How do we make time for our loved ones, family and friends instead of taking more time to work or be productive?
I hope this post will be helpful because as an entrepreneur with my own business online, I have frequently given in to the temptation to hustle harder and skip the Disney trips with my family to get a little more money.
Would you join me for day 174 of Happier People Podcast as I go on a walk at the beach on a day where I chose to give up time working on amazing cryptocurrency projects in exchange for spending the afternoon with my family at the beach in St Petersburg, Florida because this might be useful in your life today?
How have I learned to make sure I make time for the things that are most truly important in my life today like family and friends?
How do I make sure to not let opportunities like today, going to the beach with my family, slip by as I think I need to instead catch up on some work or I get afraid of missing out on something that's amazing?
What do we do to avoid the temptation to take extra time working or trying to finish some project, and instead make sure we don't miss on those moments that are most important?
I hope this will be helpful for you today because in my life it's taken a lot of painful learning to get the point:
Don't miss out on going to a beach with your family!
or
Don't miss out on going to Disney with your family!
I've spent a lot of days thinking that I'm hustling, I'm working hard, I'm getting ahead and I'm building my business, but many of those days were stressed and lonely, and I didn't even do very good work on those days.
Today, I figured, what's more effective to communicate at this point than actually doing a quick video while I'm out at the beach?
This is my beach outfit and you can see it works good.
That way I don't have to wear any sunscreen.
I just have this hat that covers almost my whole face. Then I've got these sunglasses that are prescription, which is nice. I've got my prayer shirt on that covers up my skin.
There, we can take a look around the beach.
I'm very grateful to be out here today.
I almost said no.
I almost told my wife, "No, I got some important work to do."
I'm in the middle of so many exciting projects.
I'm grateful that every blog post I make earns about $100 on Steem. Yes, it's tempting to sit there and say, "What if I go to the beach, I'm going to miss $100 or $200 today? If I go to the beach, I'm going to miss perhaps some opportunities or I won't go forward with things as fast."
How many times have I already done that already?
Then what's happened is I feel like crap about myself, and then I feel overworked. Then, I do stupid things in my work like I put out a video that aggravates everyone or I work on projects I didn't need to work on.
A lot of times we get opportunities in our lives or things we're frustrated with, and what attracted that energy lots of times was overworking, doing too much.
I find if I've a bit better balance in my life, if I don't work so much, if I work about four to six hours a day, seven days a week, is ideal.
I already did that today.
Actually, I did less than that.
I already did enough work today. I don't need to do any more. I've done enough.
This lesson has been tough for me over and over again, because most of us were programmed to go after that money.
We need to work long hours, especially men, but as we are making advances on gender equality, women are consistently having this problem too:
"Let's stay at work longer. Get that overtime pay," or "I'll just sleep later. I'll just catch up on my time with my family later."
Then "later" keeps taking longer and longer to come.
Someday we get so frustrated with our lives that we contemplate things like ending it all, or we end up getting a divorce, we end up losing custody of our kids, or just having our kids frustrated. We get into addictions and we wonder how all this happened. What I see is the little choices I make every day are essential in guiding what happens next in my life.
Just going to the beach today is one of those seemingly little decisions, but the decision to stay at home and work longer, and to miss the time with my family, is one of those things I've made so many times.
Then, I'm grateful I've learned not to miss out on the things that are most important.
Here's how I figured this out.
I look at it from my deathbed.
Now, I'm expecting, I'm intending to live 150 years in this body, in about the same shape as it's in today: healthy, full of energy, attractive and wonderful.
In my deathbed, in the comfort of my own home, with relatively small pain, but a body that's just worn out, that's just had enough, would I look back on today and say, "Well, I should've sent one more message today. I should've stayed home and worked harder," or would I say, "It's time to go to the beach with my family."
Which one of those from my deathbed would I choose to do?
It's clear when we look at things from our deathbed what is the right thing to do today.
For me, it's clear too.
I would have liked to have taken a few minutes to just get in a video real quick, so that I have a video on a different format from usual, because then that will make time for me to even go to Disney tomorrow with my family again.
So I make a quick video for a couple minutes to share this experience that's taken so much trial and error for me to learn.
Over the last year, if I can point to one thing I've essentially done wrong in the most it's this: choosing work over family and believing that if I just work a little more and a little harder, that will help the things that I want come to me.
I'm grateful today that I think about this deathbed point of view because it was really tempting again to stay at home and just work.
When my family is gone it is the best time to film because normally my family is around a lot of the day. The filming time when they're gone is golden.
It's tempting to say, "Look, I'd love to get another video or a couple videos done and just knock them out while they are at the beach."
I've done that so many times.
I'm grateful today and I'm so excited to be here at the beach and share this with you, because it helps to get out of our comfort zone, too.
The idea of going out of my home office some days, where I'm very comfortable, and even doing something like going to the beach you might think, "Well, I'd love to do that every day," but for me, I'm so comfortable where I'm normally, that it's a bit of a struggle just to get out and do something a little different.
I'm very grateful today and I share this with the hope that perhaps in reading my experience with this, it's useful for you, maybe you won't have to make that same calls so many times, or you won't have to feel like a bad person for having made that call.
Lots of times I've chosen to spend time working over my family. The less I make this choice, the better I feel and the better my work's going.
My work is going better than ever.
It's not hustling and working hard. It's loving my work, it's respecting myself, it's setting healthy boundaries that's helping my work to do so fantastically good because then I attract healthy relationships and valuable partnerships. I tend to avoid unhealthy relationships, partnerships and opportunities where I am expected to hustle and sacrifice.
I don't want opportunities in life that involves me missing out on what's most important.
With that, I think it's time to wrap it up.
This was another episode of Happier People Podcast, which I hope you loved and have enjoyed.
Thank you very much for reading this post, which was originally filmed as the video below on a walk at the beach in St Petersburg, Florida.
I appreciate you being here and I hope you have a wonderful day today.
If you found this post helpful on Steemit, would you please upvote it and follow me because you will then be able to see more posts like this in your home feed?
Love,
Jerry Banfield with edits by @gmichelbkk on the transcript by GoTranscript
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