Shifting from Community to Friends

168 Hours – Prioritize Your Time

When you’re looking at how to shift things around to realize your goals, remember you have 168 hours in a week. Where are you spending them? Take inventory, and I mean literally write down, where you are spending your time. How much do you sleep, eat, work, spend time with family, workout, work in your community, etc? Once you have how you currently are spending your time, take a look at what you can shift or cut down on to make more time for your friends.

Authentic Communication

Now, it’s time to tell people what you’re doing! Communicate your shift to everyone you trust that will be affected, your family, friends, team, boss, etc. Work with them to put an actionable plan together that can help you achieve your goals. Not only will this let people know what you are trying to accomplish, but they can help hold you accountable when you waver.

Set Boundaries

When working towards your new goal, make sure you know and set boundaries to avoid being pulled back into old habits. Perhaps, before you decided to make a shift, you would volunteer every weekend or donate all your free time to a local pet shelter. Now, you have new priorities and your time will shift accordingly. Perhaps from now on you will only volunteer once a month and dedicate that extra time to hanging out with friends. Whatever your line is, don’t cross it or allow it to be crossed. Set the boundaries make sense for you and stick to them!

Saying No

Knowing when to say no is a huge sanity saver! Most of us say yes, even when we mean no. This is a problem. And also how we get roped into all those things that we really don’t want to do. Get comfortable with saying no! Now that you know where your priorities lie, if you are presented with an opportunity that doesn’t align with them, kindly but firmly say no.