When you want to improve your skill/knowledge/competency in something you make time to do this. You work on it, you commit to it and generally you get results.
The question is how do you apply this to you? I mean you as a human, you who is showing up in the world on a daily basis, you who is living you life and doing life each and every day?
When I had my breakdown at 29, I knew that shit had to change. Mainly me and the way I was choosing to live my life. I use the word choosing very consciously because the way my life was, it was a choice. Now at the time I didn’t really see it that way. I hadn’t yet taken responsibility for me and my life and the way it was playing out.
So when I did, things really started to change. There were bitter pills to swallow on stuff I really didn’t like about me, yet in facing it I really then was able to see me in a new light and really see the things I wanted to change in my life so I could work on my life and make it the best and more importantly make it the way I choose it to be.
For me it comes down to three things…
Today we are in a medium of constant and never ending information. How to this, become that, 30 days to this, 20k to that. What does it all mean though if you haven’t really worked on the one thing that counts most…..YOU.
I love analogies and I love how we tick as humans and for me the thing I find myself saying most is that when we build houses we build them on a solid foundation, yet as humans we are born as a blank canvas craving to be coloured in and for the first few years of our life we are coloured by everyone around us. Are we grow and we develop we realise that we now hold the paintbrush and the colouring is all down to us. Sometimes we have times when it’s black and challenging, others we have bright yellow and we feel and live in an amazing way. Yet it’s all of the colours that make a wonderful painting right?
Over to YOU…
What about your foundation? Is it as solid as it could be? Is it the one you created or have you stayed with the one that was created for you? One sure way of finding out is to take a look at your life and ask you about these three things in your life:
The first thing – Happiness.
How happy am I?
Happiness is one of the few things on this planet we live on that is free, it’s also very underrated. It’s the thing that we can sometimes only see as a future event as our life right now is not perfect and when it is we will be happy.
Really? For me happiness is a now and non negotiable thing. It’s the thing that keeps me going, it’s the thing I can own because I choose to. If you can’t be happy with who you are now, then you need to get to the route of why that is and work it out. Being happy when something happens is no way to live.
When I was in corporate I was pretty unhappy most of the time. I outwardly gave the impression that all was amazing and in some ways it was, yet I really disliked what I did. I told myself that I had to keep doing it because I had worked so hard to get to where I was and it want until it folded in on me and I HAD to make a change that I did.
We can get sucked into the bubble, sucked in to the rat race, sucked in to the ground hog day of doing what we think we should. Yet time is priceless even for Bill Gates, no one can buy time.
When you are considering life and You, really get clear on what it is that will create happiness now, not when XYZ happens. We all have a time here to do our thing and being happy as much as you can leads to a much longer life. Which brings us nicely on to the next thing…
Time – Is the second thing
How much Time do you have?
Well what a how long is a piece of string question eh? Who knows! It could be weeks, months years even. It could also be minutes. No one can guarantee tomorrow so if you are living as I described before in the rat sucked groundhog day then maybe you are reading this for a reason and it’s time for you to make that change and do it today?
We all have limits and we all get to a point where we can literally take no more. The problem with allowing you to get to that point is that you spend so much more time getting to where you finally decide you want to go.
There is a saying that Presidents and Prime Ministers run countries is the same amount of hours you have everyday so why is your life not quite the way you would like it to be? Whilst I have used this as an example, as a Brit I can’t say that our PM is using her time as well as she could right now…..she rolls eyes! Anyway back to the subject. Getting accountable on what changes you want to make and creating goals based on time is a sure way to make things change. It’s a sure way to really track what is going on. It also gives you the opportunity to reflect and be real. Us humans can be our own worst enemy and not acknowledge what we have really achieved, so having accountability helps that massively and also does get more done.
I learned from the amazing Mel Robbins that when we apply the five second rule and switch the brain into direct mode, going for it and I know from personal experience removing distractions means so much more gets done. FYI as I write this, my phone is downstairs, I have no Social tabs open on my MAC and I am alone so I can concentrate. Did you know that if you get interrupted from a task you are doing it takes 40 minutes for your brain to re engage, 40 minutes! Now take that into consideration with how you do each day and see if you are actually hindering you more than helping you?
Applying all of these factors means that I am focused and will get this whole article written in much less time than if there were all of these distractions. Also as I have a set plan of what I will do with this, I have planned my time to get it in all of the places I choose to in that time.
The problem is when we start to beat ourselves up for not achieving what we wanted, the most important question to ask is did you really give it your best shot? Step back and be honest about how you do life and you will get your own answer to this.
Which brings me onto the final thing…Love
What do you Love?
We are built to love as humans in my view and we all can do this, some more than others. Can we really be in love with ourself and our life and that not be egotistical? HELL YES! Being conditioned by the corporate world at a young age I was pretty ego driven. I gave a crap about the cars and the clothes and the money, I held it in high esteem yet when I lost pretty much all of it and only when this happened did I realise that being in love with me and my life was far more important that all of the other things.
You see Happiness, Time and Love can not be brought, they can not be replaced with anything else and they cannot give you anything you didn’t give them. You can create them and you can evolve them and they will bring you to your truest self and your most profound path. I believe we all have a purpose in this world and we all have our own unique thing to bring and add to this life.
So look at your life and consider all I have said. What will it encourage you to do? What will change? Maybe nothing, maybe everything, the first step is to step back and ask, and MAKE time. You see there I didn’t say find time. I personally immensely dislike that expression, I have yet to meet anyone who can find it, I know oodles of people who make it!
Next consider….
How happy am I with my relationships, with my work, with my health? Let’s be frank for a minute this is your whole life we are talking about? Is it going to be one that tells an amazing story or one that’s pretty mediocre because you couldn’t really be bothered?
The greatest part of all of this is that you get to decide, you are the one in control and you can do anything, promise.
I made a video all about this for you to go a bit deeper, you can check it out here.
So go on make time, get real and be YOU, it’s all you every came here to be.
Big Smiles
Clare TM
