Make Room For Yourself, Just By Choosing To

As a coach, I really enjoy working with people to understand and tap into the power of choice. And one of the prime areas in which many people feel a pervasive lack of choice is their schedule. If you, like me, tend to  1) overstuff your schedule, and 2) often use the words “have to” and “need to” when talking about your day, you’ll be happy to find out that making room for yourself can actually be easier than you’d think.

It’s become way too common to cram our schedule down to the minute, with little to no wiggle room and to double and triple book ourselves (In the cult of busy-ness, I suppose some people might even be proud of having so much to do and places to be). Anyway, I was talking with a client recently about creating boundaries and scheduling. With her permission, I’m sharing her insights. She began by describing how she really needed to make time for herself and about how she could possibly schedule some personal reading time. And then she went to a more powerful insight. Most musical instruments have to have hollow space in order to create beautiful sounds. The reed can’t be played unless it is hollowed out. In the same way, she realized how much she was craving open, unstructured spaces of time in which to unfurl. She could read, go for a bike ride, or just sit and let her mind be blank.

But it's a challenge, she said, because I still have so much else to do every day for family and for my career. And it’s true. There is so much experience of obligation and duty to our employer and colleagues, our friends and family, and even to ourselves. We talk about these activities using words like “have to,” “need to,” and “should.” As in, I’d love to meet you for coffee, but I need to go to a committee meeting. In these situations, it’s the need that dictates our actions.

Using language of having to and needing to is grounded in fear of loss or guilt. It might seem a little dramatic at first, especially because it is such a pervasive way to think and be. But let’s consider that at the end of every one of these sentences is the ominous and usually unspoken second half, which starts with “otherwise..”  As in, “I need to do this thing, otherwise I might not get promoted this year.” This fear of loss is in turn connected to a fear of, ultimately, not being good enough.

Instead, we can replace “need to” and “have to,” with something more powerful and perhaps even more true ~  “I choose to.” It’s a simple tweak, and the results can be instantly positive. Even in undesirable and stressful situations. For example,  “I have to have a difficult conversation with my spouse” gives the power to the difficulty of the situation, so we’re bracing for impact. But with “I’m choosing to have a difficult conversation with my spouse,” I’m shifting the power to myself and to our relationship.

So if you’re feeling like your schedule is rather more in control of you than you of it, it’s completely understandable. And you can start to regain control by hollowing out the reed a little, and by shifting to choice.