29 Nov Finding time for me
How many times have you said “I need some time to myself, but there just isn’t time” or, “I need more hours in the day” or “I’d love to spend an hour in the bath without interruption?”?
What’s happened? Why haven’t you taken that time? It’s easy, it seems so selfish to take time out for ‘me’. Life is busy and fast paced, there is no doubt about that. People and families are time poor and everyone is in a hurry. We need to shift our focus.
If we spend the day telling ourselves we are too busy and have no time, then I guarantee that is exactly what will happen. However, if we change your thinking and focus our minds on the here and now, there is every chance we can find more time and achieve more in the day. It could relieve stress too
Taking some time out for ourselves gives us a chance to reenergise, to reorder our thoughts, to get things into perspective. Below are some ideas that can help get that time you need.
- Decide and believe that you have the right to have some time to yourself each and every day. Stop feeling guilty for taking time out for yourself. When you are tired and stressed then it’s hard to give your best to anything.
- Decide how you are best going to spend this me time. Everyone has a different idea of how to spend this time. It’s as individual as you are. If you had an extra fifteen minutes, half a day, a whole day, to yourself, how would you spend it?
- Write these ideas on a piece of paper and keep them near you for when you begin to schedule in these times into your diary.
- Write a list of all the things that are wasting your time. Checking e mails, running to the supermarket every day, answering those personal calls in work time. How much time does each of these things take in your day? You could have that time back and take time for yourself.
- Ask for help. Not everything you do has to be done by you. Ask someone around you to help
- Learn to say “no”. Some of us find this hard to do. We always want to help others, but we can be resentful if we say yes to something we really do not want to do.
- Commit to taking some time each day for you and do something (or nothing) different that focuses on you.
Stop wishing you had more time and start making “me time” a ritual.