You Can Stop Wondering Where All Your Time Goes
The #1 place my clients tell me they feel confused? Hands down - where their time goes.
Where the hell DOES our time go? After all - we’ve had lots of practice with managing our time. We’ve been doing it most of our lives!
So why is managing our time so hard to keep track of?
It’s ridiculous, right?
Do you ever say, “There’s not enough time to get my shit done?”
Or, “I have no idea where it all goes”?
Join the club! By the time clients get to me, they have NO IDEA why they have no time.
Some of them shrug and say, “I’m just a disorganized person.” Or “I just have sooo much to take care of.”
Some tell themselves it’s because they’re overwhelmed & stressed out.
They like to insert excuses & blame themselves because they’re lazy, or distracted.
The clients who really want to make a change in their lives are willing to get OUT of confusion.
But truly there are many others who are NOT willing to do it. They say they want change, but they’re not willing to do the work.
When I work with someone, I always get to the bottom of where their time goes. So, if you’re here to make a real change in your life - if you’re one of those people willing to do the work -
Let’s go!
Here’s what I’ve learned: there 4 general areas where our time goes.
Here they are:
- We get caught up in other people’ bullshit, taking care of stuff that isn’t really ours to deal with.
- We want the conditions to be perfect before we start. Which they never will be, by the way. So we never get going.
- We procrastinate because we think the thing will be too hard or uncomfortable. And we don’t want to feel uncomfortable.
- We waste time and tell ourselves it’s relaxation. And though we actually NEED relaxation, we have no idea how to do it effectively.
It sounds pretty simple, right?
But in each area, there’s confusion happening. The person chooses to remain in confusion about what’s happening underneath the surface.
Here’s an example:
One of my clients spends a LOT of time caught up in other people’s bullshit. This means she takes on junk that is not her responsibility.
Where does the confusion come in? Well, she creates lots of reasons & excuses why doing this is necessary!
When I bring it to her attention and challenge it, she’ll say things like, “Oh no….I have to help her! Without my help, she’ll be screwed.”
Or something like, “I’m his mom! I have to bring him his tuba! He can’t practice without it!”
She has excuse after excuse - to her they are reasons, but she perpetuates her exhaustion & stuckness by clinging to them.
They don’t move her forward. They don’t serve her!
Have you ever engaged in a situation like this?
Honestly, I’d be surprised if you haven’t! It’s highly common among both women and men.
It may not be your biggest pattern, but at some point, almost all of us get pulled into other people’s bullshit.
Things that are urgent to someone else but not important to us.
In every scenario like this, we are bullshitting ourselves.
We’ve come to believe that we need to engage the other people’s bullshit in order to feel important or valued.
This is where the confusion comes in. We get confused about the boundaries. Confused about what actually helps people. Confused about our role & responsibility.
Because this is a complicated subject, with emotions, expectations, judgments, and relationships, it’s easy to remain in confusion about how this behavior eats up our time!
When I ask my clients how much time & energy taking care of other people’s bullshit takes up, they often look at me with despair. “OMG. HOURS!” they’ll tell me.
But when I push them to clarify, “Is it important to YOU?” they hem and haw. They don’t want to admit that it’s NOT important to them.
‘It’s more complicated than that’, they tell me.
Of course, it is! Emotions & relationships are complicated.
And add in that our minds make it more complicated!
Our minds like to keep us confused about boundaries.
Consider this: our role of always stepping in to help someone get out of a jam actually keeps that person stuck too!
It keeps them from taking responsibility or getting out of their own confusion!
But our brains don’t like that new thought because it’s hard & uncomfortable. It requires us to design some new stories for our brain to chew on.
It makes us do hard things like saying “no” and having a boundary.
So we put up with the bullshit rather than doing the hard work to move past it.
Choose your hard, my friend. Both these things are hard. One choice has ease on the other side of it.
With support, my clients overcome their confusion around this particular topic. But it’s not easy!
If you’re ready to make a change to move out of confusion - and take back more time in your life - then start examining where you swoop in too often.
Let someone have a natural consequence. It’s ok if they’re not happy about it.
You don’t have to light yourself on fire to keep someone warm.
When my clients overcome this particular confusion - by learning specific scripts that help them move out of this role yet still be themselves - they find clarity & much, much more time & energy in their day.
Are you really tired of this pattern? Can you see how it’s keeping you from reaching your own goals? Please reach out!
I have a group program and a private program to help you with exactly this!
Work WIth Jen
You deserve to meet YOUR goal! You deserve clarity & focus. And it’s really hard to do it alone.
Learn how to get there without feeling confusion, overwhelm, and resentment.
You can do this!
Xo, Jen
