The Bay Area is a demanding place to live. The culture around you says “do more”, “achieve more”, “be better than the next guy”, “be the parent who gets to say ‘my kid was accepted into Harvard’”. It’s all about success and competition to achieve success. There are financial demands, high expectations to meet (at work/school/home) and we all put pressure on ourselves to meet them, whether they’re self-imposed or employer-perceived. How proactive are you in your own life? Do you intentionally plan to do things, and then do them? Or do you find that something often comes up and derails your plans? Of course, being proactive in your life means you have to have the TIME to be proactive. Right? Not enough hours in the day? Sound familiar?
What would happen if you committed to clearing your weekend calendar for a month? Okay, so you have soccer games for the kids on Saturdays and there’s baseball practice too. But what if you found yourself with time on your hands to do whatever you wanted with it? What would you REALLY do? Is the first thing that comes to mind home improvements? Finally tackling that project that’s been staring you in the face for a year? That’s being REACTIVE. It’s allowing something else to dictate how you spend your time. It’s not a choice, it’s an obligation. Don’t get me wrong, yes, you need to set aside time to get that done. But, what if, when you cleared your calendar for that month, you scheduled the time to complete that tedious project? Then, maybe had time to go out to eat with the family? OR, have a spontaneous night out with friends? How would it feel to deliberately tackle that project, because you CHOSE to, rather than doing it because you HAD to? Put some good music on, make it fun. You might find that your pride and sense of accomplishment actually increase and you might actually come to enjoy the same task that you’ve been avoiding.
If you find yourself just trying to keep up, you’re not alone. A metaphor that I often use when people just don’t want to do it anymore is “Unplugging From The Matrix”. You have control over your own life, if you choose to exercise it. You don’t HAVE to do anything. How you budget your time is completely up to you. BUT, you can bet your bippie that you will enjoy the life you create when you give yourself the gift of more hours in a day. Push getting your car washed to tomorrow if it doesn’t HAVE to be done today. And then use that time to go get yourself a cup of coffee and read for an hour. Try it. Put your to do list on a calendared schedule, so you don’t feel the stress and anxiety of those tasks swirling in your head. Intentionality and perception are the keys to success. Exercise what you DO have control over, your life is what you make it and you can make it exactly what you want it to be.