Could these simple sacrifices help you to make more time in your day and improve your chances of smashing your goals?
Read on to find out.
Our biggest obstacle: Time
The single biggest obstacle that we face in our forties, I believe, is a lack of time.
It can feel like a constant struggle to balance our busy family (kids), work and social life with our own personal challenges.
Whether that’s getting fit, losing weight, eating right, improving your productivity or starting a new/side business.
All of those things need time, and time is hard to find when there are a billion and one things to be done at home and at work.
So, how do you make the time to focus on our own challenges?
One answer is by making sacrifices.
The successful know how to make sacrifices
From top athletes to the titans of business, you don’t have to look very far to see how successful people around the world (or even in your own city, village or your own home), make regular, simple sacrifices all the time in order to succeed.
They know that they have to take the hit now and sacrifice some comfort because they will benefit more in the long run – no matter how unpleasant that sacrifice is or how tempting that comfort might be.
Comfort: Our default setting
Our brain’s default setting is for comfort. Just to get through life by following the path of least resistance while preserving energy and calories. We’re naturally drawn to it.
That’s why we need to make sacrifices in order to push ourselves that bit harder and teach the body that we can do more and survive just fine.
Those that sacrifice the most, usually achieve the most.
When you think about it, there are literally hundreds of micro and macro sacrifices we can make to make to find more time and help us smash our goals.
That’s not to say we shouldn’t ever take the time to relax.
But knowing when to make sacrifices and push ourselves is a great way to move more quickly towards those goals – and relaxing once your goals have been achieved is always much, much sweeter.
Making sacrifices
Getting up early to go to the gym, is sacrificing sleep in order to get fit.
Eating a piece of fruit rather than cake for dessert is sacrificing, well…. cake, in order to stay healthy or lose weight.
Cycling to work is sacrificing speed and comfort in order to be more environmentally friendly and improve your health and fitness.
Doing a simple stretching routine for 10 minutes before going to bed is sacrificing time sitting on the sofa in order to preserve and improve your strength, flexibility and mobility.
And staying at home to work on your side project rather than going to the pub is sacrificing a night out with your mates in order to focus on your own future.
Depending on what your goals are, there are loads of simple sacrifices you can make to help get you there quicker.
The three simple sacrifices I make to make more time
After I turned 40, and after a lot of soul searching and discovery, I realised that I was miles away from where I wanted to be in a few different areas of my life.
My health and fitness, my career and my financial wealth being the most problematic.
Slowly but surely I’ve been learning how to turn these things around, and most recently I’ve implemented the following three simple sacrifices into my life in order to create more time (and resources) to help me conquer these challenges.
The three simple sacrifices…
1. Alcohol
This year I decided to make a huge sacrifice and quit drinking alcohol for the entire year. Not because I had a problem with drinking, but because I realised that drinking alcohol was stealing so much of my precious time.
Related: 21 benefits of giving up alcohol for a month
Spending money on alcohol three or four times a week is also expensive, and isn’t congruent with my intention to save more money.
Drinking alcohol uses a lot of time. Sitting around in bars and pubs or just drinking at home may be a nice way to spend the evening, but it isn’t going to move me towards my goals very fast, and I need all the time I can get.
The worse consequence of drinking alcohol for me though wasn’t the money or time spent in pubs.
It was the hangovers that would rob me of my motivation, energy and even more precious time – usually whole weekends.
2. Watching sport
I used to spend such a lot of time watching football (usually drinking beer and eating chips at the same time) until I realised that I was using up all of my own free time to watch other people achieving their dreams, while mine own dreams lay gathering dust.
Related: Goals. Are they for you?
On the weekend I could spend hours watching games, reading the post-match reports and actually feeling angry or depressed if my team lost – they usually do lose.
I was wasting hours of my own time focussing on them when I should have been focussing on me. These days, my weekends are much more fulfilling.
Related: 20 things to do without drinking alcohol
As for the football, I now spend about 5 minutes checking the scores and I only watch the occasional game if it’s a really big match.
3. Consuming news/social media
I also used to waste a lot of time scrolling through Facebook in the evenings (usually drinking a beer and commenting on football-related posts) -drowning in the information overload.
Then there was the news to check, the reports and videos to watch the comments to read, then spend time thinking and worrying about it all.
Hours per day, gone.
These days I use my evenings to either read, learn, work, stretch, meditate or do a bit of exercise. All of which I find enjoyable, relaxing and congruent with my goals.
What could you sacrifice to make more time?
I now make these three simple sacrifices all the time, and I barely notice they’re gone.
What I’ve gained is so much more valuable, as the extra hours that I now have every day help me to build and create the life that I really want.
And once I’ve achieved my goals, you can be sure I’ll be sacrificing some of that hard work for a little more comfort.
So, what will you sacrifice now in order to move closer to your goals?
Let me know in the comments below or over on the Smashing Fifty Facebook page.