If you’re wondering how to find the right career, I recommend simplifying your life. Why? When you clear space to make room for what is important, the right things will come along to fill that space. For you to truly create the life and the business that you want, it’s vital that you make this space in your life. You have to be able to say no to others to allow time to say yes to yourself.
This may be a difficult thing for you to do. Most people have spent their lives taking care of everyone else’s needs and are not used to taking care of their own. It’s easier to set aside your needs when friends, family or colleagues need you. You wind up being too tired to address your needs and keep promising you’ll do it tomorrow. Tomorrow never quite seems to come though. How to find the right career is possible when you can take care of the things that matter most.
You may find yourself saying yes to anything that sounds good regardless of whether or not it will benefit what is most important to you in your life. You may find that you don’t make time for what’s important because you’re so caught up in the details and day-to-day lifestyle of just living. It’s hard to make space for what’s important when you get lost in the details and taking care of people in your life and just all the responsibilities that you have.
The key is to establish your priorities and make space for them to grow. Recognize that when you see a gerbil spinning furiously on a wheel, it may look like it’s working hard but it isn’t actually getting anywhere. Keep a notebook handy to keep track of how your time is spent on an average day. This will help you pinpoint where you are spinning your wheels and how you can find areas to free up to allow room for growth through the transition process
- How many hours sleep do you get on a typical night?
- How many minutes, on average, do you spend on your morning activities?
- How much time, on average, do you spend at work?
- How much time, on average, do you spend on family activities?
What activities do you handle after work? How long do they take (on average)? List them item-by-item on a separate page and for each, how many minutes were involved. Some examples of activities include: driving children to activities, grocery shopping, exercising, watching television, attending events or socializing.
Try to account for 24 hours in this sample day. Now, go through your list and prioritize these items by level of importance. Food and sleep are essential to stay healthy; work is important to maintain your current lifestyle. By looking at each activity in relation to the others, you should be able to identify a few major activities that take a significant amount of time yet contribute little or nothing to the future you envision for yourself. Your role or responsibility in these projects is not set in stone. If you suddenly learned you would be spending the next year on a tropical island, someone else would take over in your place and carry on these activities for you.
Success is about removing energy drains (also called tolerations) from life so that you’re free to focus on what you enjoy. List three roles, activities, projects or responsibilities that could be eliminated at the moment. By removing energy drains that take away from what is most important, you allow space for the manifestation of what you truly want to come forward.
Now look at your list and try to identify and eliminate or reduce the time spent on a few of the less important tasks that aren’t big items in your life but that still consume precious time. Consider delegating or hiring people to do some tasks to free up your time and energy. For example, you could shop online instead of going to the mall. You could hire a cleaning service or landscape service.
Is your subconscious saying if you don’t do it, it won’t get done? If you live alone, it won’t matter if certain tasks aren’t done with the same devotion to duty as you have in the past. If you live with others, now is the time to invite them to learn the joys of responsibility so that you can face the important tasks ahead of you. Feel the freedom that comes from eliminating draining activities and expending your energy on what means most to you.