Make time to make it happen . . . .

Does this sound familiar? You say to a friend......"Can we do lunch on Tuesday?"  Your friend responds, "Tuesday won't work for me, how about Wednesday?" You reply, "Nope, I'm booked." It doesn't work out, then we don't see our friend for months. We all know by now that if we're not making an effort to schedule time to catch up with our friends, it just doesn't happen. It worked in the past, but it doesn't anymore. Our schedules are crammed! So if we're not being persistent with scheduling time together, we might as well say...."How about never? Will never work for you?" 

If you don't make time to make it happen, 

it won't happen.

Today, the rush and the gush threaten to diminish or even destroy our most important connections. Unless you consciously and deliberately preserve time for, say family dinner, or lunch with a friend, or Sunday dinner at Grandma's, or a weekend away with your spouse, or physical exercise, or playing the instrument you love, or keeping up with the team you have always followed, or taking your dog for a walk, or going to your son's or daughter's play or game, or weeding the garden you so adore, or working on your boat, or reading that stack of books by your bed -- unless you consciously and deliberately preserve time to connect with what matters most to you, your connection with whatever it is will erode. The waters of the rush and the gush will rust it out and sweep it away. You will find yourself less energetic, less optimistic, less hopeful, less confident, and less enthusiastic than before, and you won't know why. You'll ascribe it to being too busy or to growing older, or depression, or being too disorganized, or just to "life." That fact is, it's none of those things! It is that you have neglected what matters most to you. In this era, you must deliberately preserve and cultivate your most valuable connections to people, activities, and whatever else is most important to you. Anyone can cultivate these connections, but only if you plan to do so and insist on adhering to your plan.

Select the connections you care most about and cultivate just those. Realize that being deeply connected to what matters most to  you is the enlightened way of life. 

"When we get too caught up in the busyness of the world, we lose connection with one another, and ourselves."

-Jack Kornfield

Partial text from the book

Crazy Busy

by Edward M. Hallowell, M.D.