If You Are Ready For Your Life To Change

“If you really are ready for your life to change you have to make space for something new.” ( quote from a Hallmark Christmas movie)

That quote from a recent Hallmark Christmas Movie has really got me to thinking these last few weeks about all of the things I’ve been involved in these last few years and how I’ve been allocating my time to each of those things. I tend to be a visual person so I decided to create a mental pie chart where each different slice of the pie represents the different things I’ve been spending my time on, with each slice of that pie sized proportionally to the total amount of time I’ve spent the last few years on each thing. That let me see how I’ve allocated my time the last few years. Because this pie is generated from time already spent it is obviously a completely filled up pie.

Going through that mental exercise allows you to see that if you want space for something new in your life you are going to have to either remove one or more of those slices currently in your pie, or you are going to have to shave a little bit off the size of several existing slices. And until you are willing to do that, you’ve left no room for anything new to come into your life at all.

Figuring out which pieces of pie to remove or which to shave a bit off of can be stressful, so I came up with some questions that helped in that evaluation:

*Which things we’ve spent time on have gotten us closer to accomplishing our big life goals and which things have been detracting us from accomplishing those goals?

*Which of those things we spent time on will bring us long-term happiness and which are bringing misery?

*Which slices that we look at make us proud and which make us cringe?

*Are our slices for things that improve our physical health, our mental health, and our spiritual health as big as they need to be?

*Are our slices for quality time with loved ones and family as big as they ought to be? Do they reflect the importance of those relationships in our lives?

*Is our slice for serving others the appropriate percentage of the total pie? Is it too little, or is it too big? Once upon a time I would have argued that this particular slice could never be too big, but I am realizing that isn’t true because we only have one pie to fill so too much time here means not enough time somewhere else that matters just as much.

Create your own pie chart and see where you are spending your time. Determine if there are things you are involved in that you ought to modify or let go of in order to create space for something new. Because none of should want our lives to stay the same…there is no personal growth when there isn’t change…so be excited for your life to change for the better and figure out how you can make space to allow for something new!

~Amy Rees Anderson (author of the book “What Awesome Looks Like: How To Excel in Business & Life” )

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