Living the lives we do, we sometimes don’t appreciate what we have. We all want to do so much, for ourselves, families friends, and the two factors that we believe conspire against us is Time and Money. I say believe because it is an easy get out. We don’t have the money to do what we want, we’re too busy working to get the money which means we don’t have enough time to have or do what we want.
There is a way of getting more done, and thus getting what we want – SLOW DOWN. We all know we can only do one thing at a time, but we still strive to get more that one thing done at a time.
By slowing down, it doesn’t mean you go slowly, it that when we are more self-aware of what we are doing we slow down on the things that matter most in our lives. I recently read a blog (see below) by Micheal Neill who put it perfectly. For more on Micheal Neill goto www.geniuscatalyst.com.
When we are in a hurry, we tend to get sloppy and things go undone or worse still, half-done. Our best intentions often go out the window and our values shift, expediency and ‘getting stuff done’ leapfrogging their way up the list above such old-fashioned priorities as treating people with respect, doing things right the first time and even enjoying the process.
Stress is a hurrier’s constant companion, as there’s never enough time and there’s always too much to do with it. As time gets short, tempers get shorter, and a frayed nerve often snaps in the face of a loved one.
While there are any number of ‘outside-in’ approaches to getting more done with less stress, effective time management evolves naturally out of our understanding of the 6th secret:
No matter what seems to be going on in our lives, we don’t to do anything. That’s insane”, one client told me when I first introduced this idea. “I don’t know about you, but I have to go to work in the morning.”
“Do you?” I responded. “What would happen if you didn’t?”
“If I didn’t go to work, then I’d lose my job!”
Ignoring the likely fallacy of that statement, I continued.
“So you choose to go to work because you want to keep your job?”
“Fair enough,” he said, though he didn’t look happy about it. “But I have to eat! If I don’t eat, I’ll die!”
“OK,” I replied. “So you choose to eat because you want to live?”
The reality is, every single thing you do or don’t do is a choice. And while personally I’m a big fan of making choices that lead to things like money and food, nowadays in most cultures you don’t even have to do that to survive. If you never got up from where you’re sitting right now, someone would eventually come to check on you, if only to find out what that extraordinary smell was.
And at that point, if you continued to choose not to move or speak or feed yourself, some other people, (usually dressed in white with friendly smiles and a lot of upper body strength) would come by and scoop you up, give you new clothes to wear and a lovely padded room to live in. They would even feed you more than enough to stay alive, though admittedly the quality of that life would be somewhat less than what you are probably accustomed to.
So the corollary to our secret (”you don’t have to do anything”) is this:
Everything that you do (or don’t do) is a choice
Given that, why would anyone ever choose to do anything they didn’t want to do?
Two reasons:
1. Because they think it’s necessary to do that thing in order to get or maintain something that they want
2. In order to live up to an idea or ideal of how they think they’re supposed to be in the world
In other words, we do what we do (and don’t do what we don’t do) either because we want to, because we think it is a pre-requisite towards getting something else that we want (i.e. because we “have” to), or because we think it will make us into the kind of person we want to be (i.e. because we “should”).
The question ‘why?’ gets a bad name in some coaching circles because when it’s asked about anything which happened in the past, the answer is invariably a story filled with confabulations that could usefully be edited down to the phrase “because it seemed like a good idea at the time”.
But when we ask the question in the present about what we are planning for the future, we quickly get an insight into our motivation.
If we hear a lot of ‘need to’, ‘have to’ and ‘musts’, we may have fallen into the trap of thinking there’s something we have to do to survive. If there are lots of justifications and rationalizations, chances are we’re doing something because we think it will help us to reinforce our self-image or live into the kind of person we ’should’ be. But when the answer is some variation on ‘because I want to’, chances are that we are following our inner wisdom.
Here’s a simple chart to make the difference clearer:
| Want to |
Have to |
Should |
| Inner Guidance |
Means to an End |
Self Image |
| Choice |
Prerequisite |
The ‘Right’ Thing |
| Inspiration |
Desperation |
Rationalization |
The more quickly you can recognize the difference, the easier it will be to recognize it as a choice and if you want to, choose something different.
