Time is not on my side…

Photo by Heather Zabriskie on Unsplash

My newborn son seems to be a guts who gorges himself on Mum’s milk. Why do I think this? He seems to require a burp fairly regularly, you can put him down and ten minutes later he needs another burp to settle.

My son seems harder to settle than my daughter was when she was a baby. Saying that compared to many babies he’s still pretty good, particularly at gaining weight.

Last night I wanted to go to sleep and it took me about an hour and a half to settle him before he went to sleep. I think I counted eight burps and three vomits, one which went all over me. Given that my plan was to rise at 5 am and get back into my normal pre-baby routine of driving to the office, go for a run and then do a days work I was getting stressed about the lack of sleep I was about to have.

My wife and I have already had discussions about “it won’t always be like this” or “we’ll be able to do X again soon.” In these moments it is very easy to long and hope for the current period in life you are in to end.

One saying my Father has said to me regularly is “don’t wish your life away, it will go quicker than you think.” This was mainly said to me during exam periods when I would say “I can’t wait til next week when I am on holidays!”

As I get older I appreciate the wisdom of my Father’s words more and more. The simple fact is life does go quicker than you think. I now have a three year old daughter and it doesn’t seem that long ago I wasn’t a father.

So as I tried calming my son last night after getting over my frustration and stress of “why won’t you go to sleep!” I began thinking “won’t be like this forever” but instead of hoping for it to end, I thought the real frustration is that I don’t have enough time. 

I don’t want this magic period to disappear in a haze. My son is a newborn and is only a newborn for a very short period. Soon he won’t be curled up in his little newborn hunch, soon he won’t be so dependent on me and soon I’ll long for the day when he was a baby.

At the same time I still want to achieve so much everyday. I want to write my blog, go running and train for Ultramarathons, play with my daughter, hang out with my wife, work on other projects that interest me, go to work and any number of other things including sleep (ideally 8 hours, but this is a pipe dream at the minute). If only time was limitless and I wasn’t stressed about one area limiting another. If only I wasn’t standing there late at night thinking “I need to go to sleep, I have these three things to do tomorrow.” But unfortunately time isn’t limitless and when we get stuck in a moment, that puts pressure on our time, we can get stressed.

Given I cannot create more time to allow me to enjoy moments more, all I can do is prioritise where I put my time and efforts. Some of this I covered in a previous post about my hierarchy of fulfillment. The other area I need to improve is living in the moment more, instead of thinking about tomorrow or that thing I need to do and it’s 11.30 pm and I want to go to sleep. I need to appreciate the moment I am in, and enjoy my baby son for who he is as he won’t be like that for very long.

Unfortunately the Rolling Stones weren’t right when they said “Time is on my side.”

 

The hierarchy of fulfillment…

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

At some point during almost every day or multiple times I will feel like a failure as a father, husband, in business or just about anything I do.

I am not sure if anyone else feels or thinks these thoughts regularly. I’ve never really spoken to anyone in depth about it. The thoughts typically are not serious and I will get over them. How long they stick around depends on how long I dwell on them.

Some of the problem stems from my endless need to be achieving something almost all of the time. I discussed this in a recent post see here.

The trap that I will often fall into is I will feel I am not doing enough in one area of my life, then I think I’ll need to do more to fix it but, that will mean I will neglect other areas and fail in them.

The other compounding factor is I regularly over think things and often spiral down into completely implausible negative scenarios. So I’ll think X will happen at work, if that happens I won’t have a job, then I’ll lose my house etc. All the thoughts are madness and I often can calm down by stepping back but if left unchecked it can run wild.

An instance of this played out today. I am currently on paternity leave. But I have to get something done for work, my thoughts went along the lines of;

• I need to concentrate on that. I’m tired and don’t have much time so maybe I won’t be able to do that properly.
• That means I might make a mistake.
• That could be a disaster.
• That could mean I don’t have a job and I’ve failed in business.

Completely mental I know but that’s what minds do.

I pulled myself back. Walked through that what I have to do doesn’t have these huge consequences and I’ll get what I need to get done, done. I’ve done this many times before and it will work out just fine. Problem solved? Not quite.

It wasn’t just the work matter that caused me mental turmoil. As mentioned I’m on paternity leave and so this is a special time with my son who is now just one week old. So on top of the work issue I then went on to think, I am wasting this special time thinking too much about work and ruining time that I will never get again. This point did have some merit.

So what am I doing about this issue of over thinking things and using energy on mind contortions.

Well meditation really does help. It helps me quiet the mind see what’s going on and see thoughts simply as thoughts that arrive and disappear. It also helps stop the spiral down I find.

Meditation though at the moment I am not doing as regularly as I should as I am out of routine.

So what else am I doing? Well I sat with my son this afternoon. This then satisfies my hierarchy of fulfillment.

I developed this in my mind a while ago when I looked at life and thought about when I get to the end what is it I will want to have achieved and, what really forms my identity and gives me fulfillment.

I have a list in my mind of things that fulfill and are important to me and have them ranked. The items at the top I will make time for, and something lower on the list can be sacrificed to fulfill something higher on the list. So for instance my family is number 1 on the list so I can sacrifice doing something else if time needs to be spent with the family or they need me. I then can justify not getting other matters done as the hierarchy has been satisfied.

This system has helped me prioritize what’s important to me and really help me try and focus on things that are important. It’s also helped me form an identity and work out what makes me, me.

I still need to stay busy and do things but hopefully I’m getting better at doing the things that will make me feel most satisfied first. I am still perfecting following the hierarchy, but it is helping soothe me and feel comfortable that I haven’t answered that email or I haven’t replied to that text message.

I encourage you to assess your hierarchy of fulfillment and what gives you fulfillment and makes you, you. Write it down if you have to, one thing I would say, don’t share it with everyone it’s yours.