Early this morning I woke myself up, knowing I had an appointment to get to. While showering (my favorite spot for reflection), I thought back over my last dream before waking…
My client had shown up and was circling my office looking for me. My gardener pointed him to the front door. My husband was home and I heard their voices when he opened the door. I was frantically getting ready and a part of me was chiding myself for having overslept.
Thankfully, it was just a dream, but also a wakeup call for me. Was it caused because I was overtired and wanted to sleep more? Was it a foretelling that my client would call and reschedule with me? (It could also be a connection with recently seeing the movie, Alice-in-Wonderland or maybe reading Sunday’s L.A. Times article, “Breaking Into Dreams” about the dream thriller film, Inception. Or maybe it was my recent comments added to the Women Entrepreneurs group on Linkedin around this question, “How do you balance work and life?”).
But more than likely it’s my own unresolved concerns about how I manage my time.
It’s a personal value of mine to find joy in all I’m doing and not wait till I have time off or less things scheduled on a certain day to enjoy life. Even so, it was refreshing not to have a busy weekend for a change, a rarity for my husband and I, since we spend much of our time with our families. There will be busier days than others and I recognize it’s more about how I am being with those events at the time that is the real “time effectiveness” component.
Life balance and time management are completely within our individual control. For example, you don’t have to take on that extra project or work somewhere that expects you to put in 12 hour days – it’s your choice. But if you do have to do those things on occasion, it’s about finding grace with it and working as fluidly with it as you can. Not resisting it or plodding painfully through it. And as my dream response reminds me, “leave the chiding aside.” Some helpful tips:
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