Morning. Early. On my way to have my coffee out and maybe opening the laptop and get some work done. Nothing special till here, just another Sunday morning. But many times we have many reflective moments exactly during the most mundane activities. Like now…

Sitting in my corner, enjoying my coffee and taking a quick look at the situations around me, because if you really pay attention you will notice a whole human spectacle that’s played right in front of you. The couple who’s too busy looking on Instagram than at each other, the single woman taking selfies, the elderly group who’s complaining about weather and politics, the bored guy at the cashier, the woman who’s always too loud on her phone. It is a show, I’m telling you!

In the middle of all this you must admire the complexity of the human race, not judging it, but simply admire it! How much importance we give to the taste of coffee, the shoes we are wearing, how the traffic is very bad and how paying my bills today is a very boring activity. In fact, we give them so much importance that this is what we call living. Yes, this is what we actually call life. And we wonder that we are not content and that we have no time for ourselves. I’m doing my best not to start being sarcastic because this is already sounding like a joke. 

Let’s look at, just for the sake of giving an example, a person who wakes up at 7am. Washes his face, grabs some form of breakfast, drinks his coffee and rushes to the door. Spends at least 10-20 minutes getting another coffee, talks on the phone for maybe another 20 minutes and arrives at work where again spends another half an hour just saying hi and maybe catching on some of the latest office gossip.

And this is just in the morning, I don’t even want to start counting the rest of the day where he has even more time on his hands and most of it is going to the same meaningless activities.

Please try and keep in mind that this is just for making my case and not to judge no one for doing so.

Let’s say this person goes through some problems in his life, like most people.  He will try to seek professional help, hopefully, but then he hears that he has to do some self-improvement work…what do you know? He has no time… Of course he has no time! We are always too busy to read a book, we are too busy to give meditation a chance or to reflect at our own behavior.

This is really the issue with most of us, we are seeking advice everywhere: online, therapy, business consultants, gurus and God knows who else but when we have to sit down and actually apply any of it, guess what? We have no time.

And do you really want to know what’s the real problem with all this?

The problem is that changing or improving ourselves is not a priority. No, we like to make it sound as it is a priority so that the feeling of guilt to disappear but in fact it is not a priority.

Self improvement is a long and hard process, it needs sacrifice. Is painful, it means dedicating every spare minute you have, it means to wake up determined and motivated to do it, it means loosing friends and how many people you know that really did it?

Let me answer that question for you: maximum 2 people. And consider yourself lucky to know such people.

So mainly we have a problem with setting priorities and that’s another vast subject but for now lets leave it at reflection stage.

Do we really have no time or we don’t want to do it? How badly you want a change? Or you are happy as you are and you’re trying to put a mask on it? 

How much time are you really investing in yourself? 

Do you still think that the time is your problem? 

Monica Burtavel

Family & Relationships Counselor, NLP Transformational Coach, Timeline & Hypnosis Therapist.