I was invited to join a brilliant group coaching session this week, and among many other questions we were asked, we were invited to consider what we always make time for?

I have really enjoyed reflecting on this question this week.

You see my immediate answer to that question was my morning 10 minute ‘daily calm’ meditation. Don’t get me wrong, I have far from perfected the skill of meditation. In fact, I very often have a distracted, busy mind when I wake up in the morning. However, what it does give me is an opportunity each morning to breathe, and to reflect, and what I find myself doing is actually asking myself another very important question …

What’s important?!

You see I would invite everyone to do this each morning, and perhaps regularly throughout the day, as it provides a real opportunity to bring back perspective into our lives.

All too often people rush from one task to another and get all consumed in that ‘to do list’ that will simply never be ‘done.’

So, what is important? This will clearly be different for everyone, but it is a valuable question that will help you to clarify what your values are in life and can in turn really help to guide you towards your true purpose in life.

These days I am getting real clarity on what’s important… You see I think so many people get lost in continually striving to reach some unattainable goal, proving their worth, and trying to fit into society’s expectations of what they ‘should’ be doing. It seems to me that achievement seems to be held above all, and that creates so much pressure and the I don’t deserve .x… until I have done/ finished/ completed…y……. first mentality.

All that does is leave you depleted from a long list of to do’s, and in fact what it does is to push what is really important further down that ‘to do’ list.

It makes me sad that it often takes a significant life event for people to finally wake up to what’s important in life… Suddenly we realise we should have spent more time with that loved one before they got ill, or we should have prioritised our health before we were suddenly forced to face it when we became sick!!!

Why is it that we must wait for that wakeup call before we realise what’s important and what we should be making time for daily.

I listened to a brilliant talk once about the 3 glass balls analogy and is really stuck with me. You see we are all juggling lots of balls daily, but some of those balls are very fragile and it is important that we don’t drop them! To me that is my family, my health, and engaging in things that give real purpose to my life….

I have also written previously about a brilliant paragraph from Jay Shetty’s ‘Think like a monk’ book. In it he shares the regrets most people have in the last moments of their life… but I think it can really help to be reminded of it often. He says,

‘Among the most common regrets dying people express are:

I wish I’d expressed my love to the people I care about

I wish I hadn’t worked so much

I wish I’d taken more pleasure in life

I wish I’d done more for other people.’

So, I’d love to invite you to take a moment to ask yourself today….

‘What are you going to make time for?’

Please do get in touch if you’d like! I’d love to know!

Harriet x