What are your top reasons for not practicing yoga? Motivation might be up there, cost may be a consideration, travel, but time ….. precious time. Finding the time is at the top of the list.

How do you find time to fit one more thing into the day, when your days are already packed?  Full.

Let’s blow it apart and look for a new way of putting our day back together.

Find perspective.  Find time.  Find space.

1. What’s important?  What matters to you? Does your yoga practice matter to you? Or does everything else on your to-do list get moved ahead and you wait to see if the yoga maybe fits in?  If the others things really do mean more to you and how you want/need your life to be, then do them.  But if not and you can’t find time to practice, you need to make some changes.

2. Ask others.  Ask for help.  Do you have to do everything yourself?  Can you delegate a few to-do’s to your partner, kids, co-workers? This is a biggy for me, so I completely get it if you’re not used to asking for help.  But it just might be worth it. People don’t always know if you’re struggling with something. Tell them. Ask them.

3. Disconnect. From your laptop, smart phone, TV. If you’re like most people on the planet these days you’re probably spending too much time checking email, Facebook, Twitter, Linked-in, You Tube, Pinterest.  Do you have to be part of every conversation? Need to know everything that’s new and exciting in the world?  Keep up with the latest and greatest?  Do you need to constantly check and reply to email or could you commit to doing so twice a day?  Check it, action it and leave it be.  Again, if it’s important to do so for whatever your reasons are, by all means continue doing so.  But examine it. Habits.  If it’s not working for you or isn’t necessary. Change it. Break away.

3. Simplify. Do you have things in your daily routine that are no longer serving you well?  For me, reading the paper is probably one.  It’s rather pointless with the quality of newspapers available here, so I could give it a miss.  Making simpler meals these days is proving to be a time-saver.  What is it you could do differently, strike off the list, do less of?

4. Focus. Forget multitasking. For years I declared being the ultimate multi-tasker on my CV as one of my best skills.  Some of it came naturally to me, some of it by necessity (years ago looking after our 21 month old son, followed by twins). Not so much anymore.  With certain tasks it might still work a little magic, but …… I understand science is now proving that you’re better off focusing on one thing at a time as the mind tends to work better that way. Multi-tasking and constantly switching from one thing to another takes away time.  (I’d look for the research to back this statement up, but in my attempt to simplify and get this blog post finished without the need for it to be perfect, I’m not going to spend the next 30 minutes looking to justify it.  If it’s important to prove or disprove my comment, I’ll let you do the research.)

Does it feel like my kids are always demanding my attention?  Maybe it’s because they don’t have my full attention.  30 minutes of focused, quality time might be better than 3 hours of sort-of being with them, while watching TV and checking emails…..

I’m not so sure we need to find more time to fit something else in.  I think it might work better to drop some unnecessary, unimportant tasks and focus on what’s meaningful to us.

I’ve been a little under the weather the last two days.  Normally I would just carry on, plow through.  Do it all.  Do it right. Not so much these days.  I know I need to rest.

So yesterday I asked for help, rested and cancelled one commitment that I decided wasn’t a “have to”.  Today I did what was absolutely necessary.  Rested some more. Moved everything else over to tomorrow’s schedule or dropped it off the list of to-do’s completely.

I really hate dirty kitchens…. but last night mine was a mess!  My son is waiting on some documents I need to have “superlegalized” which means another trip down bureaucracy lane here in Qatar.  But another day of delay won’t make any difference. Q-tel still needs to get back here and finish the job they started over a week ago, but I wasn’t about to make that phone call of complaint again today. Doctor’s appointments were made.  Teaching was done.  Family fed.  Everything else fell by the wayside.  Oh, except the yoga.

And the yoga, felt good.

What might you need to let go of, stop doing, change, to allow you to do what really matters in your life? 

I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.  Or if you want to receive regular updates from me straight to your email…. enter your email address where it says Email Subscription on the top left of the blog.