Love Lies Waiting by Pauline DeForest

Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!

Source: Lewis Carroll

What Is It We Are All So Busy Doing?

There is a kind of horrible truth in the quote above, as if we have gone through the looking glass and brought into that line as truth. Now we can’t ecape back out of that mirror world. We run instead, faster and faster to stay in one place.

But there is an escape, we just need to find the will power to pass back through the looking glass, back into a world with out a Mad Hatter.

How do you do that?

Step out of the stream of time!

To do that you need to stop and think about all the activities that go on in your life and divide them into three groups.

Things You Must Do or Have to Do

Work could be one of those, unless of course you do not have to or your work is something you love to do. If you commute to work, like I do, then that is part of your must do’s.

Put in here everything that is essential to your Levitra survival in a physical body.

Things You are Expected to Do

Housework, cooking, entertaining the in-laws all fit here. Things you do because you are
expected to by others or by yourself.

Things You Love to Do

Here you will be surprise to find, many of the things that get pushed aside to fit in all the activities in the two other buckets.

I recommend you start a page for each one of these and over the next two or three weeks jot down things as they occur to you.

The idea eventually is to carve out time devoted exclusively to the things you love to do.

I’ll give you an example.

I step out of time this Sunday Afternoon. I recognized that I used up all my days off running errands doing chores, and all the things are expected of me by others and myself.

So last night I decided I would carve out an afternoon that would be mine to do with as I pleased. First off I did a few of those things expected of me, but I did them quickly and willingly. Then I was out of the house and away with a whole long afternoon before me.

One of the things I love to do is go and get a coffee and then sit outside (if the weather allows) sip the coffee, make notes, people watch and simply enjoy the moment.

I arrived at the local Starbucks around three to be greeted by the longest line up I have ever seen at a Starbucks. But it didn’t matter to me because I was on my own free time. I wasn’t rushing anywhere, didn’t have an agenda, wasn’t press to do something in a limited time frame, which turned out to be wonderful because I got into a conversation with a chap ahead of me who happened to be caressing two very interesting books. So as we moved forward in the line I managed to find out about one of the books and even got a book recommendation.

This wouldn’t have happened if I was rushing, I might not have waiting in line to begin with.. or if I did I would just fidget impatiently until I could put in my order.

You can cobble together your free time in two ways.

1. Stop resisting the things in the second bucket. This allows you to preform those tasks faster and more efficiently…after all you have some free time waiting.

2. You can negotiate either with yourself or your spouse or family… a reduction or removal of those things that are expected of you. Instead of inviting the in-laws over every week try for every other week or once a month, thus free up a chunk of time.

Get started by creating the lists.

Then take a detached view of them with out all the mixed emotions they might otherwise evoke, and make some choices based on what the list reveals to you. With a little work you just might be able to create a whole day of “MY FREE TIME” to spend however you want.

When you do that, I promise you will find your self outside of time looking in and wondering… what it is we are all so busy doing.

Nick

PS The Things You Love To Do list will serve another purpose…stay tuned.

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Technorati Tags: Human Interest, Inspirational Article., Lewis Carroll, Pauline DeForest, personal development, Starbucks Corporation, Time, time management

Tags: Human Interest, Inspirational Article., Lewis Carroll, Pauline DeForest, personal development, Starbucks Corporation, Time, time management