Carol Briney Work From Home

 Are you truly busy or is busyness a way of avoiding your life.  As someone who has coached and spoken to hundreds of people about having a Simplified and Balanced life I have noticed two major categories into which most people place their lives.

 The first category is being busy.  We are all busy in this fast-paced overly informed world.  The trick is to choose, really choose what you want to be busy with.   How do you want to spend the 24 hours you have in each day?

I do believe that we all have a choice on how we spend our lives.  However most people spend more time planning their one-week vacation than they spend on deciding what they do want in their one and only life. 

 The second category is busyness.  Most of you who have been reading my column for years know that I believe that being “too busy” is a choice that we make.  People call me all of the time and speak to me about being “too busy” they tell me I just do not understand their life.  What I do know is we all have choices.  We can all chose what we really want to do and what does not seem to fit for us. 

 I had a women client in the past.  She told me that she had heard me speak at the National Bi-Polar Association Convention and thought that I might be able to help her. She told me that although she was not Bi-Polar, she thought I was speaking just to her that day.  She came to me explaining that she literally could not move inside of her home because it was so full of stuff but her challenge was that she was so busy she did not have time to clean the house or purge any of the unnecessary items and this was making her crazy.  At our first session together I had her tell me a little about how she spent her day.  After listening to her talk nonstop for about 15 minutes about how much she had to do and how none of it could be changed I asked her if she really wanted things to change? 

 To make the changes we need to learn proper planning of our hours.  We MUST take our life off of autopilot.  We need to commit time to doing the right things for us and not just the next thing that comes along.  Most of all we need to learn to spend our time effectively not just efficiently.  To spend your life effectively you must decide what are your values?  What is it that you hold dear? Once you decide what your personal values are it is time to consciously decide what is right for you to be doing.  The next step is to go about your day proactively choosing what the best activities are to keep your goals and values in alignment. 

 As you take these steps, they can be scary and uncomfortable at first.  After all if you want what you have never had, you must do what you have never done.  However, as you take the steps they will become more and more comfortable and soon, like my client, you too will be living an effective life that makes you happy and content.

 Until next time, I wish you the true riches of life, peace, happiness, and time to enjoy it all.