The Reason You Are in a Hurry and What To Do About It
Are you always in a hurry?
I know that I used to be. I lived each day feeling like I was running late. I’d get mad at myself for not “managing my time better.”
Why couldn’t I wake up earlier?
Why couldn’t I go to sleep sooner?
Why did I get stuck in traffic or some other delay that made me have to hurry faster?
And when it came to months, or years, they just started moving even faster.
I gave myself deadlines. I used time blocking for my calendar, thinking that would solve the problem.
But it didn’t.
The more I rushed the less time I had.
That’s when I realized that time wasn’t the problem. Hurrying was the problem.
And I wasn’t hurrying because I thought I didn’t have enough time to do everything I wanted to do.
I was hurrying because I couldn’t keep up with the pace of what I THOUGHT I had to do.
I thought I had to do more, faster. I thought I had deadlines.
But they weren’t my deadlines. They were the rules of the “shoulds.” The rules that I was letting into my life without realizing.
They were the rules and pressures of a life unexamined.
I thought I had to hurry up and go to college and get a degree, then get a job. Then get a better job. Then go get another higher degree and a better job after that.
Then once I had the better job I had to work more. Work longer hours to make more money.
The pressures as a woman were also to hurry up and get married and decide if I was going to have children. And who would I have them with? This was a rather time sensitive issue so there was pressure there.
But wait, there was the career that I hurried up and busied myself to create. Was it the career I wanted?
The moment my mom passed away I realized I couldn’t hurry anymore. In that short second, when she left the Earth, I realized how temporary life is.
I could not live it in a hurry anymore.
But I also realized that I had built my life around hurrying and achieving and building my life based around default goals.
Default goals are the goals of an unexamined, unconsciously chosen life.
They are the goals that we think we have to have because the external world tells us this is what’s best.
And then we hurry to accomplish them because we don’t see how we can have enough time to do everything they require AND still have time for our real goals, which are the ones simmering inside our hearts.
This conflict between default goals and our dreams is what I think makes us hurry.
So, the only way to stop hurrying is to decide; Do you want to focus on building your life based on your dreams and goals, or do you want to continue spending all your energy on your default goals?