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Welcome ladies- I’m Sharri Harmel, career and life coach as well a founder of The Real You.
In a few weeks I’ll be talking about our time in one of the sessions in the Recapture Your Joie de Vivre Course, but I also wanted to share a bit of this conversation with you today.
How many times a day or a week do you say to someone, I just don’t have enough time!
How often do you say to yourself that all the projects and dreams you have would be happening, if you just had more time?
What’s so interesting about time is that for day-to-day tasks, we often feel we don’t have enough time. And yet, when it comes to our dreams, we tend to think we have an infinite amount of time.
Well, as shocking as it sounds- everyone has 24 hours every day or 168 hours every week. Today, I want to talk about how the amount of time you have isn’t the problem, it’s how you use those hours, minutes and seconds.
I recently heard this story on a podcast, and I want to share it with you.
A man got up early every day to pick a flower and place it on his wife’s grave. One day his grandson went with him. The grandson told his grandfather how much he admired him for making the time to do that every day. The grandfather responded “I just wish I had picked a flower and given it to your grandma every day when she was alive. She would have loved that.”
A very touching story, that also makes us think about what we will regret. Let me ask you…. If nothing changes in your life, and time passes, in 10, 20 or 30 years, what will you regret not doing?
Could it be:
1. Spending too much time with the wrong people and too little time with the right people?
This is a question of how you spend your time, which we will talk about in just a minute.
2. Not speaking up and saying what you need to say?
This applies to whether speaking up and saying what you need to say at work or to your partner or family OR even more important, what are you not saying to yourself.
Or could it be that you’ll regret…
3. Not having listened to your intuition.
I have learned that your intuition is brilliant. Your intuition knows if you need to be brave and do something that will shake up your life. It’s your logical brain that talks you out of it and negates your intuition.
A silly but poignant story about intuition.
A few weeks ago, I shared that I signed up for the dating program “It’s Just Lunch” because my intuition told me to stop whining about not having a significant partner in my life and get going.
Well, I had my first zoom date.
The guy on the screen thoroughly enjoyed talking about himself, so I had plenty of time for my mind to wander.
First, my intuition said to me that I think I had met that guy before because he looks very familiar.
Ummmm…then a few more minutes went by and my intuition now said, “this guy looks exactly like your cousin Keith when he was younger.” I almost laughed out loud on the call, because THAT idea sounded so ridiculous.
Well, 75 minutes into the call, I asked him where he was living and then shared the crazy idea that my father’s family all comes from that area….
AND we quickly realized we are cousins!
I had a huge laugh…. what are the chances…. but then I was completely amazed by the brilliance of my intuition.
I hope my online dating experience makes you laugh, but the point of the story is that your intuitive self is much more aware, enlightened and brilliant than you might think, so please do make a commitment to listen to it.
This podcast is about your time- and I now want to invite you to be open to looking at your time differently.
First Step to doing that….
Make a time chart of an entire week. You’ve got 168 hours. Break this into every single hour of every day. Even better, break it down into 15- or 30-minute time slots.
You can do this as an excel doc or paper and pencil.
Once you’ve made the chart, you’ll have spaces to add what you are doing at the various times.
For one week…. keep track of everything you are doing and for how long. When you sleep, work, what you are working on, time with children doing what, time with partner, exercise, grooming, cleaning…. all of it.
Now this idea comes from Laura Vanderkam, who many years ago published the book 168 hours: You have more time than you think.
In her research for the book, Laura discovered a few important items that I’ll share with you…
First people sleep much more than they thought and worked much less. Laura also discovered that there wasn’t a huge difference in quality time spent with children between the stay-at-home mothers and those that worked outside the home. The biggest difference between those two groups were the stay-at-home mothers had cleaner homes…. or spent more time cleaning their homes.
But why do I want you to do this activity?
First, I want you to see where you currently spend your time
And second, I want you to analyze your time, and see what changes you need to make to have the life you want.
Now I’ve done this exercise with several of my clients….
Here are some of the take-aways from the women who completed this exercise….
1. Outsource tasks that are easily solvable and someone else’s occupation.
This is super important if you are interested in starting a business.
Yes, as an entrepreneur you’ll have to wear all hats, not just the CEO hat, but what tasks can go off your time chart. What can you hire someone else to do?
I’m not a social media expert and never will be because I don’t like it and I have no design skills, so I hired two gals who know the world of social media, are good at it, and have the time to keep up with the daily changes.
2. Learn to say no.
Are you saying yes to helping others out, which is actually to the detriment of your own needs and happiness? Some people just love to ask others to do things they just don’t want to do- which is different from my first example where you are hiring someone. Are you saying yes when you should be saying no?
3. Schedule in time for your dreams
This is time for you and you alone. You need time to create, envision new ideas or ways of doing things, people to connect with….
Don’t wait….it will never ever be the perfect time for your dreams.
what will you regret not doing or trying- 10, 20 or 30 years from now?
You need uninterrupted, quiet time to be the CEO of your life. What kind of business do you want to start, does the business idea align with your values and life goals, is there a need in the market for your idea, what are options you haven’t even thought of yet? This CEO way of thinking requires quiet and time so put at least an hour or two into your schedule each week.
4. Spend time with the special people in your life.
Who are the people you give most of your time to? Is it those people most important to you? What often happens is that people want solid relationships with those they love, and yet they spend the least amount of time with them.
Maybe as a woman (because you are natural nurturers) you give away your time too easily. I want you to learn to guard your time, cherish your time.
These were the top takeaways from a few women I have coached. Yours might be different but I hope that gets you started thinking about your time in a new way.
Let me leave you with one last idea that I’ll be sharing with my ladies in the Recapture Your Joie de Vivre course.
This week pretend your time is a jar full of coins worth a total of 168 dollars, equivalent to the number of hours you have each week.
Imagine handing over coins and dollars to people and tasks that don’t really matter to you.
It sort of makes you panic right?
Now, imagine that you lay out so many dimes/quarters and dollars to the tasks and people that really do matter to you, and if you have any coins left in the jar, that is the only time available for the people and tasks that don’t really matter to you.
Feels completely different doesn’t it?
Well, you and you alone are in control of your time. Change is always possible regardless of our age. I just don’t want you to have any regrets.
Time isn’t unlimited, even though we try to convince ourselves it is.
Therefore, it’s your turn to ask yourself, in ten years, what will I regret not doing. What about twenty or thirty years?
In the next few months, I’ll be announcing my new course “Design Your Next Chapter Business.” This mastermind course will be perfect for any of you who are ready to ditch corporate and start a business. More information will be coming but if you are interested, please message me on LinkedIn, FB or send me an email. I’d love to hear from you.
As always, thank you for listening and being on this journey with me. If you liked this podcast, please subscribe, and write me a review. Reviews do matter!
Bye for now….
À bientôt!
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