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May 12, 2008, 2:08 pm
Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new. Albert Einstein,
physicist |
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Life CoachingBuilding Focus, Energy & Courage - to Make a Better Life for You |
The Time of Your Life
(The Key to Change
is Time)
Your life is a sea
of moments. Time is the sea in which you swim. How you spend your time and how you live your life are inextricably linked. In fact, they are the same thing. Many of us are trapped in lives we don't like. We are so busy just trying to keep up with the demands of everyday living that we have no time nor energy left to work on changing our situation. If that sounds familiar, then this article is for you. |
 Living in a Sea of Time |
I see this pattern almost every day in my coaching practice. Somehow life's pressures snuck up and consumed all our available time. And now we're on a never-ending treadmill and can't slow it down and can't get off. This places us in a passive role; unable to enjoy our lives and unable to change them for the better.
I help my clients out of their time traps in ways they may have spent decades failing to do. It all starts with a change in perspective in the client's mind.
1. You are in Charge. Accept that YOU are responsible for the way you spend every second of your waking time. Sure - some seconds are more difficult to reallocate than others, but they are all yours to command. Your job, your marriage, the way you parent, how you relax, your favourite hobbies - they are all - theoretically - up for change. You could become a Tibetan monk. I know you probably don't want to, but it's essential to accept that it is possible.
2. Change Means Change. Recognise that change means exactly that - things have to CHANGE! So you can't carry on doing what you've always done and yet make miraculous changes in your life. Change can be scary - but it's essential, and once you see it working in your life - you'll be hooked.
3. Change means Loss. This surprises many clients. Change requires loss. There is a saying; "you can have anything you want - but you can't have everything you want". To make change - some things have to go. Another way to think about this is wrapped up in another saying: "you can't make an omelet without cracking eggs".
4. Losing Useful Things is Good. It is unusual to find things you currently do, which serve no purpose. In general - you do things to serve a real need. So you can't stop doing it, right? And since everything you do serves a need - you can't stop doing anything!
Feels that way - but it's wrong.
If you can stop doing a useful thing, and use the time freed up to do a more useful thing - then your life will get better, and the more you do that - the better it will get. My clients are often strongly resistant to stopping anything because there will be consequences. Which leads me to the last perspective shift...
5. The World Hates Change. You live and work in a world which will resist your efforts to make changes. Your partner will resist, your children will resist, your boss and your parents and your friends will resist. The TV will resist. YOU will resist! There is a very strong force at work which acts to bounce you right back into the life you've grown to hate. So making permanent change means focused effort over time. You have to toughen up.
If you can make all of those perspective changes, then you are far better placed to set about changing the way you live.
Try those ideas on for size in your own life.
If you think that they cannot work in your situation, because your life is uniquely difficult, then I can guarantee that you're wrong, and that this belief is single-handedly - keeping you in a life which is keeping you away from your potential.
That's where coaching can help you to see new possibilities by sweeping away (in a pleasant and entirely positive way!) your mistaken certainties.
Even if you accept the perspective shift - that change is possible and you are responsible for making it happen - there's that little matter of the world resisting your efforts - forcing you back down into quiet desperation.
Coaching can help there too. I have a large number of strategies to help you make progress in the face of resistance.
Change is certainly possible - I see it every day. But it is NOT easy. Which is why most of us don't even seriously consider it.
Life is a one-shot deal, so I encourage you to make those changes soon.