372: Are You Really That Busy—or Are You Just Putting Yourself Last?

But as my son grew older, the same excuses persisted, right? "I don't have time.

I can't do this.

There's no time for myself." But Kate, who I was still living with, is an attorney and she's, like, annoyingly good at challenging, like, any of the time c- excuses that I would, like, say to her.

The reality is, is that things at home were getting easier.

My son was in daycare, I was back to work full-time, and we had much more of a routine.

I would actually even say I was, you know, able to get a little bit more time that I was able to prioritf- prioritize myself, but I didn't do it.

I would complain about not having time for myself constantly, but I wasn't really taking any, like, meaningful or actionable steps to make the time that I was saying that I needed.

I just kept on complaining about having no time.

And Kate would be there, like, offering solutions about this and trying to come up with ways to help me get more time, but I just kept shutting her down, even though she was challenging me.

[laughs] What I realize now is that the complaining about not having time for me didn't really mean that I didn't have the time.

It meant, for me during that time, and really still, that I'd wasn't ready to prioritize my time and I was...

I wasn't ready to prioritize self-care.

And I knew that I should be doing it, the, you know, the in quotes "should," and I knew that I would benefit from it, but for whatever reason within me, I just, I just couldn't do it.

Complaining about not having time was a way that I think I felt like I had control over a situation where in my life I was having very little control.

Now I know that if I'm saying I don't have enough time, it may not be related to time.

It might be related to other feelings that I'm masking as an excuse for not having enough time.

So a lot of times, I think when I'm complaining about not having time, it's really code for me that- I don't wanna do something, I'm avoiding something, or I don't wanna start something, or I'm really scared to do something because it's very uncomfortable for me, so it's kind of like an avoidance strategy.

So a lot of the times when I was complaining about having enough time, I would say probably not a lot of that time, it really had to do with not having the time.

It was more that I was using that excuse as a way to mask all of the other feelings that I didn't really wanna deal with, and I didn't really wanna, like, sort out and figure out what, what was there.

But what I realized is, is that time is, like, this great equalizer, and we all have the same amount of time in a day to achieve what we desire.

So if it really was a time issue for me, um, you know, the person who gets more done in a day, like my friend Kate, is really no different than you are.

The difference is, is that they prioritize their day differently than you did.

And so that can be, like, a really freeing thought and a really disappointing thought.

The freeing thought is that, like, if you wanna become that person where you have more time, then you can be that person, but you have to make yourself a priority.

And then I think the embarrassing and disappointing thought is that if you haven't made yourself a priority, then that's probably why you're, you're not that person and you haven't taken control of your time.