In my last blog entry I asked you to write down answers to 10 questions and keep your answers private. Bring those out and keep them beside you for now.
Take out a sheet of paper and write down your priorities in life. Your list may look something like this:
- my children
- my husband
- work
- the house
- my friends
- biking
- gardening
Whatever your uppermost priorities are write them down in a list like the one above.
Now, keeping in mind that every day is 24 hours long and there are 7 days in a week, calculate how much time you spend in a week on each priority in your list. That means that out of a total of 168 hours you spend maybe 56 hours sleeping, but how are you spending the rest of your time?
The important thing with this exercise is to be very honest with yourself. You may say that your husband is a priority in your life but you may only spend 5 hours a week with him in total. That's okay. This exercise is to help you see how you are actually spending your time and whether you are living according to your priorities.
Once you have calculated how you are actually spending your time take another look at your answers to the 10 questions. Spend some time reading through your answers, paying close attention to your responses to each question.
The ten questions are designed to help you know yourself better. It is very common that as we get caught up in the details of life that we forget what is really important to us and what isn't.
After rereading your answers to the ten questions do you need to revise your list of priorities? Or do you need to change the amount of time you are spending on things not on your priority list?
When I first did this exercise I had a very young son at home and my marriage was falling apart. I thought I had almost no time for my own hobbies or activities and I found that I was spending a huge amount of my time looking after my son, my husband, my dad, but spending no time on myself. This exercise helped me realize why I felt so exhausted all the time.
It also helped me realize that my list of priorities were okay, but the time I was spending outside of that list was not. I reorganized my time and spent more time on myself and came to terms with my marriage.
This exercise is so valuable because you not only see how you are spending your time, but you start to see other people's priorities as well. For example, even though my marriage wasn't good, I still considered it a high priority and I spent a lot of time on it. My husband, however, did not. He actively avoided spending time with me and I realized that for him our marriage was not a priority.
Behaviour is everything and anyone around you who is perceptive will see the discrepancies between what you say and what you do.
If someone spends the majority of their time working but claims that their wife and children mean everything to them, something doesn't ring true.
One of the important steps to finding yourself is aligning what you say with what you do.
Over the next week change the amount of time you spend on your priorities and the other details that fill up your life. This will take more than a week for most of you and may even involve some pretty big life changes, but finding yourself requires effort, time and a commitment to yourself.
Small consistent steps will bring you back to yourself.
I will be back next week to discuss old patterns and how they can creep back into your life.
Peace and love,
Jacqueline
