Making the Most of Your Time

Cindy Lynn White was 48-years-old, and she was my friend.

They buried her in Greeneville this past Friday, August 6, 2010.

To know Cindy was to love her. I can say that with no fear of it being disputed, if for no other reason than the droves of people who came to the funeral home to pay their last respects. But I have even more evidence than that.

I met Cindy in high school. She was a city girl, and I was a farm girl from the county, which normally would have meant that we lived in separate universes, and, I have to admit, should have meant that she felt and acted better than me. But nothing could have been farther from the truth with Cindy. She had an openness about her that immediately communicated how receptive she was to everyone. I don’t think she ever met a stranger, as they say where I come from, and, if Cindy knew you, you were her friend. Simple as that. No standards to meet. No hurdles to get over. No stumbling blocks. Just fun, and smiles, and friendship. Cindy cared. That’s all there was to it. And the literally hundreds for whom she cared showed up in full force to bid her farewell.

It happened much too soon.

They used Cindy’s high school graduation photo in her obituary, which was surprisingly appropriate, because the last time I saw Cindy, she really hadn’t changed all that much. We’d played softball and basketball against one another in high school, which ironically led to us being in medical rehab together, both of us for knee injuries. Even more irony is that her injury sort of came at my hands during a softball game, but that’s another story. She forgave me. Of course. She was Cindy.

We went on from there to work together, while I was in college, at Mickey D’s, where Cindy was a shift manager. Despite only being five foot nothing, she was a fireball of energy. When I sang a few years later at her wedding to Kevin, her diminutive size may have paled in comparison to his height, but there was never anything diminutive about Cindy’s presence. Cindy was strong and she knew it.

She still seemed exactly the same the last time I saw her on October 20, 2009. Our friend Jean’s mom had passed away unexpectedly. We’d all entered that phase of life. You know, the one in which grandparents and maybe parents are beginning to pass, so we typically only saw one another at the funeral home. That’s where I saw Cindy. She sat right beside me during the funeral. Never would I have imagined that this picture of health, who looked just like her high school graduation photo, would receive a stage 4 cancer diagnosis 5 short months later. And never in a million years could I have anticipated she would be gone in just 5 more short months after that.

Yet there I stood on Thursday night, one of the hundreds who waited patiently in line for over two hours to reach her family. It gave me a lot of time to think. And I wondered; what was it about Cindy that obviously touched so many lives? Do I even have it…whatever it is? And have I even begun to impact a fraction of people in the way Cindy did? These are difficult questions for anyone to ask and answer. Maybe none of us will ever bring to bear the unique combination of what made Cindy Cindy. So I won’t ask you to hold yourself to that standard anymore than I’m going to beat myself up about it. But I do want to ask you to think about one thing.

If Cindy’s life teaches us anything, it’s that we don’t know how much time we have.

How many times have you caught yourself thinking, “One of these days, I’m going to…” or “Someday, when I have time, I would like to…” or “When I retire, I am definitely going to…”?

Please don’t wait to live. Whatever it is, don’t put it off. LIVE your dreams NOW.

Perhaps an even greater weakness we all suffer is not worrying about the time we waste. We waste it on the unimportant, the inconsequential, the distractions. We don’t think about how we might use this time differently, if we knew it was all we had left.

But we should. Today is all you know for certain that you have. Each hour. Each minute. Make it count.

Last week I wrote about redeeming your time. One of the other translations of that phrase was making the most of every opportunity. I think Cindy redeemed her time. I don’t think she ever missed a single opportunity to do what she did best—reach out to others, build relationships, show compassion, offer help, and make every single person she encountered feel special.

What would it look like to redeem your time? Have you identified your priorities? Do you know what’s most important to you? Do you know what it would look like, if you were making every minute count?

Life truly is short, and some lives are even shorter than others. Whatever time you have, don’t waste it. Make it count.

With all my best and deepest love and condolences to Cindy’s family,

                                                                                          Rhonda

Summertime Priorities

Well, June is finally here, and school’s out for summer. I have to use that phrase loosely, however, since summer breaks have become so brief even Alice Cooper can’t find much to sing about. The mad rush parents now experience, as they try to fit some semblance of vacation into this wisp of time, is one I might easily overlook were it not for my sister’s experiences, since I was never blessed with children.

Okay, I’ll admit, I’m using the word blessed a little loosely, too. I often feel blessed that I didn’t reproduce. Aside from the obvious cliché, the world is better off without another one like me; I’m really not sure what kind of parent I would have been. It’s such a challenge for me just to take care of myself the way I should. Heaven knows how I would have nurtured a child.

