Underextend Yourself

It is the current trend in this world of opportunity for people to over-fill their schedules, over-spend their income, over-promise to their family and friends. All of this leads to overwhelm, overload, and being in over their heads and over-extended. It becomes obvious how prevalent these situations are by noticing how many over words we have in our vocabulary to describe them. My bold proposal is that instead of all the overage, we practice under-extending ourselves. A graphic analogy to demonstrate this is to picture a rubber band around a deck of cards. If the band is stretched to its ultimate, adding even one more card will cause it to break and all of the cards will scatter. If the band still has some slack and can stretch further, more cards may be added and the deck will stay intact. If our lives are like that deck of cards and our rubber band has stretching room, we will be free to add more to our lives without losing our integrity. For example, if you have a reserve of money and a great investment opportunity presents itself, you can take advantage of it. If you keep reserves of time and energy, when unexpected events occur you can handle them without undue stress. If you under-promise to family and friends and then deliver in excess of the promise, you are a hero. There are several ways to keep some slack in the rubber band of your life. You can clean out some of the