the basis of legal systems in some regions or cultures.

I curiously listen to and enquire about spiritual beliefs that are not so prominent in my society. Maybe the fact that a belief is not so omni-present is somehow less threatening to me, but I like to think of my quest for spirituality as a search for something that has meaning for me. I haven�t jumped into any alternative belief with both feet, but I do listen politely to those beliefs and listen carefully to see if they fit my basic values or if they stir anything inside me.

I have recently read a book by Dr. Wayne Dyer called �The Power of Intention: Learning to co-create your own world way,� which is heavily based in spirituality. Dyer contends that intention is akin to a higher power, which we all can tap into in order to live a more fulfilled life. Living in sync with intention Dyer implies makes one more productive, successful and happy with how they live. Dyer claims that when you live on the positive side of intention that �good� things happen in your life, or the right things happen at the right time. The opposite of intention in Dyer�s description is the ego or selfishness. Dwelling on your troubles and the hurt in your life is the effect of your ego, which keeps you away from achieving your positive intended state of being.

I like the concept of intention for two main reasons. First it puts the responsibility on the individual to move in a positive direction with intention. I like the thought that our positive actions lead to positive reaction from intention or the divine. If we only would live rightly, the world would be our protector and provider. I also like the general optimism of the approach. The world is based on a good or positive intention, which you only have to act to access. There is no fear of damnation, or very specific rules of good and bad actions. There is no heaven or hell to get into, only a divine existence in your lifetime. There are prophets or people who live with intention at a high level, and who exude positiveness wherever they go. Everyone can, however, live in this manner and you do not have to be part of an organized religion or belief system. You do not have to follow these sages, but you can benefit from there presence. The glass is not half full, it is full and it re-fills itself as you drink it. If you are work with intention on a regular basis the glass will even get larger.

If I understand Grace correctly, it is living in harmony with God�s will. Grace means following the moral code set down by Christian doctrine and having faith that every thing that happens is God�s will. Good and bad things that happen in the world are meant to be that way and the way we deal with these occurrences shows weather we faithfully believe in God�s plan or not. Living with �intention� may be considered similar to a state of living in Grace with God. If intention provides contentment and happiness in individuals then I would say it is important to work diligently toward this state. I seem to be working myself closer to a state of intention in a cautious way. Maybe all that is required for me to fully achieve this state is to remove that caution and to have faith in the natural flow of intention.

Faith! Can I have faith in something I can�t see or hear or smell? Can I have faith in an idea! I have beliefs have don�t necessarily have 100% basis in fact. I believe that reading and writing will improve my brain function; I believe that eating a vegetarian diet is better for the environment; I believe that a positive attitude will lead to a happier person. These examples may have some basis in fact, but I choose to believe in them enough as if they were completely true. I have faith in these ideas, just as I could have faith in a spiritual belief. All I have to do is find a spiritual belief that fits nicely with my personal beliefs and principles. Maybe I will have to develop my own spirituality based on what I like about the spiritual beliefs that I am exposed to. That is more or less what I am doing at this time.

I have also been meditating for some time now. I mainly look at meditation as personal mind control. I practice thinking only certain calming thoughts during these sessions and I push other thoughts aside for another time. Thinking about being in tune with intention provides a new level of meaning to my meditation sessions. I do not call this meditation a spiritual experience or prayer, but sometimes it proves to be a powerfully moving experience depending on what I choose to meditate upon. Maybe I should consider meditation my form of prayer or my way of thanking or tapping into what ever higher power exists in this world. Perhaps meditation simply taps into higher power that exists in my mind.

I have been doing a gratitude exercise since last summer when I read the Martin Seligman book called �Authentic Happiness.� This exercise involves writing down at least five things that you noticed or experienced throughout that day for which you are grateful. I often remember noticing a beautiful flower or a somewhat rare bird or animal. I also note special occurrences throughout the day like a good run or dinner with friends. I will also mention individuals who I have made special contact with during the day to acknowledge their presence in my life. This exercise I feel allows me to appreciate life better. What difference does seeing another eagle have in you life? It can have great significance only if you let it be so. Choosing to make what some people consider to be �everyday things� special in your life allows me to appreciate life to a much greater extent. I stopped to feel the warm summer breeze on my face on the walk home the other night and that became a special experience. Laughing with friends becomes something which I gratefully acknowledge as something that enriches my life and swimming at sunrise makes living a spiritual experience. This gratitude exercise is one that I will keep doing, because it helps me maintain a positive outlook on life and it makes me appreciate life much more than I have in the past.

