Wishcasting Wednesday: What Do You Wish to Make Time For?

It’s Wishcasting Wednesday. There is power in wishing – putting your wishes out there sets mighty forces into action…

What Do You Wish to Make Time For?

I wish to make time for the things that will help me help more people, serve my purpose and expand my business. Right now, day to day stuff keeps getting in the way, and I wish to change that and make those projects, inspirations and ideas more of a priority so that I can reach more people and help them live with purpose, passion and joy and express their gifts and talents in their unique and beautiful way.

Get involved on Jamie’s blog, or leave a comment here. As you wish for yourself, I wish for you also.

Love

Donna.x

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How Do You Waste Hours Of Your Life?

Last week I did the ‘reading deprivation’ exercise from The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. The idea is that the time you spend reading can be filled with creative pursuits…or just give you the space to hear your inner voice over and above the chatter we put into our lives. Because I am a bit of a book worm, I had put this exercise off for about 2 months, then last week I decided to go for it. I had a busy week planned and thought I maybe wouldn’t miss having my nose stuck in a book as much.

WRONG! I have missed it very much. The exercise actually showed me how much I love to read, and how relaxing I find it. Instead of reading, I have found the time to clear some clutter, pick up a project I’d forgotten about from months ago, give myself a pedicure, watch a couple of movies and some crap late night tv, spent more time piddling about on the internet (NOT the purpose of the exercise), clear out the clutter in my inbox, re-arrange my office and spend more time with friends.

So from that perspective, the exercise has been good… But. The time I have missed reading the most is at night before I go to sleep. This is not (for me) a massively creative time that I could fill with fun, creative projects…it’s just ‘wind-down’ time. I tried writing, meditating, watching tv and messing about on the computer…but none of these are conducive to a good night’s kip. Writing wakes my brain up instead of relaxing it down for sleep, tv (assuming you can find a thing you want to watch) does the same, meditating…well, I do fall asleep – but I’d rather meditate earlier and stay awake for it, and as for messing about on the computer…

Well, that does waste hours of your life. But I don’t find it even slightly relaxing. Instead, I find there’s a kind of manic, obsessive quality to spending hours on the computer messing about. You go from one social media platform to the next, one video to the next, one site to the next, one game to the next. Before you know it, several hours have disappeared from your life and you are exhausted, your eyes dry and grainy, your brain overloaded with information and (in my case) you now really want to read for a bit just to calm the mind down so you can get a good night’s sleep.

So although I can’t say I have enjoyed the reading deprivation, it has been an interesting and useful exercise – for example, I now notice even more than before the time-stealing qualities of tv and internet…and I also realised even more strongly that these activities are NOT good for me. Instead of freeing up time for creative pursuits and hearing my inner voice, I have had less of both than I normally do because I’ve been watching the lobotomy box (TV) and wasting time on the internet more than I usually do.

Interesting huh? How about for you? What activities do you find you lose hours doing…and not in a good ‘oh that was fun’ way, but in a ‘what the hell was I doing for 9 hours’ way? Where does your time get spent? How much of it is spent on a virtual farm instead of outside in nature? How much vicariously in the lives of others and not in your own life? In an average week, how many hours are wasted by activities that don’t enhance your life?

If you spent those hours on something you loved doing, how much would that enhance your life? If you spent those hours having fun, how much more fun would you have in your life? If you spent those hours working on improving your life, moving into a life of purpose, passion and joy, how much progress could you make between now and Christmas?

And if you want some help, support and coaching to help you move into that life of purpose, passion and joy, don’t forget the September special offer – 20% off multiple coaching sessions booked in September. For more details, click here.

Love

Donna.x

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Leisure by W H Davies

Something to think about this week…

W. H. Davies

Leisure

WHAT is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?—

No time to stand beneath the boughs,
And stare as long as sheep and cows:

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass:

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night:

No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance:

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began?

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

Love

Donna.x

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What Limits Do I Wish To Set

Wishcasting Wednesday is here again.

What Limits Do I Wish To Set

Today’s wish is really easy: I wish to set limits on the time I spend on the computer (the irony that I am writing this at 20 to 11 at night is not lost on me!); I wish to set limits on the amount of time I spend trying to escape from facebook and twitter! I wish to set limits on the time I spend thinking about work when I’m not working (the joys of having your own business!); I wish to set limits on the time I spend procrastinating working and get cracking on the fabulous projects I have in the pipeline! All of the limits are on my time – to give me more structure, which is something I always resist as I see myself as more of a free living spirit! But that structure, I know, would give me more freedom. I wish to set limits that allow me the freedom to live.

Get involved on Jamie’s blog, or leave a comment here. As you wish for yourself, I wish for you also.

Love

Donna.x

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Emptying Every Spare Minute

Dear reader, I hope your week is going exactly to plan. Mine is not. I had a lovely day out to visit my friend, came home intending to check my e-mail, write a blog, relax and instead discovered that the carpet in my office needed to come up. Some new flooring is going in on Saturday, and the concrete underneath the old carpet is wet. I thought it was just a little corner, it was actually three quarters of the room! So my lovely plan to relax and chill out turned into a mad few hours moving furniture around to get the carpet up and moving boxes and boxes and boxes of stuff out to the garage to leave as much of the floor exposed as possible so it will dry.

Big, deep sigh. It also means that my plans for tomorrow (in a relaxed way catch up with admin, marketing and writing tasks) have been replaced by ‘box everything else to get it out of there’. In the meantime, my office is a building site. So in true ‘beach’ style, I will be trimming other tasks to make way for this to happen, not frantically trying to pack everything in and collapsing exhausted at the end. Which reminded me of this mini article that I thought you might enjoy.

- Emptying Every Spare Minute -

I was thinking last week about what stresses me out, and noticed that about 99% of the problem was my insistence on filling every spare moment with ‘something to do’. Got 15 minutes before a client? I’ll just go and write my blog. 10 minutes to spare? A quick tidy up. 5 minutes to spare? Check my e-mails. 1 minute to spare? Read half a sentence of this book…

No wonder I get stressed! And no wonder I often run late and work late. I have no time to myself to just chill, to reset, to plan. I cannot proceed from task to task in a nice relaxed manner because I have ‘mustbedoingsomething-itis’. Is this busy-holia making me more productive? More efficient? More at ease? Nope. Instead I am wild-eyed and fraught.

I have a client call in 15 minutes – if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to use that 15 minutes to do nothing.

- Something to Play With -

My articles are usually longer, so take the time you would have taken and just do nothing for a couple more minutes. You can pretend to be reading if it makes you feel better. And all this week, notice if you are ‘filling time’ and experiment with emptying it instead. Want to share your thoughts on this article? Leave me a comment below.

Love

Donna.x

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