Intentional with Time and Energy

So in early 2016 as I was coming to grips with my slowly healing leg and the realization that I had lost my way – I began to reflect and to decide to take some of my truth back. As I mentioned before, I had two key decisions that were made in early 2016 as I was evaluating all that I could in my life with a very fresh perspective. The broken leg definitely triggered a series of events I’ll get into down the line in more detail, although the relevant point is that I recognized for the first time that I had been unintentionally uneven with my time and with my energy.

I was not directing my days. I was not directing my energy. I had major leakage across nearly all facets of my life with water coming in through a variety of leaks and holes not just my leg. I had been living on someone else’s schedule. Depending upon the various dimensions of my life, the ‘someone else’s schedule and priorities’ individual was different – but my role as ‘order taker’ did not.

I was an unintentional slave, and I was not even self aware at the time.

I had very close friends and professional colleagues ask that I take a fresh look on how I spent my time. I did partially listen, but largely remained as a blind man. I required a hard reset. The broken leg and resulting handicap as I navigated my way through physical therapy began to crack me open. For the first time in a long time, I felt helpless. I could not even drive myself down to the store, thank God for Uber or else I would have missed out on a concert or two… I didn’t feel lost, I just knew that I had misplaced a few things that I used to put forward as my priorities.  Someone had kicked my proverbial soccer ball over the net and into the woods, but I was damn sure I could find it again and inflate it for a new game that was going to get played…

I recognized in January, 2016 that I had to take back my fire and rebuild my inner energy factory that had been largely dormant in many areas of my life. I had been overly focused on delivering in my career, being too focused on my ‘provider role’ for those closest to me, and generally buying into a bunch of classic storylines that I had internalized in recent years – many of which are pure garbage that society foists onto both men and women. The operating principles I was leading with at the time were not centered on my truth, rather they were what I had been lead to believe were the truths by our culture. As an American man with a family living a typical suburban lifestyle I was not special in this regard/setup… The difference is that I woke up when I decided to find out where the hell my energy and mojo had evaporated to, and that I was no longer going to play the roles. The mask was coming off.

I decided that I had had enough, and that I still had the best years in front of me – provided that I took command of my time.

I decided to truly wield my calendar and time in a manner that would result in some serious breakthroughs – initially at work. I became exceptionally tenacious with deadlines and achieved a great deal with this intentional focus on schedules at work and in my career. We did a few things that were frankly impossible to many that witnessed the deliveries. The ‘Do Monster’ had metastasized into an even stranger monster of self fulfilling busy-ness based value. I overcompensated on doing, rather than taking the intentionality of my calendaring and pushing it across everything I did or chose not to do.

I decided that I would first focus on my timing and begin to truly exercise my intention – knowing that my energy levels were already sapped pretty badly. At the time, I began to truly focus on where I spent my time, and began to witness how many times I said to myself ‘I’m too busy.’ What a load of horse shit.

You know what I was too busy doing?

Better yet, you know who I was not being?

It was in this timeframe that I recognized that I had been lying to myself for quite awhile.

You know what?

It turns out I was the Do Monster.

It turns out, that I had all of the time I needed.

That I could actually recover my energy levels, and hell – get even stronger and achieve even higher levels of energy.

It started with being intention-based. So I started with a simple decision, that I would not automatically say ‘yes’ to anything that was placing a demand on my time. I internalized a kill switch on anything that required my time – thereby raising my mindfulness on where I was spending my time.

This mindfulness slowly began to take hold, resulting in some fundamental questions being asked as my time was/is so precious. Increasingly, this intentional mindset drove me to question my priorities and to truly seek some path forward to change my daily routines.

Now this mindset is at the core of nearly everything I do, and I’m spending my time exactly where I intend to.

Busy ness is shield for those that do not have true direction in their lives, and many times it is the person that is ‘too busy’ that needs to get conscious on their unintentional approach to life on a day to day basis. Getting clear on why you are spending your ever shrinking bank account of time is an unbelievably freeing and likely terrifying exercise that many have no damn clue on how to get started – let alone finish to a point of completeness.

Here’s the good news – you don’t need to break your leg or spend months of grinding in self reflection to begin to achieve some benefits right away. Hell, you don’t even need to worry about getting it ‘right’ or completed.

 

Start simply with a decision …

… to challenge your self-talk and ask yourself if you are doing something intentionally or are you reacting. We’ll talk about who and how you are being – in a later post.

For me, the decision to be intentional – to drive my calendar – to understand that I would be able to reestablish my electrical circuits – all lead me to the next simple thing that likely saved my life in 2016.

I decided to lift. I did so with a promise to myself and to one of my sons. Sometimes the simplest things are the hardest to do, every day.