I also look at gratitude in another way. I�m thinking less about the gratitude we feel toward another person and I mean the gratitude we might feel toward existence. We are given an opportunity by being born to do something important or productive with our lives or to do little or nothing with our lives. Simply existing is not being grateful in my opinion. Coasting through life, which I must admit I have done at times, is not neutral, it is negative. Coasting takes from life, it does not give back.

How does a person show gratitude for being alive? In my mind, making the most of life is how you show you are grateful for being alive. Be the best teacher, lawyer, crossing-guard, politician, or plumber that you can possibly be. When not at work show your friends and family your gratitude by being the best father, mother, friend, son, daughter or sibling that you can be. How is this done? Only you can know the answer to that question. How do you show you care for your parents? How often do you say you love your brother? What little things should you do on a regular basis, to simply say you are grateful to be alive and to be part of a family unit?

Another type of gratitude is being grateful to the earth for supplying everything we need to live on this planet we call home. How do we show gratitude to our home, our planet? I show gratitude to the earth by trying hard not to be wasteful. That�s why I consider myself an environmentalist. I am grateful for what mother earth has given us and I try not to use what has been given in a greedy or unwise way. I am trying to reduce the size of my environmental footprint and I try to minimize any impact that I do make on this planet.

In �Authentic Happiness� Seligman also considered the character strength of forgiveness as being a powerful producer of happiness. Forgiveness is often encountered in biblical stories and is considered an important part of Christian teachings. How would I consider forgiveness as playing a part in my life? Forgiveness is usually applied when someone does wrong to another person causing some sort of pain. The person causing the pain is forgiven by the person hurt and presumably the hurt person suffers less. As I have observed suffering is an emotional pain which is controlled by the person doing the suffering, so this process is completely understandable. I�m not trying to make light of anyone�s pain or suffering by implying that suffering is produced in a persons mind. Suffering can have a very powerful influence on a person�s well-being. Forgiving someone for wronging you in someway, therefore, has the potential to relieve great suffering from a person�s life should and lead to a better quality of life for the forgiver.

Being wronged can be a subjective or real as necessary, because suffering can be produced in different people by different factors. Let me create an example to explain. Let�s say for example that John runs over Mary�s flowerbed causing a fair amount of damage and neglects to apologize or pay for the damage for no apparent reason. Mary mentions the incident to John who does not seem acknowledge that he has done something wrong. Mary then has a choice to create a great deal of resentment toward John and his apparent bad behaviour or she can forgive him and carry on without letting the matter fester and ruin many of her days. I�m purposely not mentioning legal, or monetary issues in this case, because forgiveness I think has little to do with monetary issues and everything to do with emotional pain and suffering. The pain inflicted can be great or small, but forgiveness can relive any suffering that exists. I have suffered some in my life-time, which I probably consider was the result of other people�s actions. This suffering has lifted somewhat recently and I�m not sure if forgiveness has played a part, but I will certainly consider the matter more closely the next time something bad happens in my life.

In general I have a reverence for nature. I feel that the earth and all the biological diversity that it harbours is a wholly thing. Humans could not live without the resources that the earth provides. This sense of nature is what I consider to be a sort of nature worship. I think special places on earth should be protected and that earths biological and mineral resources should be used wisely. I see beauty, mystery, power, knowledge, and creation in nature. Mankind should learn from what nature provides and not simply use up the apparently endless supply of resources.

Do I believe in �fate� or possibly a master plan for the universe or for my life as created by an omnipotent being or God or force. Not really! In this regard, I believe in a more scientific description of the universe and life and all that happens around us and to us. One could argue that God created the forces that run our lives and our planet. It requires a leap of faith to believe in a creator and I don�t really think it is necessary at the moment for me to choose to believe or not. I feel fine believing that the universe operates the way it does, because it has always operated this way and no master plan or divine planner is required.

One last thing I would like to mention in this section on spirituality is wonder. Wonder may not seem to be a spiritual matter, but it is for me. When I think about the vastness of our universe and the complexity of life and systems at work on earth, I am in awe of the fact that I am part of this system and I am grateful to be able to observe it from close up. When I stop at the end of the day or when I get an opportunity to have some uninterrupted think time, I often reflect on how things work. How does grass use sunlight, rain and soil to grow and produce waste products (oxygen) that we (humans) breath. I look at the stars in the night sky and wonder if some other living beings might be living near them right at this moment. I wonder if homo-sapiens will live long enough to move out into the vastness of space and colonize other planets successfully. I think moving into space is mankind�s next step and I think we should make this move with care and attention to the things that the universe provides us. I think we should be grateful for the opportunity given to us by the universe to grow and expand out into its vastness.

I�m sure there is more that will come to mind that I will want to say about spirituality, and I will add it to this page when I give it some good thought. Stay tuned!