5 Ways To Say ‘Yes’ to Yourself

Imagine a day only for you. Imagine taking a day to say yes to nothing but yourself. How would that feel? What decisions would you make? What would you do with that time?

Now, back to reality.

In a world filled with calendar grabbers, time wasters, baggage claimers and a hyper sense of needing to feel accomplished, we often lose sight of saying yes to ourselves.

Let’s face it, there are just some days in our lives when we need time for ourselves. We are consciously aware of this, yet brush the feeling aside as our minds drift to ‘what needs to be done’ or that important business meeting you had scheduled for weeks.

The truth is, many of us are spending too much time making others happy through our various obligations to know and think about what our own happiness should feel like.

The brutal truth is, even after reading this, many of you will still not defend time for yourself in fear of being alienated, talked about or disowned at your place of work. No one can do the work that you can do, right? Wrong.

I once worked for a Business owner who would get a mass volume of calls during the summer season in Canada. As this time frame approached, he would slowly return missed calls and messages without much sense of urgency. This led me to ask him one day, “Sir, why don’t you return ALL of the phone calls for more work? We can be busier, do more jobs and make more money.” His reply was simple, “Everyone is calling with an urgent request, however, what if I were dead? Would people find another company to do the work? Yes they would.”

What he meant by this was that no matter how much money you want to make or how much you want to jam into your schedule, you still have a life to live outside of this.

If you want to say yes to ‘you’ and no to ‘who’, here are some great strategies to get started:

1. Become A Calendar Vigilante

In order to combat this loss of time, one strategy I have implemented is making my google calendar work for me. For example, each week I carve out at least two hours per week for “me” time. This can be spent writing, reading or simply hanging out at the beach. This habit has created a significant change in my focus, productivity and my capacity to deliver energy to my vocation, relationships and hobbies.

2. Create Cycles of Productivity

A second strategy that has allowed me to say yes to myself is my ability to produce greater results following that time. I convince myself that great productivity will happen following “me” time…And it does! I believe life goes in constant cycles of productivity. For those cycles to continue as cycles, adding in a cycle of “you” time is key to keeping the wheels spinning.

3. Know Your Strengths

Would I say yes to something that does not fit my strengths? If I am, it better be pretty important or provide you with a ton of money. Because ultimately, if you are doing something that doesn’t feed into your strengths, you are spreading yourself too thin and will end up fatigued, burned out and flat out exhausted. Do yourself a favor by rejecting exhaustion in favor of focused, energized execution.

4. Invest In Others

Sometimes you just need a day. A day to do nothing but focus on “you” time. You need to be able to defend that easily with your professional and personal relationships. To do this with confidence, invest emotionally in others. I recently posted about the power of Emotional Bank Accounts and why they are so important. When you build a currency of trust with those around you, the withdraw of not being in the office or fully present for obligations and relationships becomes minor. Invest now to see ‘me time’ later.

5. Learn To Say No

In life and in work, if you want ‘you’ time and success, you need to learn how to say NO. If you think you are good at this, I challenge you to continue to evaluate this area of your life. Say no to anything that doesn’t make you happy or does not fill you/move you in the direction you are hoping to go.

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Want to take your life, relationships and vocation to the next level? Check out my latest books here: https://www.faheyconsulting.org/books

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This post was previously published on Medium.

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