Todays post is about taking the time for family and your loved ones. In one of my previous blog posts I admitted that we had been so busy building our businesses, that we did not go on a family vacation for about ten years. Thats right, ten long years. Time was just ticking by and we thought we had plenty of it. One day you wake up from your fog and realize you do not have endless amounts of time. Can you feel me? I know you all get this. We are all too busy, and life is going by so fast, sometimes you say you’ll do things, meet for lunch, get together, & say things like “Wouldn’t it be nice if…”, then time gets away from you and you just don’t do it. Last year I had enough.  It was time to start living again.  The kids were getting older and soon our oldest was going to be in college.  So we decided to finally take that trip. What a fun trip! We had the BEST time with our kids. This year, we wanted to go again and my sister and her family joined us. What a wonderful time to be together and enjoy each others families. My sister and I have always said it would be so fun if we did that, and so we finally did! We did a lot of different things, since we had a big age gap with the kids, and tried to make sure everyone had fun. We went hiking, white water rafting, trampoline park, arcade, horseback riding, bear crawl tour,  berry picking, goat petting, eating eating and more eating, made smores, fires in the fireplace, and a whole lotta togetherness.

Looking back on our lives, we all have regrets. It is sometimes a hard thing to swallow. This year, I have been spending time with people that encourage me, lift me up and make me want to live my life intentionally and purposefully. It has been invaluable. I realize that life is too short and can be taken from us in a heartbeat. Taking the time to prioritize your valuable time, and deciding what you want and taking action to make those things happen is crucial to a happy successful life.  When people take stock of their lives and look back over the years, they never say they wish they had a better car, or a bigger business. They wish they had more time. Even at this stage of my life I wish I had more time. Time for do overs, and to spend more time with my kids. Building a business and providing for your family doesn’t mean you sacrifice them while doing so. I finally realize this, and wish I could take those ten years back. I am sure while you read this you are thinking similar thoughts and wondering what to do about it. Well, we cant go back in time, so making the most of what you have is where its at! Here are some tips that have really helped us take more time to be with our family and refocus our attention to our business in a different way.

1- Schedule EVERYTHING. That’s right, you heard me. If you don’t put it in your calendar, you tend not to do it. If I schedule things I tend to do them. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t always do everything, but most of the time I get it done. This helps to organize your thoughts and tasks so much!

2- Prioritize your list. Set the things that you have to do and start listing them by the most important to the least. Include it all. Then you can break the master list down into smaller bite sized lists. Don’t forget to include everything! Even small tasks. Your time is valuable, so you need to know how much time you need to set aside to get everything done.

3- Set your goals. Goal setting has been a big one for us. We thought we had goals, we just never had time to really figure out what we were working towards. Take some time to figure out what you are working towards and why. I believe the why is really important, since it drives you towards your goals. We thought we were working towards a certain level of business, and when it was all said and done we realized that is not at all what we actually wanted. So we had to reevaluate. That is ok, I think we all need to do that every so often. If your goal is to take more vacations or spend more time with your family, you need to know how you can make that happen. Goals are not wishes, they are destinations and once we know where we want to go, we just need to draw the map to get us there.

4- Set a timeline for your lists and goals. You need to give yourself a time frame that you want things to happen or they just keep ticking by just like the rest of your life. It is just like when I ask my son or my husband to do something… If I don’t specify a timeframe (NOW, RIGHT NOW, THIS VERY MINUTE, etc) then who knows if it will ever happen? lol, but seriously… it is true. That is how it is, and if you don’t set a time limit on things it can go on till eternity.

5- Learn new skills. In order to get what you want and do things in a different way, you may need to learn and apply some new skills. Personally, I am like an old dog lol!  I like to do things the way I know how. Learning new things and actually applying them are hard and scary. But it is harder and scarier to keep doing things the old way and getting no where fast. Find someone to teach you, or hire a coach or mentor that is living life the way you want to.

I would love to hear how you all get things done and do life on your terms. Feel free to comment and share if you got value from this! & if you want information on our trip & where we stayed pm me & I will give you the info!