My client came to me wanting to create a better schedule for his day. He wanted to have clear times and blocks for all the things that were important to him. He wanted me to share how he should do that, and I felt resistance.
Why? I did not have the answer for him, because our human experience is so varied. We are all different and there is not a single strategy that works for each and single of us. We kept going, back and forth, between our coaching sessions, me gently pushing him to find his own answers on how to organize his days.
The number one piece of advice I shared with him was to honour himself and honour the type of person he was. The same goes for you. We really don’t want to start fitting the square peg into a round hole. We don’t want you to change who you are as a human being to become someone completely different. We want to honour your strengths and inclinations, we want to keep what is working for you.
Ask yourself: What works for me right now? Perhaps, if you are a creative person, you need to have flexibility in your schedule to honour that. Perhaps, if you are a night person most productive in the evening, we need to honour that as well. If you love organization and schedule, let’s keep that.
The point is to build on what is already working for you. As a coach, I will not advise you to create a rigid schedule when you are a creative. I will not encourage you to start waking up at 5am when you work at night and sleep at 1m. I will not recommend ditching all your time plans if you need that concrete layout for the day.
Sometimes, we try to become what we are not. We stubbornly try to fit the peg into the wrong hole. The thing is that it never works, long-term or until we burn out. This is not to say we should not strive to be the best possible versions of ourselves, we should 100% do that. However, we should do that honouring our natural way of functioning that works for us.
Last year, for a couple of weeks I tried waking up at 6am. I got that alone, contemplation time I craved, but by 9pm I was sleeping on the sofa while my son jumping all over me. I didn’t have time to be with my husband, missed that connection between us and I felt exhausted. It felt like a constant struggle. It was not working for me. Now, I wake up around 7am and have my alone-contemplation time right after my husband and son leave for work and school. I go to sleep around 10pm or 11 and I get my time to hang out with my husband or read. It feels so much more natural.
When you want to create a new habit or give your full self to becoming the best possible version of yourself, going head-on for your dreams, don’t try to fit your square self into a round hole. Use what you already have and what is already working for you, and build on that. There is no one-size-fits-all. What works for your friend might not work for me. What works for a ton of other people, might not be right for you.
And my client? He recognized that he is a creative person and that doing the same things every day does not work for him. Organizing his day became easy once he realized his natural tendency for spontaneity. He felt better, getting rid of that guilt of not doing things in a particular way.
It doesn’t matter how you get to your goal, what matters is that you get there while having fun and enjoying the journey.
