The
demands of modern life are never-ending and it often feels like a constant
juggling of work, appointments, events, chores, grocery shop etc. In the midst
of all this, we are beeping, tweeting, clicking and messaging. The list is
virtually endless - I find myself drained and exhausted by the end of most
weeks and just to do it all again on Monday. I typically run out of steam on
Sunday, even the simplest tasks seems to be an effort or a chore – I felt I was
in a crash and burn cycle, something had to give.
I
sat in on a woman’s ministry talk for working mothers on how we can manage the
different demands or roles of work, home and life in general. I was left
feeling quite perplexed as to why I am struggling so much. On the surface,
I seem to be doing everything right, from food preparation in advance to the delegation. The main premises of the talk was
to think about your family values or priorities, asking yourself what is
important to my family and use our time to reflect this.
This
reminded me of Stephen Covey’s 7 habits of highly effective people principle of
knowing your big rocks - your personal vision for your life. We should use time
according to this. However, this often gets lost in translation. For example,
how we use our time doesn’t necessarily reflect our values and this may turn
into regret at a later date.
The
most important value for me is my faith; at the start of the year, I made a quest to prioritize the pursuit
of my spiritual life. Stephen Covey calls this, ‘beginning with the end in
mind'. If I look back on the highlights of my year so far it will include many
fruitful conversations and lots of memories being built from doing things such
as serving the community to attending seminars.
I share the key highlights of these via Instagram.
Being
intentional has enabled me to attend to the things that were important to me
and my family. So, the talk brought home a pressing issue that I have been
struggling with for quite some time. I began by having a conversation with my
daughter to break down the barriers that I unknowingly created – going back to
my values – I value my relationship with my daughter more than my desire to be
right.
In short, keeping my priorities manageable and focused
meant I had time to reflect on the ad hoc issues that crop up. It’s more than
my diligence in my faith but consciously knowing my values allows me to
co-exist or cope better in the midst of the pressures and busyness of life. A
big life hack flowing from this is planning for the unexpected issues, as they
always seem to be there in life! It’s about creating “margin” so we aren’t
extremely overloaded when the challenges come.
I
want to look back on my life and see real tangible benefits, rather than a
bunch of meaningless stuff that dominated my time- the world is full of
distractions. This can be very overwhelming in itself if you don't guard or
protect your time. It's very easy to get sucked into what everyone else is
doing rather what you should or like to be doing.
I close this by asking you, what are your
values or priorities in life? And does the way you use your time reflect this?
You may find yourself frittering away the most precious resource that we all
have - Time is the only commodity that puts us all on an even level playing
field. I am writing very much from experience. I am full of regrets on just how
wasteful I have been with the way I used my time in my younger days. I suspect
I would have been a lot further ahead in life - had I asked myself this simple,
yet thought-provoking question.
A
note to my younger self would read something like:
Time
should be used in a purposeful manner that inspires one to do better each day
and live each day to its fullest. My priority should be pursuing knowledge to
learn and discover more things that enrich my life rather mindless tasks that
failed to leave a long-lasting impact. Live life like an adventure with stories
to tell, build in time for self-care and shape a lifetime of memories.
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