You have enough time and space, you may not have the right priorities.

You have enough time and space, you may not have the right priorities.

What do you LOVE? Not who do you love,… what do you love?

Maybe you love walking your dog or baking a new cake, fixing your car, going to the gym, reading novels, gardening. What do you get caught up in, whenever you have a space in your schedule?

Or more importantly, what do you make space for in your life?

Do you make space in your life for your important people – kids, parents, lover?

Space and time are slippery concepts to most of us, we say and believe that we don’t have enough time or space for important activities. We dream of and wish for more time so we can …. whatever it is. Dreaming and wishing are great, but they don’t change much in our day to day hurry, scurry.

How much time did you spend in the past 48 hours watching social media or tv?

Seriously – do a quick audit of the past two days.

Did you actively, consciously make space to watch Facebook, Linkedin, Netflix, Disney, CNN, Twitter, or did it just sort of happening… out of habit…

If you have a dog, do you walk your dog every day? Do you consciously make space and time to take care of your dog? Is it an active choice?

Is this the same kind of choice as to when you choose to watch Netflix or scroll on social media?

We have time and space for the things we love, like our dogs, the garden, our friends, and our kids.

Maybe that sentence has you feeling uncomfortable. Do you make time and space for what is important in your life?

You have probably seen Bonnie Ware’s research into the top 5 regrets of the dying.
Here’s a reminder:

  • I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me
  • I wish I hadn’t worked so hard
  • I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings
  • I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends
  • I wish I had let myself be happier.

Time and space in your week are finite. You can not change them.

You can change your perception of them and your relationship with them though. You can choose how you use your time and space in every moment, of every day.

Writer, Steven Pressfield wrote in his book The War of Art, that “resistance is the enemy”, not time or space, but fear essentially.

The key tenant of Pressfield’s book is that every endeavour that is important will illicit resistance, even the goals that are clearly good for you or others will provoke internal resistance. You might hear yourself say things like ‘who do you think you are, who will listen to you’, perhaps you’ve started an exercise program and you hear internal chatter like ‘I wonder how long this will last? I give it a week, that’s about my average success’.

Pressfield says that we have a dream or an idea first and then its shadow – resistance arrives. Oprah Winfrey in talking with Pressfield noticed this as the yin and yang of life. Dreams and goals come with resistance; you don’t have one without the other.

The more important the dream, desire, or goal is to you, the more resistance arises because there is more fear. Fear of not being good enough, of not achieving, of feeling humiliated or embarrassed, of making the wrong choice.

To really move forward on something important to us we need to truly want it. The pain of not doing it is worse than doing it. Our desire for something different outweighs the fear, the risk is then worth taking.

Make the time and space you need to do what you love

We have time and space for the things that we love, for the activities that give our life meaning. We can enrich our lives and those of the people around us by activating our dreams and taking action on our goals.

Action trumps knowledge and plans. In fact, action delivers knowledge. It’s in taking action that we learn what the next step is, what empowerment feels like and that brings confidence and clarity, the energy to keep progressing forward towards our vision. In making the decision to act and then taking action we counter-resistance, the balance shifts.

So it’s really about energy and what we choose to give priority. You have time and space if you choose if you live your life consciously. The question is really, do you want to make the effort to create your best life or will you be satisfied with the status quo as you scroll and flick through whatever comes up next on your screen.

How are you going to actively choose your priorities, so you have the time and space for what really is most important to you?

Take a quick audit of your time, space, and effort. Ask yourself these three questions:

  • What do you really love in your life (remember what, not who)?
  • What did you actually spend your time, space, and energy on these past two days?
  • What support or structure do you need to put in place so that your energy and effort goes into what you love?

Make the time and space you need to do what you love, achieve your goals, and live your dreams. Bring resistance along for the ride. It’s natural, feel the resistance and lean into it. Choose to be an active agent in your life, you are not at the mercy of time and space, they are yours for the taking, depending on your priorities. There is always time and space for the things you love.

What could your life be if you activated your energy in service of what you love?

Sharee Johnson works as a Psychologist, Executive Coach, and Meditation Teacher. She has spent the past decade crafting a working life that she loves, working with the people she wants to work with, in health and education. Sharee learned not to live in fear when she took a harrowing cancer journey with her young fit husband, Tim. She believes life is too short to let resistance get the better of her and encourages everyone she works with to learn the skills of self-awareness and emotional intelligence, so we are more likely to notice what is really going on, … at least some of the time!

For more thoughts about resistance and purpose from Sharee CLICK HERE

Contact Sharee for more information…