Making time for YOU!

My clients often tell me that one of the added benefits of coaching they hadn’t considered before they started, is that their coaching session can often be the only time in a busy week that they feel able to step back and truly focus 100% on themselves. Hand on heart, how often could you say that you allow yourself to do that?

A lot of the time we get so busy ‘doing’ that we forget about ‘being’.

This was a revelation of sorts for me some years back. I had something fantastically inspiring to aim for, I had the focus and drive to work really hard and I was making good progress. And yet, I wound up feeling ill, stressed and fairly disillusioned. If this was what having stretching goals was about, I wasn’t sure I wanted them after all!

Talking through how I felt with a friend one day, I was brought up short when she said “oh yes, you’ve become a human doing instead of a human being” . That comment really resonated with me and I thought about it all the way home.

As I reflected on the previous few months I could think of few times when I wasn’t ‘doing’ and even fewer times when I’d consciously decided to take time out and ‘be’.

So how much of your time do you spend ‘doing’ and how much do you spend ‘being’? If you had to divide a circle up with how much time you give over to each, what would it look like? How big would your ‘being’ slice be?

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With our busy lives and time-poor society it can seem impossible to take more time for ourselves, but at what cost do you choose not to? My decision those few years back was to invest more time in myself and I’m certain that I’m much more productive as a result. I get more done in my ‘doing’ time now than I ever did when I was ‘doing’ every waking second of the day. Plus, my ultimate decision was that it couldn’t all be about the doing and the destination or I’d miss the journey altogether.

So what time could you make for yourself to ‘be’? To listen to your thoughts and feel your feelings. When could you next set aside an hour or two, a whole day or even more than that to relax and recharge? Can you set aside fifteen minutes a day to sit and have a cup of tea or coffee, relax and be you. How much better would you feel if you did?

Could you do with some regular time set aside to focus 100% on you and on making your life how you want it? If so, what are you prepared to commit to?

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Learn to live your life more simply. We all have around 80,000 thoughts a day, but we don’t have to listen to or believe them all. Which are the thoughts that give you a nice feeling? Which are the thoughts that you don’t like? Have you considered that you are only one thought away from a lovely feeling and a more peaceful life?

Have you got so lost in the process of life that you have forgotten how to be you? Would you like to have a conversation to discuss this further? Get in touch today.

Maggie Currie