What Does Your Day Really Look Like?
Do you have a healthy balance of work and play, commitment and self-care? Are you setting aside the time to work on your plans and dreams or are you just going with the flow with no real commitment?
Before I retired, I had a daily routine Monday through Friday beginning at 4 A.M. And since I got up so early, my day was usually over by 8:00 P.M. when I began my bedtime routine. The weekends were for catching up on chores I didn’t get to during the week, spending time with friends, or much needed time alone decompressing from all the hub-bub in the work environment.
Since retiring I have finally been able to do whatever I want, whenever I want, and have pretty much done so with of course the exception of the pandemic.
I’ve had no set schedule and can count on one hand how many times I’ve actually set an alarm!
I’ve allowed my body to fall into its own natural sleep/wake cycle and it has thanked me by following the natural order of daylight. I’ve always been connected to nature and the sun and the moon are no exception. Without an alarm, I naturally wake up when the sun comes up. What a glorious feeling it is to participate in this natural process. And by finally getting the rest my body requires, I have settled into a nice rhythm with my current nightly routine in which I have no trouble falling asleep or staying asleep most nights.
I’ve spent days living moment by moment, day by day, week by week, month by month and time just keeps marching on. I thought this part of retirement would be great; however, what I’ve learned is sixteen months have passed since I retired and while I have enjoyed living in the moment in some ways, there is always this nagging feeling of time slipping away. I had plans and dreams yet to fulfill and had been doing very little to fulfill them. I would tinker with them when I felt like it, and I had to face the fact that most days I just didn’t feel like it, or always had an excuse to put them on the back burner.
I started asking myself what that meant. Had my dreams changed? When the answer to that question was a resounding No! I knew I needed to look deeper.
I knew for certain my plans and dreams were not going to just magically fulfill themselves.
In March I had signed up for Beth’s Magic 3 one-on-one Support and we had our first session the beginning of April. My focus was to make some of these lifelong dreams a reality. With Beth’s suggestion of a time allocation chart, I began to see how much time I was truly wasting every single day. I was never going to teach these workshops or yoga or reiki or finish that book I’d been working on if I wasn’t actively doing anything to reach that final goal.
Within days of creating then tweaking a daily schedule, I began to see progress. Now granted over the years I have been developing things here and there, but never completing most of it, so I had already done a lot of the leg work; however, within just a few weeks I am now seeing the finish line of all of these projects! I will be practice-teaching a workshop in the last week of May and my book of poetry and lyrics is with the proofreader!
While I thought living my life day to day with no real schedule was what I wanted, I’ve discovered that it led me to having no real purpose and I need purpose! We all do. I’ve also learned that when I get really close to getting to where I want to be or doing something I want to do, I pull back, let myself get distracted and never complete those things. In other words, I was self-sabotaging my own wants and desires! Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?! At first, I thought so, but then I realized I’ve always been a very organized and structured sort of person and in order to keep me on track I need lists and require some accountability to complete the things I truly want to do.
Accountability can look different to each one of us.
It can be in self-parenting, working 1:1 with someone, putting your plans and dreams out there for other people to see or any combination of these things. With the tools I now have in place even when life has me pulled in other directions like a weeping willow on a blustery day, which was the case for three days last week, I was able to be flexible without stress and get back to what I want to accomplish in no time.
Ask yourself this –What does my day really look like? Those plans and dreams aren’t going to come true on their own. It’s up to you to put in some effort, and you are so worth it!