Do you want to change the path you have been following, change your life purpose? Some of you might want to do this and one critical resource that's needed is time. Where does our time go? What use are we making of our time? Are we heading towards where we want to go in life? Time is a finite resource that we must manage but often we are so busy surviving and doing that we may be unable to see a different way of doing things to shift our course and align ourselves with a new destiny. Plan the use of your time.
Trapped By Daily Routine
Does this seem familiar to anyone? I shrug off restless sleep as the alarm buzzes insistently, the last dream a fading memory. I've overslept! My eyes half closed I shuffle about the house barely awake, grabbing clothes on my way to the bathroom. I trip over a pile of toys, and manage to stumble upright. After my quick shower and strong coffee I feel a bit better, ready to hit the morning. Children are somehow dressed and ready. Breakfast has been touch and go and the smell of slightly burnt toast lingers. It always seems like such a struggle getting the children to eat anything in the mornings, and I hurriedly stuff a bit of extra something into their lunch boxes. There has been no time for free flowing, livening, conversation. We're late! I shout. We are now all in "move mode". I make a last wild stab at brushing uncontrollable hair. Hoping nothing's been forgotten and grabbing bags we find ourselves in a crisp chilly morning and we shove ourselves into our misted up vehicle. Brrr! When did it get so cold? I glance quickly at the brightening sky and then see around me that leaves have already turned yellow and brown and started drifting from stark trees. Where did Summer go? No time to reflect! Concentrating on edging into traffic, driving, fiddling to get the right radio station playing, music crackles into sharpness. Who changed the radio station?! A few hurried sentences like did you remember to finish the homework we were discussing last night. You didn't?! We are just going to have to make an extra effort to catch up this afternoon! No time to think. No time to connect. Quick rushed goodbyes and it's on to work. The day's soon a blurred memory of dashing from meeting to meeting. Leaving work and going home becomes a repeat of the hurried morning. Evening rushes forward overtaking us with her speed and it's time to sleep, later than should be. Days repeat the deepening routine.
Dreams are for naught if there is no time to follow through. In times past I felt like there was just no room to make changes in my life to shift onto a new course. I didn't know how I was going to change, or even what change I wanted. I didn't see my new purpose. I was in the moment of day to day life. You may feel that being organised at this point in time and living the life you are leading gets you through each day. You know what you must do and you live your routine. You have no time to plan for an alternate reality and you might not see any way out. For example if I am someone who is living on the streets I barely survive from day to day. I wonder where my next meal might be coming from, perhaps where I will sleep. I have no money to set myself up in a space where I can change my reality. I have no time for this either as I am too busy surviving. That is an extreme example but is relevant for many people who want to be a productive part of society and we can all learn from this. It might have taken you a long time to get where you are now in a career where you are earning money to pay the bills. If you are a teacher or a lawyer or a police officer who now wants to start your own business, how do you go about making the change?
Planning For Our Future
The ideal situation is that sound planning to live out our future purpose should happen during childhood. Growing up is the time for laying solid foundations for our future. A good education, talent identification and development, solid interpersonal skills and the resultant sense of identity should be a gift to all children, whether their parents have the means to provide for this or not. I believe it is the only way to really lift our world out of poverty. But what of people who now find themselves searching for identity during adulthood or who want to try something radically different to find their true purpose, people like me and perhaps you? (See a bit of my previous story in blog article: Rediscovering me) Know that change happens slowly. It is always easier to build something new than to try go back and change something afterwards. Sometimes changing something might mean throwing everything away and starting from the beginning again. If you have lived your whole life working towards an Information Technology career, you have gone through a number of steps to get there. If your dream now changes and you wish to become a teacher you will need to obtain a new qualification, and you might need to continue working while you study for a totally new role. It can seem frustrating not being able to make the change quickly, like you are trapped by your current life and circumstance, but if you see the bigger picture of where you are headed this can really motivate. You need to take small steps at a time. Someone I used to work with many years ago left a promising Information Technology career to become a pastor of a now steadily growing congregation. Someone else I know has started a small business on the side while he still works for a large organisation. He initially wanted to resign and start his business in a step of blind faith, but he had a wife and family to consider too. It really depends on your own personal circumstance as to how you go about making any change to your life's direction. Find your identity, dream your dreams, plan for the future, work towards your goals. I wrote a blog article called Identity: be who I am that contains some of my thoughts around this topic.
Throwing It All Away To Find Yourself
Sometimes the unexpected happens. You are retrenched. You fundamentally change where you are in life, perhaps even who you are. If you are retrenched, forget about what you were promised in your old job, you need to step forward and may need to start at a lower point again. See setbacks as providing scope for new opportunities. I moved overseas and now have some space to dream new dreams and have started writing, something I always wanted to do but somehow never had the time for. I am also starting to volunteer to help people. I will see where this all leads. Destiny is not usually a known point on a map, we may only have a grasp of our future vision and a vague guide to get there and the journey is all important. Sometimes you have to lose yourself to find yourself, to make yourself anew. If you keep doing the same things you have always done, you will stay on the same path and get the same results. I wrote a bit about this in the blog article called Reflections we see of ourselves
In Conclusion
We often live busy lives and time is limited. We need to choose where we want to go and how we are going to get there. We need to make choices and take action. We need to forget about the past if that's been holding us back and embrace a new reality. If we decide to change yet keep holding on to what has been or what might have been we will not move forward. We only have finite time available to us. The activities we choose dictate the free time we have. If we want more free time we need to prioritise use of time and change what we do and decide what to spend our time on. I was told about this concept at a training course I attended. Just a simple concept but it really seemed quite fundamental to me. We know this, but do we practice it? What do you think? I'd love to hear from you.
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