Last week I discussed the second step in Cheryl Richardson’s book “Take Time for Your Life”. This week I will be looking at Step 3 and applying it to how we can help ourselves become better parents or the parents we want to be. Step 3: “Identify the things that drain you and eliminate them – people, places, and things – once and for all” Richardson, cleverly, uses an analogy of an internal energy barometer that lies within all of us. Certain things will cause these levels to fall and others will cause them to rise. Every action we take uses energy but more importantly, and often over-looked, is that actions you don’t take use energy as well, like distractions, disorganization, incomplete tasks and things that hang over you.  Interestingly, when Richardson works with clients, right off the bat, she spends more time removing things from their lives instead of setting goals. With this in mind, as parents, maybe we should be looking at removing things from our lives that drain us and cause our energy levels to fall before we embark on other things? There are certainly times in my parenting life where I would have happily removed my …Read more →

Last week I discussed the first step in Cheryl Richardson’s book “Take Time for Your Life”. This week I will be looking at Step 2 and applying it to how we can help ourselves become better parents or the parents we want to be. Step 2: “If your schedule doesn’t reflect your priorities, stop reacting to life and take control of what gets your time and attention.” Some of the points that Cheryl Richardson makes regarding this are as follows, the key being, CHOICE: Don’t confuse tough choices with no choices – we always have a choice If you want a quick and dramatic improvement in the quality of your life, make a big choice Time is a gift that most of us take for granted We get so caught up in the busyness of our daily lives that we rarely stop and take a serious look at how we’re spending this gift of time We can’t manage time, time will always tick away no matter what we do! We can, however, manage ourselves; this is self-management not time management In order to prioritize, we first need to know what our priorities actually are and then what things currently take …Read more →

With the summer holidays virtually on us, I thought it would be a good idea to find some ways to make sure that I get some time to myself. If you are anything like me, as much as I love the summer holidays and having the kids around, I find that I rarely get time to myself and as we advance through the holidays I find my patience fraying and often just want to escape the family all together! The bottom line is, everyone needs some time for themselves and for parents this is especially so. Just as I was thinking about doing this, I happened to be recommended a book called “Take Time for Your Life” by Cheryl Richardson. It’s weird how things like that show up in our lives; we think about doing something and before we know it, something is presented to us, to guide us down that very particular path. More details about this book about this book can be found here: http://www.amazon.ca/Take-Time-Your-Cheryl-Richardson/dp/0767902076/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1403990522&sr=1-1&keywords=take+time+for+your+life This book is rated a #1 best seller and it offers an inspiring, practical, seven-step program to help you create the life you want. I think that many of us will often have …Read more →