We live in a time where our personal and work lives are often not our own. We revolve ourselves around the never-ending need to fill our days with tasks, our months with appointments, and our years with accomplishments.
In a time of instant gratification, the busy-ness of life is something we create to make us feel good, important, and even relevant.
They say the grass is always greener on the other side and in keeping busy, it’s like we are doing everything we can to get to greener pastures. To become a better parent, daughter, son, employee, employer, and the list goes on.
And yet there’s an element of “keeping up with the Joneses” involved in this way of thinking that is rooted in fear.
ie. “If I don’t remain relevant I will soon be forgotten.”
When we’re operating our lives out of fear, the opposite of what we want usually happens. With our desire to be relevant, we get caught up in tasks or meetings that don’t accomplish much. Our energy is spent and we become tired. We might not be able to put the effort into our relationships or work the way we would like to. We might not have the time to relax and enjoy an evening because there’s too much on our mind.
What we need is a safe space that allows us to be irrelevant for a time, to discover what it is we want to accomplish. We need a safe space to think, to try something new, and to fail. We need to start prioritizing time for ourselves, because when we do, we start to recognize what’s most important in life. Having a safe space allows us to relax, have some fun, and work smarter, not harder.
It’s time to do things in order of importance, like booking your calendar based on priorities and deadlines but on a grander scale. Creating a safe space requires effort, since it’s rewiring our brain to think in a new way, but the results are worth it.
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