When you feel like you're not spending enough time with family - 3 Planner Tips

When you feel like you're not spending enough time with family - 3 Planner Tips

 

[VIDEO TRANSCRIPT] 

Hello, my friends, I hope you're doing well. Do you ever feel like you're not spending enough time with family, maybe you feel like you're not spending enough time with your children, maybe you feel like you're not spending enough time with your parents who are getting up in age. To be frank, I feel like I'm at the age where I'm seeing a lot of people around me just getting older. And I'm hearing more and more every day about people passing away, more so than I did when I was younger. And that makes me feel more anxious about spending quality time with the people I love.

In this video, I am going to give three planner tips for when you feel like you're not spending enough time with family. My name is Tonya and I make videos on functional and practical planning. If being productive and organize is something that interests you, please be sure to hit the like and subscribe button.

 

TIP 1

So, tip number one for when you don't feel like you're spending enough time with family is to review your values. Values are those things that are most important to you. And they are the foundation of everything you do. I wrote down my values several years ago. 

And actually, here is a list of my values that I wrote down here:

 

I pulled out this old planner page from 12 years ago. And here I wrote down my values, I find that your values don't change. And as you can see, one of my values is family. And it still is. Is one of your values family? See the advantage to writing and reviewing your values is that we get so caught up in everyday life. And sometimes we tend to focus on things that aren't important. If your core, if your foundation is about your values, then you want to make sure you make time for those things that are important to you. So, if you have family written down as one of your values, you certainly have already identified the importance of family to you. 

It seems like back in the day with family, we spent more time with eating together and actually physically being together. But over time, sometimes family can be physically separated. Maybe you don't live close to family anymore. And then sometimes you can be in the same household with family and everyone is so busy, they barely have time to eat together. When you're doing actions aligned with your values that's where self-fulfillment comes from. I feel that family is bigger than that, because it is the core of good communities. And the reason for that is because family is one of the first things that people feel that they are a part of, you're born into a family, you don't have to do anything to belong. And people do. A lot of times they say that they don't, but people do have a need to belong.

People tend to group together with people that are like them. And family is that first unit that somebody is a part of and it's an important part of a person's Foundation, and it can help satisfy their need for belonging.

And to summarize this tip up is basically about reviewing your values and being intentional about your actions as they relate to these things that are important to you. By the way do you like my binder? This binder is called the Tiffany and it has a crock design as you see here it is in a pale pink color. There is a slip pocket on the back that goes all the way down to the spine. And inside there's loads of organization. It comes with a flyleaf with card slots on the back side. There are also numerous card slots a place to slip documents, another pocket divider, a zipper with a gusseted pocket that expands out and the back cover has additional pockets. It has two elasticized pen loops, as you can see here and also a third pen loop on the flyleaf. This binder has seven rings so it can house Franklin planner classic size inserts, Daytimer desk size inserts and a simplified inserts. Also, this binder comes into smaller compact size with the six rings with all the same features you can get this at tonyaplans.com and you can save money with discount promo code TONYAPLANS10.

TIP 2

So, tip number two for when you don't feel like you're spending enough time with family is the usual weekly compass to think about the one thing you can do for the relationships in your life. So, I've shown the weekly compass in my videos before and this is pretty much a form that can slip into a page finder and you complete this each week to kind of guide your life so you don't lose focus of those things that are important in your life.

Now I did a whole video on this. So, I'm gonna go over this really quickly and I'll put that video at the end of this video on the pink screen if you're interested in seeing more about the weekly compass but you don't have to use this form. You can use a blank piece of paper in your planner you can make your own insert with these same categories and fill out the weekly compass. You have options there but the main point of this is a bottom part of the weekly compass deals where roles and that means relationships. So, as you can see, on this weekly compass, I have the role as a mother, I'm a wife, I'm a daughter, and I'm an employee.

Now these first three roles all have to do what my value of family. So, the point here is to identify the roles or relationships that you want to work on and list them here. And then under it, write, the one thing that you want to do this upcoming week, that has to do with that relationship, to enhance that relationship to preserve that relationship. So, for example, I am a mother. So, the one thing I would like to do this week and this role is to watch a movie together with the kids is something inexpensive, is something that we can relax and just do at home is safe, and it's something small that I can do that I feel that I can actually squeeze into my schedule. So let me say something else about the relationships that you have in your life, each relationship takes a piece of your energy. That's right, each relationship that you decide to deal with in your life takes some of your energy; your energy is limited. Have you ever had a day where you gave so much to other people, by the end of the day, you were on E, empty, you are just empty, you had nothing else to give, and you could do nothing but just fall out in bed at night. Well, that's a sign that you may be given too much of your energy to other people. And I say this because society sometimes make us feel like we're being selfish when we take time for ourselves. But I disagree. Because sometimes taking time for yourself is self-preservation. Because if you keep giving, giving, giving, giving so much of yourself that can affect your health and your wellbeing.

