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According to
a recent Time/CNN poll, close to 65 percent of us spend much of our
so-called leisure time doing things we'd rather not do. That
is a staggering statistic, especially when you consider the
incredible number of options that are available to us today.
I think there
are two reasons a lot of us aren't doing the things we really want
to do. First of all, many of us don't know what those things
are.
When I think
back to my hectic lifestyle, I have to admit that one of the reasons
I allowed my life to continue to be so complicated is that I hadn't
slowed down enough in recent years to figure out what I wanted to
do, not only in terms of my work life, but in terms of a lot of my
personal choices.
I knew the
basic things: I knew my husband, and family, and special
friends were important. I knew that for me, spending time in
nature was important. I knew maintaining my health with
exercise and an appropriate diet were important.
But there
were other areas, such as my life's work and many social and leisure
activities, I just sort of drifted along with because it was easier
than taking the time to come up with alternatives.
For any
number of reasons we lose sight of what we want to do. Perhaps
we weren't encouraged as children to make our own decisions.
Or maybe we
have easygoing, compliant personalities and have gone along with
what other people have wanted to do, or have wanted us to do, for so
long that we've forgotten what's important to us.
Or perhaps we
never allowed ourselves to believe that doing the things we enjoy is
even a possibility for us.
If you've
spent a lot of years not knowing what you really want to do, either
in terms of your career or in terms of your personal, social, civic,
or family life, it can seem like an impossible task to stop what
you've been doing--or at least slow down for a bit--and figure it
out. It often seems easier to keep on doing things we don't
want to do.
Secondly,
what we want to do can often be difficult to do.
For example,
if your deep, dark, hidden desire is to write the great American
novel, it would seemingly require a major disruption in your life to
arrange things so you could even get started on it. Often it's
easier to continue doing things you almost want to do, or don't mind
doing.
So our lives
get frittered away by a social engagement here, a luncheon there, an
evening of television here, or the habit of working evenings or
weekends or both on projects that we don't have all that much
interest in. And the things we really want to do, in our heart
of hearts, get put on the back burner.
One of the
things simplifying your life will do is free up time for you to
figure out what really matters to you, and then enable you to
arrange your time so you can do it. |
