I was at the hairdressers the other week, and whilst doing a bit of work, emails and the like was listening – as you do, to the conversations going on around me.
One of the women was speaking about how she was heading over to Europe for the next 2 months and that she was having a gap year this year. Now you might think by the conversation that she was just out of school, or at uni, but no she was around my age – 50 something and 2014 was her gap year! What that meant was that since January she has been travelling for 2 months somewhere in the world, then coming back home for a month before heading off again.
She had decided it was her year to do what she wanted – no kids to worry about, they were all grown up, I’m not sure about her work or personal life, but what stood out and made me ask myself was “when was the last time you or I took time out just to do stuff we enjoyed and wanted to do”.
For me 2014 to date has meant well over 60 flights in 8 months, to almost every state in Australia for various speaking engagements, workshops, key note presentations and seeing clients, plus a couple of overseas trips. Judging by the flights I’ve taken and got booked in for the rest of the year, definitely great for the frequent flyer points, I know that Virgin loves me, but what about family, friends, my general well being, as well as my business.
Now the team at JBS have been awesome and really stepped up, but what made me think was, have I really taken the time out to do what I want to do. They say that life is short and not to miss opportunities, I know I’m always one to say, yes when presented with an opportunity or asked to do something and then work it out later. But am I cutting myself short? Where are my priorities? and, am I planning enough time off for me?
So what to do? Learning from this, I’ve made a list of my goals – being a huge goal setter it wasn’t hard, I started with what I had on, what I wanted to achieve and of course by when. Mapping out a plan of the next 12 -18 months.
I made sure going forward I’ve scheduled in holidays and time off with the family, after all planning is the key to achieving great things. Often we leave it too late, and sometimes we’re given a wake up call, an illness or injury either personally or to someone close to us that makes us sit back and re-assess where we’re at and what we want.
So I ask you – what do you want to achieve and when was the last time you had the time off to do what you want to do?
Don’t wait until it’s too late, plan now…..
