Let’s Talk Time, Shall We?
We are constantly hearing how little of it there is. How precious it is, and oh, how fleeting it is. Well, let’s start managing it, and making the most of it by filling it up with conscious thoughts, actions, and feelings.
Ask yourself if there are only 24 hours in a day and you spend, on average 8 of those hours sleeping, what would you like to be doing for the other 16? What or who brings you joy? What would make you jump out of bed in the morning, with hopeful anticipation, excited to tackle?
Those are good questions to ask yourself because those answers are exactly how you should restructure your day with those core things at the center.
We all remember the old food chain pyramid that we were taught in school….it was somewhere around first grade when we first saw it. There was a huge portion of meat on the plate and then it was 20% fruit and veggies, 20% carbs, but the main part right, like the meat took up the whole platter for the most part right at about 60%.
About 5 or 6 years later, in middle school, they adjusted it. Then adjusted it once more around high school. It was interesting that the general guidelines would change and every organization and household was supposed to fall in line with the chart to the letter or else.
It completely fed you exactly how much of one thing you should be eating for every meal. Of course, we now know that this was just a guide and we also know that different body types require different foods in order to process our food and function properly.
This is also true of society, which tries to feed you a one size fits all model of how you should spend your time. We know that what one person needs may not be the same as another. Some people are extroverts and in need of face-to-face interaction when they work, others who may be introverts, independent workers without the need of a lot of social stimulation.
It is perfectly okay to have different thoughts, wants, personalities and skills. If we know that we all have different needs, desires and drives, then why should we all have to prescribe to the generalized notion that you have to spend the majority of your time working to pursue someone else’s dreams and goals? Additionally, when you do get off of work you then take what is the leftover of your emotional and physical capacity to pursue your happiness and spend time with those who matter most? That sucks…and is totally backwards.
Why do we have to be spoon-fed how many hours we have to go work a job that we don’t even like and then come home feeling tired, & uninspired? Furthermore, you then take the crappy energy you have had all day and bring it home to the people you supposedly care about most in your life?
When you feel like this, you’ve nothing to give that is creative and meaningful to those people whom you would actually love to spend a lot of “intentional time.” Not just being in the same room, but actually looking those people in the eye and engaging. It means so much to have a decent conversation without things in the background or without having an electronic in your hand, your computer on, and doing work from earlier on in the day. Or scrolling the internet escaping to anywhere but where the people are right in front of you.
So many of us out of necessity, or what we think is a necessity, get on this hamster wheel and believe that we have to operate in a certain way. We think we have to give up so much of our core time in order to provide for ourselves and our families. It’s so easy to fall into this trap where things are already planned out and you just step up and give the time away. The time that you can’t take back. The time that can be spent more willfully your way. You just need a plan!
Decide how you would like to spend your days, then develop a well-thought-out plan that will allow you to do just that.
This may mean changing careers, going back to school, or even downsizing your home, lifestyle, and pay options. But if more freedom to do what you want is the result of this, it may not be a bad idea. You could even start your own business. Now the hours will definitely be triple that of if you were working for someone else, but at least you could control your hours, your message, your product, your day-to-day.
Time. How you spend it is a conscious choice.
What happens to you in life may not be of your design but how you react to it can 100% change your life. It can affect how you decide to spend the moments of your life.
Children often follow our cues. They definitely pick up what we’re putting down and they understand actions way more than they understand lectures right? So if you are never without your phone, constantly check emails on your computer, scroll the internet or watch your favorite show while you are in the presence of your loved ones and call it being there, it’s not “intentional time”. And they are learning to be background noise with the leftover time you have before you go to sleep and jump back on the hamster wheel.
It is most definitely easier to say than to do with most things in life however one thing we can say from experience is that deciding to prioritize what is important to us and what makes us happy was key. Our family, creative expression, world-schooling, social and cultural interaction, and travel were the foundation of our vision board. By writing it down on the board and scheduling your day, your thoughts, your energy around those things or people that matter the most to you was life-changing and allowed each day to be filled with purpose.
Allow yourself to take your skillset that you already have and turn it into money so it will free you up to have the time and freedom to spend it how you like with whom you like where you like and when you like.
For us, travel is a necessity. Exploring new places, faces, cultures, and traditions is a monumental way of bringing us together as a family. It exposes our children to different circumstances and situations, allowing them to view the world in a much broader sense. We feel that our sons have a natural curiosity and acceptance of much more due to their experiences living in different settings and being a part of larger communities around the world. Their horizons are vast and possibilities endless.
We enjoy seeing this amazing world with them as Global schooling is a chance to experience all that life has to offer in the now. Not putting off or on hold traveling, exploring, learning, and growing at a young age allows us all to learn more about ourselves and the world around us.
We completely understand that this way of life and vacation lifestyle is not for everyone. However for those who covet spending holiday time with loved ones, friends, or even alone while pushing boundaries of self-discovery, facing change with a gleeful grin, and travel then we offer this site and our insight as a gift that we feel we must pay forward.
Join us as we chat about travel, homeschool, vacation tips, leaving our 9-5 behind, and learning how to monetarily maintain a vacation lifestyle according to your individual needs and desires.
