Rule of Three

By Cheryl Hansen

Three is kind of a big deal if you think about it.

• Red, yellow and green on a traffic light.
• Time is divided into past, present and future.
• Third time’s a charm.
• Freud’s id, ego and super ego.
• Columbus’ Pinta, Niña, Santa Maria.
• Charlie’s Angels.
• The three little pigs.
• Snap, Crackle and Pop.

I wish I’d remembered that three is a magic number last night when I attempted to get organized before going to sleep. The idea, of course, was to make a big to-do list of everything I’d hoped to accomplish.

My list, however, had 26 items on it. 26.

Shoot, I barely accomplished three percent of that list. And now I’m all discouraged, I feel like I failed and I’m drowning my sorrows in a pepperoni pizza. (OK, the pizza thing isn’t true, but three.) All of my efforts to get organized only served to set myself up for failure.

Maybe the better plan is to lean into three. Three tasks. It’s genius, really, because I can totally complete three tasks. And I LOVE checking said tasks off of a to-do list. And I LOVE LOVE LOVE completing to-do lists. So, all I have to do is figure out what three things I need to do next, and check, check, check, I start a new list.

And guess what? Yoga embraces the number three. The Om is made up of three sounds (A-U-M). Depending on who you ask, it represents heavens, earth and the underworld; or three Hindu gods: Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva. Chaturanga—which requires strong core, arms and shoulders—features three key parts. There’s also triangle pose. I could go on, but I already provided three examples (!).

The point is—and there is only one—if I truly want to find peace and success in this life (in that order), I have to set reasonable, attainable goals.