Three Things To Reclaim Your Life

Do you remember when you were a kid? Everyone has had a different experience as a kid and I want to honor that. But I often think back to my own childhood and the decisions or things that stressed me out at the time. They were huuuuge in my mind at that age. However, what I wouldn’t give to have those stresses now instead of the adult ones we deal with today. I am thinking you can relate to this feeling as well? I miss the decisions like, what will I play at recess or when I can convince my parents to have my next playdate. I miss the stress of studying for a test over crunching numbers to make ends meet each month or dare I say….trying to navigate through a pandemic. Those were the good ‘ol days…

However, I am not willing to give up on being happy in my adult life, professionally and personally. I have tried many things time and time again to reclaim my happiness and my space for me in my life. Willpower alone wasn’t enough. I start with developing healthier habits, but then wham! Life hits me smack in the face and I tend to derail. The truth is, I didn’t want it to be so hard and so much work, but I didn’t know how to change that. So I did some research and I tried out a few things to that have helped me so much. Michael Hyatt is my ‘go to’ for these strategies and he is the king of leadership and automation. I knew that if I didn’t want to have to try so hard for everything, I needed to develop automated systems. And that is where Michael became my source for all things automated, productive, and efficient. Here are some things that I have implemented in my own life and leadership, and hopefully they will inspire you to start to look at ways to reclaim your life back.

1. Automate everything you can. I am talking personally and professionally. Think about how much energy it takes to make decisions, find things, or just to do the most common tasks. What if you took the decision making out of the equation and had someone or something else do it for you? According to Hyatt, when you reduce as much daily decision-making as possible, you free your mind and lower your stress levels. You also clear up brainpower for other, more important things (Hyatt, 2021). So for me, dinner and lunches caused me massive amounts of stress, time, and energy, and I looked for ways to automate that. I now do a meal subscription that delivers meals three times a week. It actually doesn’t cost any more than what I was spending on groceries before. I also invested in a housecleaner twice a month which has been amazing. Do this for yourself, I promise the benefits long outweigh the cost and you really can find cheaper options. I automate everything I can in my leadership as well. I have some email responses, project management tools like Asana, and system operating procedures with dashboards so that I can easily access info and it is all in one place. Simple things like having a shared family calendar or a control center in the house where all information goes is also super helpful to reclaim space and energy in your day. Little things like this can save you hours so think about where you can automate things.
2. Creative Problem Solving – Ok, this one is taken directly from Michael Hyatt and when I learned about it, it made so much sense to me. He talks about the times where we have the most breakthroughs in our lives. Usually it is when something is engrained in us as a habit or perhaps is automated. Think about it, have you ever had a breakthrough in the shower? Hyatt claims, that’s partly because the shower is already a self-automated environment. You don’t really think about the process of bathing—you just start going through the motions. Imagine what’s possible when you automate more decisions and actions through your day. You gain more headspace for creative thought and more freedom to think, contemplate problems and ideas, and make connections you hadn’t seen before (Hyatt, 2021). So for me, shower time has become so much more meaningful! When I went back to think about where decisions have really hit me, it has usually been when I am trying to sleep, out walking the dog, or in the shower. Write those thoughts down and come back to them later. Or better yet, make more space in your day to do some creative problem solving through mundane things and see what happens.
3. Schedule your Calendar into Bins and Stick To Those Time Frames – Your calendar can really help to control how you spend your life. Now I am not saying spend hours writing in your calendar each week. But I do mean zone out your calendar into containers with deadlines and time frames and stick to it. Set up each day so that you are spending tine in the professional bin, the personal bin, the creative problem solving bin, and the doing nothing bin. These are just examples of the zones I use in my daily calendar. You may want to create your own zones of how you spend your day. The only rule about those zones is that you stick to that focus only. Some call it batching, where you focus on one thing for a longer period of time to batch content. If you are intentional and protective of your time and space, you will start to reclaim your life back.

Don’t forget that this is your life. And just because you are not a kid anymore with that carefree spirit, you can still have a life that you want and not let it be so controlled by other peoples’ agendas or circumstances. Intentionally setting out to reclaim your life back matters and you can start by trying these three things. My day to day life isn’t perfect by any means but it is a whole lot better and I am a lot happier since I started doing these three things.

Here are your action steps to help you get started. Start by choosing to try one of these three things for a month. Stick to it and then add another tip when you are ready. I would love for you to share how it is all going in our private facebook group called Principals and Leadership!

I have also included a free guide on Reframing How You Show Up For Yourself to help you even further on your journey of reclaiming your life back. You, my friend, are only just getting started!

Hyatt, Michael. “3 Benefits of Self Automation.” 18 Oct. 2021.