Put up or shut up. As they say on Grey's Anatomy - seriously. I cannot participate in another club, community meeting or group function and listen to people complain about what is wrong in the world and then do nothing about it! These are usually the people that will talk the longest, the loudest and the most often - stirring the proverbial pot - yet have a laundry list of excuses they are prepared to show you when you ask for them to volunteer.

The most common excuse - "I don't have enough time." Seriously? I am the wrong person to make this statement to. I work full time in a highly demanding job as an IT project manager. I have two young (not just young, but 18 months and 6 years young) sons and I am married to an incredible person who also works full time. And somewhere in there, amongst all of life's activities such as cleaning, cooking, doctor appointments, etc. - we also coach our child's sports teams (myself soccer, my husband football), I am on the Board Of Directors for our HOA, as well as the social committee, I volunteer with my child's class by doing random computer projects from home at night, I have been attempting to get a side portrait photography business up and running and we do plenty of other social and recreational activities. Yes, I am not a fan of the pace at times and yes, sometimes things at our house go undone, but we are living life and making a difference.

Don't get me wrong - we are far from the house that has their schedules so incredibly booked that you forget what day you are on. We actually have a great balance where each child can only do one after school activity at a time, we all sit at the dinner table every night with no TV (okay, 90% of the time that happens), we do our best to limit TV time to about five hours a week and Sunday night is family night with everyone at home. It wasn't always like this, we had to grow in this area. Start by doing yourself, your family and your community a favor - sit down for two weeks and log everything that you do. Yes, everything! From the time that you get up to the time you go to bed. How much time do you spend eating, working, sleeping, exercising, watching TV, time spent on the computer or on a gaming system, showering, shopping - EVERYTHING. Then look at what you can cut back on and see how much time you have left and how much more rewarding it is to get involved in things that make a difference. Such as spending more one on one time with your kids or volunteering in the community or working out for your health. People do have time; I just don't think we realize how much is wasted.

But what really gets me, is the people that stir and then when asked to volunteer, they act as if you are crazy to ask in the first place (which may be true, but we'll ignore that for the time being). We had a gentleman at our yearly community meeting a few years back. That year, we had to increase the community fees because they had not done soin over four years. He talked a big game about the budget and what we were missing and doing wrong - even admitted that he did accounting or some sort of finance type job for a living - but when I approached him about helping out an hour or two a month to get our finances in an even better position, he literally scoffed at me. At that point, I no longer listened to what he had to say and to this day, he has yet to put in any time on the budget committee. Seriously - if you have a skill that can help out your community in some way, then volunteer - as much as people don't want to admit, every little bit counts.