In the past, the one thing I heard repeatedly from my clients was “I don’t have time”, “I wish I had more time”, “there just aren’t enough hours in the day” and “I’m so busy”. With the recent global pandemic, our concept of time has been redefined and there is a growing murmur that we can’t go back, and we won’t go back to how things were.

Time has become like a precious jewel that sits on a pedestal, just out of reach from the average human. It has become more and more revered like it is something only for the privileged few. Yes, time has become one of life’s great luxuries.

Somewhere along the line, as a race, we have surrendered our ability to control our time. We have got onto the hamster wheel of life and forgot to get off. We go around and around and when it slows down, even slightly, we fill our lives with more stuff, more doing, so we never have to stop. Then we say we have no time or that our lives are so busy!

Ironically, although we feel time-poor, we keep overscheduling, overcommitting, striving to over-achieve and scrolling through mindless social media, and the cost of that is having no time, feeling stressed, feeling stretched, feeling anxious and feeling like we have no choice in this conundrum.  Here is a cold hard truth: you are the gatekeeper of your time, and only you are responsible for how you spend your time.

There have been some big life lessons from the recent COVID lockdown. We have been forced to stop our habitual way of living and experience a new paradigm (for better or worse). Here are four lockdown lessons to consider in relation to your time:

• The world will not stop when you stop. Things don’t fall apart when you don’t have every ounce of your life scheduled or controlled or overly informed.

• You are still worthy (deeply worthy) without having to prove how hard or long you work or how many social engagements you have in the diary or how ‘busy’ you are.

• Your deepest creativity, innovation, deep thinking and value you gift the world comes from the very thing you have disregarded – time and space.

• You may just find (or have found in lockdown) that some of your deepest fulfillment and joy comes when you clear the noise of life and allow yourself to just be; to have nothing to do and nowhere to go – simply to have the space to wallow in a hypothetical bath of luxurious time.

So, my friend, if we take the jewel of time off its pedestal and hand it to you in your open palm, what will you do with it? How will you use it? What will you stop doing?

As we enter a new chapter of life post lockdown, you get to redefine how you spend your time. What will you prioritise? What boundaries do you need to set in your life so that you feel more deeply connected to yourself and others?

Instead of being time-poor the question becomes how can you enrich the time you have?

I recommend journaling your answers to the last three paragraphs and start to consciously create how you want to define your time in your new normal.

Much love,

Simone