Here we are again! The flexibility that summer may have brought is now a sweet (albeit sweltering) distant memory. A new fall semester, in all its academic and extra-curricular glory, is in full swing. And like clockwork in my office, out come the surge of harried, stress-laden statements like “we’ve just got so much going on” or “I don’t know how we’re gonna fit it all in, but we have to, so we’re going to.” Travelling soccer leagues, advanced calculus tutors, competitive dance troupes, college interview prep lessons are as far as the eye can see. And that’s just for the kids. Pair those with project deadlines, philanthropy events, international sales conferences, and board meetings and we officially have painfully saturated schedules.
There’s no getting around it; we live in a time and culture that, intentionally or not, seems to glorify whoever can hustle the hardest and accomplish the most, all the while encouraging lifestyles of comparison. Our “progress” is less often about strengthening the skills and experiences that we value the most and is more often fueled by a palpable fear of “falling behind” or, one step further, not advancing beyond the Joneses to our left and right.
As much as we all like to pretend that “we can have it all,” the sobering but ultimately liberating reality is that “we can’t.” No amount of money or code-cracking efficiency can negate the truth that we are finite beings engaging our lives in a finite number of waking hours in a given day.
So if “missing out” is not just a fear but an inevitability, here are a few questions that may help kickstart your confidence that what you are committing you and your family to will prove to be
worthwhile and not just a pathway to your exhaustion and dissatisfaction:
What is this commitment costing us? And not just financially.
For every “yes” we give, we are inherently saying “no” to or limiting our ability to invest in something else. So if I have found something worth dedicating hours of my week to, that’s (potentially) fantastic! To be fair to myself and my comprehensive hopes for my life, have I consciously evaluated and accepted how this commitment may influence my ability to substantively invest in the other things in life that also deeply matter to me? Things like my marriage’s integrity, my concentrated time with my tween as they navigate through junior high, my physical health…they all require my time and attention. Can I make my peace with my current negotiation and allocation of my personal resources?
Does this commitment conveniently help me (or us as a family) avoid something?
I’ve watched time and time again hard conversations, conscious confrontations, and personal goals or resolutions be avoided (or more accurately perpetually procrastinated) by way of the overstuffed family calendar. If we’re never sitting still and/or able to keep our eyes open in the same room, we don’t have to confront that elephant that has made its home between us. If I have blindly deemed every invitation to a networking happy hour “crucial to my success,” I’ll continue to “have to” put off facing the problematic relationship I’ve developed with alcohol until “things slow down.” As time tends to teach us, avoiding a problem (even when that avoidance is cloaked in enjoyable or altruistic engagements) typically only breathes more life
into it. So rather than exhausting my resources running away from something that is
minimizing my joy, is there a way to use that time and energy to better equip and empower myself to confront it?
What am I telling myself this commitment will yield? What is the ultimate purpose of this commitment?
Is it to expand or deepen my social network? To keep my kid from being ostracized by his peers? To invest in my long-term health? To keep me in the good graces of this authority figure? To inject some levity or relief into my life that often times feels heavy? To curtail my anxiety by staying on the front lines of all incoming information?
It does us a disservice to judge our motivations; they simply “are what they are.” And most of the time, they are multi-faceted. But we can show ourselves the respect of being honest with ourselves about our “whys.” Only then are we able to assess if the methods we’re using to accomplish those goals 1) have proven to actually be good and/or sustainable for us and 2) are actually effective at fulfilling their purpose.
Your time is precious. By using it purposefully, you stand to cultivate a life that is deep and rich in meaning for you. If you feel like you are no longer at the helm of how your time is ultimately being used, or if you find you find yourself exhausted with little to no satisfaction to show for it, that sounds like a fantastic jumping off point to do some self-exploration, ask yourself some of these questions, and reposition yourself back into the driver’s seat.
Insights Therapist