I did get a brief glimpse on one beautiful June day years ago, when my now 16-year-old nephew was only a 2-year-old toddler, and my sister asked me to watch him for her. I thought we had a marvelous day, until my sister showed up and asked what I had fed him.

"Uh, fed him?" I stammered. "He . . . he didn’t say anything about being hungry."

Come on. Give me a break. We were running and playing all day, and I didn’t get hungry. I go without eating all the time, especially when it’s June and summer bathing suit season! Am I right, ladies? Back me up here!

I actually thought I was going to be off the hook for it with my sister, but then she pulled out all the stops and asked what I had given him to drink. The look on my face obviously spoke volumes. “You did give him a drink, didn’t you?!” She exclaimed. “Did YOU go all day without a drink?!”

Busted! She had me there, although I do have to confess that I now realize, even though I’ve never gone completely without fluids, I’ve probably never consumed enough water in any given day. I'm probably not alone in this. We really don't take the best care, not even, of ourselves.

I share all this, not only to ensure no one will ever ask me to babysit, but also to confess to you that the Leadership Coaching work I now do comes not from a smug place of conceited perfectionism, but rather from a place of humility and learning from my own mistakes. In order to coach women and men alike to make better choices, both personally and professionally, I’ve had to first learn to do that myself. In fact, I’m still learning.

Every day I’m still working to overcome some obstacle, either real or imagined, that might prevent me from fulfilling all my potential, attracting abundance, experiencing joy, and spreading peace. We are the leaders of our own lives, personally and professionally, and if we’re not intentionally working to improve our leadership skills in that regard, we can be quite sure we’re not creating optimal results.

But, trust me, I’ve come a long way from the days I starved myself and my dehydrated nephew. And so can you. I’d love to help you begin that journey. In order to continually enhance my ability to do so, I’m developing a new program. I call it PE2 (pronounced P-E-squared), which is shorthand for Prioritize, Economize, Exercise.

I’ll be writing and blogging about it regularly from this point forward, and I sincerely hope you’ll be able to benefit from that effort. I especially hope you’ll respond to my blogs or email me through the contact page of my website to let me know how this helps you and what specific obstacles you face.

One thing I've learned is that our greatest ministry (or means of helping others) often comes out of our greatest struggles. I’m so pleased to see my own struggles redeemed in this new program. I eagerly look forward to helping you redeem yours, too!

The Sum Total of a Successful Life

Let's face it. We live in a world today where, despite the recent economic recession, our mantra is "If a little is good, then more is better!" In our society, we're really good at performing the addition and multiplication involved in that equation, without a great deal of regard for naysayers who, these days, recommend a little subtraction. And all this "math talk" leaves me wondering, is it possible to calculate the sum total of a life?

This was a question that hit me squarely, when I recently attended my friend and former colleague, Mike's, funeral. At the corporation where I'd previously worked for just shy of 25 years, Mike was a successful advertising executive. His untimely death at the young age of 57 was a shock to everyone in his wide circle of influence. Yet, strangely, I believe I was possibly more stunned when I entered the chapel for his funeral. There in the front of the massive marble, stone and wood structure, on a tiny table, sat an even smaller urn. Juxtapositioned to Mike's very large life, it stopped me in my tracks. That's it? I wondered . . . a man who lived as full a life as Mike - NCAA championship swimmer, Division 1 university football cheerleader, graduate of the most prestigious journalism school in the country, creater of award-winning ad campaigns for an international Fortune 500 corporation, on a first-name basis with leaders of the largest advertising firms on Madison Avenue - and this is the sum total of all that . . . a little pile of ashes in an urn smaller than a half gallon of milk?!

I suppose, as a Leadership Coach, I'm naturally haunted by such questions anyway. When our time is over, no matter how short or long it may be, how can we calculate the sum total of our life? What are the factors in such an equation? Can it be as simple as A+B=C? If so, what are A and B? And, if we figure out a cipher for calculating success after the fact, could we then use that insight to predict success? Could we calculate the probability of success, based on current actions and circumstances? Could we even use this insight to change the course of a life to ensure the best possible outcome?

These are the topics and questions I'm going to be blogging about in the coming weeks. I sincerely hope you'll join in this discussion. I really need to know what you think and hear what you have to say on this subject, so that I can be the best coach I can be. Your insights will be multiplied into help for so many others!

Please comment, follow this discussion, and check back in a few days to read my new posts. Thanks!