Quality Time, Quality Relationships

When I sat down to evaluate the things that make me happiest, the first category I came up with was relationships. Many of my moments of Blissful Timelessness occur when I am spending quality time with the people I love.
Within relationships, there are several categories: My family, My friends, My love life
First, let’s take a look at my family. As a single mom, my immediate family consists of my three sons and the two girlfriends that live with us. Quality time with my sons is one of my favorite things!  When I applied the Pareto principle, I realized that I often put off time with my children for other things, that are less important to me, like work, television, books, etc.
With that in mind, I evaluated how much time I spend with my boys and decided to turn it around and make quality time with them a priority.
I have a different relationship with each of my three sons. Each of them expresses and expects love in a different way. Each of them also has different interests.
The key to making changes in my life is taking baby steps.
As a task oriented person, I decided that it may be best for me to schedule time, somehow, putting it on my to do list will make sure it happens. I don’t want this to be just another thing on my ever growing list of items that needs to be done, I want it to be special. The boys each agreed to a date night with mom, once a month. This quality time I crave with my children, must be a mutual desire, as they all agreed to family dinner every Sunday as well. So, My handy bullet journal gave me a place to schedule dates with each son and write in family dinner.
One caution here is that sometimes life happens and we miss a date or family dinner is replaced with some other obligation and that is ok. The important thing is making it a priority without the guilt, if plans have to change.
I don’t want to feel guilty if I have to reschedule, so, if I reschedule, it has to be a mutual decision and something important. Healthy boundaries are important and establishing boundaries around the things that are important to me feels good.
Identifying what is worthy of a cancellation or reschedule and what is not worthy, upfront makes it easy when something comes up.
So, there you have it, I was able to add family dinner to my schedule and date night with each son. Simple baby steps that make me happy and fulfill me.
Later, I will talk about how I added my other relationships to my priority list and dig into the other 9 categories on my life balance wheel.

Quality Time-Quality Friendships

 If a man is measured by the quality of his relationships, what is your measure?
I have a lot of acquaintances but only a few people that I truly call my friends.We truly are pack animals and we are not meant to be alone.

One common theme in almost all of my life drama...is relationship.

I do not always listen to my heart when I make decisions. I do not always do what is best for myself.
When I started evaluating most of my troubles, I found a common theme. I am and always have been a crappy friend. Its true, my friends will tell you so...

I am not being non chalant about it, but I am facing my own truth. In order to find my happiness, I need to be brutally honest with myself. When I sit down and think about it, honestly... I am a bad friend.

Again, I cannot go back and change the past and no amount of sorrow can change it, so I CHOOSE to change it now and make an effort to do it better from here on out.

In order to do this, I decided to focus on my current relationships and make a better effort.

The first thing I did was sit down and think about the friends I have, and the people that are important in my life.

One of the things that makes me a bad friend is I am not really great at staying in touch.

As I have said in the past, depression is really ugly and it causes me to isolate. Isolation perpetuates the viscious cycle of depression and keeps me from spending time with the people I love. In turn, the isolation from the people I love makes me more depressed.

I often rely on my friends to reach out and stay in touch. Of course, I reach out when I need something, even if I just need an ear, or a shoulder, but if I am going to be brutally honest with myself, I am going to recognize the fault I play in the relationships and this.. not keeping in touch and only reaching out when I need someone is one of my greatest faults.  Its not pleasant, being so brutally honest with myself, it hurts. But, if I want to be happy and I want to make necessary changes, I have to face the facts and admit the part I play in this, even when it sucks to admit it.

Quality relationships can make all the difference when times are hard, so isolating myself when things are bad (depression) is not the best thing for myself.

My friends are always there for me, I know if I reach out they will be there, but I am not sure they can or would say the same about me. I have been so hung up in my own drama, depression and self that I am not sure my friends trust that I am and will always be here for them. That is a sad thing to admit about myself.

Part of this healing process and admitting my faults is walking a thin line. I want to be brutally honest with myself, but I do not want to get sad or depressed at the past and my past mistakes.

Keeping that in mind, all I can do is focus on the future and what I can do to be a better friend.

I started reaching out more. A simple "Happy Friday" text or "I saw this..... and it made me think of you" The Pareto principle really does apply here.. it does not take much effort to reach out and let my friends know that I am thinking about them. The benefits, (the 80%) are exponential, I feel good because I am talking to someone I care about, the relationship thrives because I make an effort, my friends know I am here and present and they can count on me and all of that equals Happiness.. which was the goal in all of this self analysis afterall.

Applying the Pareto Principle to my Relationships

 

In my last post, I talked about applying the Pareto principle to my life. I broke my life down into categories and now I am going to break down each category into the things that I can apply 20% of my effort to, in order to get 80% of the output or happiness, I am looking for.

One of the ways I used to identify what makes me most happy, was looking for moments of blissful timelessness, or moments when I am able to be present in the moment, when I am happy and nothing before or after makes any difference, I am perfectly content right here and right now.

When I started paying attention, I noticed that relationships made me most happy. I am happy when I am spending quality time with the people that I love.

Ironically, when I started to track the amount of time I spent on the things that were most important, I was pretty disappointed with myself. But, this new lifestyle of mine prohibits me from focusing on what I have done wrong, all I can do is focus right now on making it right.

So, I grabbed my handy bullet journal and started writing. Quality time with people I love is something I want to do more of. I often get caught up in my work or in my anti-work (aka relaxation time) like watching TV, reading books etc. I turn down quality time with the people that are important to me, when love and relationships is absolutely one of the things that makes me happiest.

I cannot remember which book I read, that led me on an exercise (Please tell me if you know of it). In this exercise, I had to write what I want said about me at my funeral. If you could be an angel, watching your own funeral services… what are the people saying about you? More importantly… what do you want them to say about you?

Have you ever heard of someone, on their eve of death who is reflecting upon their life…. say, “I wish I had worked more!”? I haven’t. I hear people say, “I wish I had told someone that I loved them,” “I wish I had spent more time loving_______”",” I wish I had been more fearless,”

Why then.. do I spend so much time focused on my work? I could list a hundred reasons why I spend my time on work… but, really we are living in the moment and doing what makes us happy, so I wont focus there… I will focus on spending more quality time with people I love.

Did you use relationships as one of your categories? What one thing can you do to start improving your relationships? What gives you blissful timelessness?