Yes, I would love to get a chance to meet with everyone of you someday. But that is not the point of this article.
Everyone of us needs time with ourselves regularly – sort of “Meet with Me” time. The need is higher at this day and age. Living in an “always connected” world has its advantages but the biggest disadvantage is that it makes it hard to stop, think and reflect unless you force yourself to schedule time to do just that.
The Best YOU!
There are a LOT of important people in your life – and the best gift you can give to them (apart from not being a burden to them) is to give them the best YOU possible.
How do you know you are doing that right now?
If you don’t stop, think and reflect how would you know where you are in becoming the best YOU?
Mirror, Mirror…
When you are managing someone, they expect you to give them regular feedback just so that they do all the course corrections along the way to be and deliver the best. In a way, the most important person you are managing is yourself and you would be expecting that kind of feedback from yourself. After all, who will know you better than yourself.
But, the question is – are you asking for that feedback on a regular basis?
The Invisible Trap
What would be more difficult to schedule some time with yourself? It’s the easiest thing to do. You know your schedule and you have some flexibility to rearrange things. So why not do it? This is where the invisible trap comes into the picture. The trap is – “if it’s easy to do, it’s also easy to not do.” You can always get away postponing these meetings saying to yourself – “I will get to it as soon as I can.. but let me first focus on things where I have external dependencies. I can always meet with myself ANYTIME I want to.”
Honestly, thinking you can meet ANYTIME rarely works. You and I both know this. If it’s not on the calendar, it’s not there. Imagine adding just one hour on your calendar every week and labeling it as Weekly MWM (Meet with Me) and leave it there. You will start scheduling other things around this time rather than trying to stuff MWM somewhere when there is a slack (which rarely happens)
When Will You Start?
There is no need to wait. You can add MWM to your calendar for next week right after you finish reading this page. if you have never done this before, that ONE hour will be super uncomfortable for you but it’s worth going through every minute of that “pain” and soon you will start seeing the “gain” from this.
Photo Courtesy: Birdman of El Paso on Flickr