I have in the past allowed my life to be driven more by others expectations than my own. I allowed those expectations to be manifest through positions I held and roles I took on.
I allow my life to be cluttered with expectations.
For a time, I was dropping what I was doing and stepping in to look after a job that someone else wasn’t keeping their commitment to, often at the drop of a hat. I found myself juggling what I wanted to do with what was needed in order to pick up the slack created by another.
Then I got sick. I kept on meeting those expectations, putting my own wishes aside to make room for that illness. I figured it was just a bug and if I made a bit of room, it would leave. It didn’t. I ended up in hospital and then a long recovery time.
That illness forced some people to step up and do things that previously I was doing because no one would step up. It decluttered my life. As my strength came back, I decided that the buck would no longer stop with me.
I took back the tasks I wanted to do. What I wasn’t doing though was pursuing business activities that I had long wanted to do.
Then the pandemic happened.
Now my time was 100% mine. I immediately started doing what I’d been putting off for years. I started working on building a business. What an interesting couple of years this has been.
I have more time for writing. More time for reading. More time for spending quality time with myself doing what I want. More time for learning and meeting some neat people.
I’m liking the new life enough, I have zero desire to pick up the other things that held me back. Let someone else carry those loads. I’ve done my time with them.
Have you decluttered your life?