Coaching Corner: Your challenge for the week
By "Coach" Marilou Butcher Roth
This week, I want to explore something with you -- how you are spending your time. Not only what you are doing, but if what you are doing reflects how you want to be spending your time!
We go through days, weeks, months and years living our lives. The big question is, are we living it in the way that brings us joy and fulfillment? Are we LIVING or just living by default.
So, here is your challenge-- get yourself a notebook of some sort (no, that's not the challenge) -- something that you can keep close by as you move through your day. As you do, jot down actives that you are engaged in -- this could be anything from exercise to paperwork. When you have done this for a week you will most probably have a pretty good idea of how you have spent your very precious time.
Next, go through your list and begin to rate the items. First, identify the activities that you absolutely do not like to do. If you do not have any of these, a celebration is in order! If you do, look at the frowned upon activities, and decide what you want to do with them. If the activity is a necessity, how can you create a better way to handle this task? Or maybe, it is an item that you can delegate, or better yet, it could be one that can be eliminated entirely! Yippee!
Up next are the items that you are OK with, but wouldn't be terribly upset if you could find yourself moving away from these particular tasks. You can use the same method as we did above to determine the future of identified activities.
Finally, what items can you say that you truly enjoy? Hopefully you have a fair amount of these left on your list. Oh joy! These are the golden nuggets of this exercise, ready for your loving attention!
Now that your identification process is complete, the implementation begins and so begins the real challenge. Determining how you can work towards spending more and more of your time on your own golden nuggets, a.k.a., the items that you love. This challenge may meet some internal resistance. Don't worry, that is a normal part of the process. When we make changes in our outer world, sometimes our inner selves rebel, finding new territory disconcerting.
That's the challenge if you choose to accept it -- I hope you do!!!
Marilou Butcher Roth
Marilou Butcher Roth is the owner of The MBR Group, a coaching and training company working primarily with REALTORS who have a desire to work and live from a more inspired place. She is also the Broker/Owner of Group REALTORS in Cincinnati.
Marilou is a member of the Ohio REALTORS Board of Directors and past chairman of the organization’s Communications Committee.
