Improve your Quality of Life by exploring your Quality World.

What do you do when you have so much to do and no time? You say: “I have no time”. I hear it from my family, from my colleagues, from my clients and sometimes even from strangers rushing about their daily business. I often hear people saying: ‘I have no time’, ‘I am running out of time’, ‘I have a deadline’ or ‘time is precious’. We seem to always refer to time.

It is only natural that in a world dominated by global warming, terrorism, natural disasters where we do not have much power, we attempt to gain a little control in our individual lives by organizing our time. Therefore, the use of time becomes critical when we try to understand human behavior, when we attempt to make sense of why we behave the way we do.

What do we do with our time? Why do we choose to use our time in a particular way? How do we plan our time? When we have an answer for these questions, we know what matters to us.

For example, “family time” is particularly important to people, but again, in an increasingly demanding world, expectations tend to be high. There is pressure on parents to offer ‘quality time’ to their children and pressure on the individuals to spend ‘quality time’ together. In addition, planning of time involves knowing when one is working, when they are going to college, when they spend time with family, when they go on holiday or when they have spare time. Thus the spare time is not spare anymore because it is planned. The simple fact that it’s spare means that there is no pressure to do anything. But we still organize it.

It is this perception of “quality time”, time well spent or what the Greeks called ‘kairos’ that we seem to be running after. ‘Kairos’ is the right or opportune moment when something special happens.

A “me time” and a safe space to explore one’s wants and find more satisfying ways of living one’s life and spending one’s time is, partly, the reason why people come to counselling. And it is my role as a counsellor to consider my client in the context of their culture and to support them in finding ways of growing and achieving what they want.

To finish off, here is a little exercise for you:

“Stop for a minute and think about what you need to prioritize in order to lead a more fulfilling life”. 

• What is important to you? 
• Are there any changes that you’d like to see happening around you? 
• What can you do about it? 

Give yourself the gift of time and you’ll be amazed at the difference this might make in your life.