So, there's nothing wrong with giving a little to others and saving a lot of for yourself. Because if you take the example of being a mother, when you deal with your children, whether they're grown or not, that takes energy. So, in the example of being a mother, there's nothing wrong with scheduling something small to do with these relationships. Sometimes in some relationships, somebody might live far away, and the best you can do that day or that week is send him a text because you're so busy. The point here is making it intentional to reach out and connect with someone else with the time that you have, so that your relationship doesn't suffer too much, because we're all trying to juggle multiple things.

TIP 3

So, tip number three. And the last tip is to use that information on your weekly compass to actually schedule the time for these items in your planner is not enough to just write them on your weekly compass or on a separate sheet of paper that's not on the planner pages that you see every day. Because if it's not in front of you, you're likely to not do it. So actually, write it on your prioritized daily tasks list to actually call and reach out to someone to make sure that it's in front of you to actually do it better yet, you can even put it in your appointment schedule with times that you plan to do it.

Now I know what some of you are thinking. And I hear this a lot. If people are being honest with me, they'll sometimes say, well, gosh, I don't want to plan that. Because what if I don't get around to it? Let me tell you something, I put things on my planner all the time that I'm not able to get around to. 

The main thing is to write it down, put it on paper, and here's why: Have you ever heard that saying that “Death and life is in the power of the tongue”? Well, it's something like that. And it's actually a Bible proverb. What actually means is be careful what you speak, because what you speak may actually manifest it may actually come to fruition. If you say something negative, like “Oh, well, I'll never lose weight”. You're putting that out in the atmosphere and you know what is likely that you may never lose weight. But if you speak positive things and speak things that are not as if they were so that you can gain confidence so that you can hear it it's bacon inherent, it helps if speaking something out into the atmosphere is powerful. What do you think writing does writing something down is so powerful. 

You know, I was recently watching the movie King Richard, which is about the Serena and Venus Williams tennis players. And I find it interesting in that movie, how it talks about that the tennis players father, his name is Richard and that's why they call it King Richard, how he wrote down a plan for his girls like before they were even born. And often the movie keeps talking about this plan that he wrote so much. So it like irritated everyone but he actually wrote down his plans for his children. And you know, what's amazing is those plans manifested they actually came true. His girls, Venus and Serena are considered to have the best tennis players in the world. That's how powerful writing something down is. Even if you don't get to it that day. And you plan to call your mother and you didn't get around to it because you wrote it down. It feels permanent. It does something in our minds and you will make sure it happens I'm sure by the end of the week, and that's the whole point of it. You may not get to that thing that you want to do because something else came up but you will eventually get to it if you just write down a plan for it.

So, another thing I want to say is when it comes to family now there are some family members that we need to separate ourselves from, because some family members take your energy and there's nothing productive there. But I encourage you to identify your core group of family members that you want to keep in touch with and keep connected with. Because in this life, we need family, we need friends, we need each other. And I talk about family in this video. It doesn't just apply to family by blood, it applies to your friends and those other people that you care about. We don't want to get so busy in life that we forget to nurture our relationships with the people that we care about. Because nine times out of 10, we're going to need those people one day.

Another quick thing I want to say is about us making the time for others time is limited. And it could be that you're really busy with a career and with family and things going on that you can't really nurture those relationships that you have and want to maintain reaching out to people and connecting is so important in this day and time. Some people watching this video may be retired. And they're on the other end of that spectrum where they want to connect with family members. But everyone around them is so busy working and doing other things they don't have time for them. And as I do this video, I'm speaking to myself, because this is an area that I need to work on. And I need to improve with as well.

You know, I recall about 20 years ago, my father-in-law was in the hospital, and I was busy with work. I was a new manager and I was trying to prove myself at work. And I kept saying, you know, I'm going to get to the hospital, I'm going to get to the hospital. Do you know what happened? I kept putting off going to the hospital saying I'm just really busy. I just didn't get around to it. And when I did have time to go to the hospital, I was just so tired because I gave myself so much to work. Unfortunately, what happened was he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and died very quickly after that. And I vowed from that day on whenever someone is in the hospital, I will make it a point to reach out to them and connect with them. Even if I can't get there, they will get a phone call from me. If they can't take my phone call. I'm reaching out to someone else that's close to him to inquire about how they're doing.

And I've said this before in a lot of my videos that my husband has some health challenges, and I've spent many days in the hospital and you will be amazed at how quiet it is in the hospital. Meaning that a lot of times people don't reach out to people in the hospital. And it's sad. I know people cared about my husband when he was in the hospital, but they were so busy doing other things that they didn't get a chance to reach out and reconnect. And in this lifetime, we just never know. So, let's try not to have regrets that we didn't reach out or connect with someone because we were just too busy.

I hope you found these tips helpful. Please don't forget to like this video. Please tell me in the comments, what you do to stay connected to family and friends? I would love to hear about it in the comments. I love talking to you guys. This is Tonya helping you feel more organized, so this can be your best year yet.

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