Since last couple of years, I have divided my time into three parts: the first is the time that I like to spend for me, just for me, only for me what I like to do, I don’t want to compromise on it.
Others might say I’m selfish because I don’t want to give this time to anybody else.
But nothing has touched me more than what my body, mind, and heart whispers me to do.
Selfish is a really complicated and difficult word to use in daily practice.
It leaves a negative perception in our mind and thinking process, so I generally try to avoid.
My body and mind always whispers simultaneously to me not to say the word ‘selfish’ to anybody else because I don’t know the other person completely.
Many of us use it too often, too quickly, and too lightly, but I’m always scared to use it in such a way.
Let others use it in whatever way they want. This is their life, their thinking, and their choice.
But my way is different, I really don’t want to use the word ‘selfish’ for people around me, at least after using my conscious second thought.
Michelle Elman, author of ‘The Joy of Being Selfish‘ said, “We have to discover the joy of being selfish and reclaim our life through the art of boundaries, the only way we truly love ourself is if we know ourself.”
The best of me comes only if I push my ‘me’ time over the edge, and this is possible only if I know myself better during my ‘me’ time
If we avoid using the word ‘selfish’, my experience says that we improve our nonjudgemental curiosity and compassion a lot better.
We are living in a fast technological world, we all want to be super successful and super perfectionists so that we become superhuman super quick.
But, in reality, all we need in life is a lot less ‘extra super part’ but a lot more ‘extra human part.’ This is more likely to happen when we don’t compromise time for our ‘me’ time.
‘Me’ time is nothing but a microscopic view of our own life, it is not a selfish moment or selfish thinking.
My picture of ‘me’ time may look unusual for others but it is very common for me.
And I hope this should be the same for you too.
Here is a simple synopsis of my ‘me’ time as an illustration.
I wanted to read Mark Twain‘s ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn‘ even though I was super busy.
But I managed to read it, it put me right into the story and took me to a different place and time. In my opinion, it is a scathing satire on racism and is truly a magnificent piece of art of the evolving society.
Now I want to write about my first dad experience because when my first daughter was born something unforgettable had happened.
I want to meet with my childhood friend in Seoul, South Korea, because I’ve spent my past 20 plus years with him together.
My tomorrow’s 5k running time is conflicted with one of my friends’ birthday party, but I want to run.
I want to travel this weekend, Naperville, Illinois to attend the writer’s club conference where I’d have the opportunity to meet with Paulo Coelho, author of ‘Maktub‘, one of my all time favorite authors.
I want to listen to a specific song by Lata Mangeshwor several times when I am on my patio remembering my deceased grandma.
I want to meditate for 30 minutes on Sunday afternoon outside to elevate my focus level.
I learned that the best of me comes only if I push my ‘me’ time over the edge.
And this is possible only if I know myself better.
And I know myself better only if I spend quality time on myself during my ‘me’ time.
Remember, air hostesses always say put your mask first before helping others.
I hope you got the point.
I didn’t offend anybody by saying ‘no’, I offended myself a lot, most importantly, my health, my confidence with many regrets
The second part of my time is for my family where I want to spend my quality time with my kids, wife, parents, siblings, and close family members.
Nothing is more important than our family bonding. Most of the time, our life revolves around our kids, spouse, parents, and siblings.
I like to stay at home, play with kids, watch movies with them, travel with them, participate in activities that they want to be involved in and make them happy.
I know if I don’t do this now then there would be a list of more regrets on deathbed than my life’s accomplishments.
In Bronnie Ware‘s words, author of the memoir ‘The Top Five Regrets of the Dying‘, published in 32 languages, “Finding the courage to act or surrender will never be as painful as lying on a deathbed with regrets.”
The third part of my time is to dedicate time to my professional work.
This is the time for bread and butter.
In my opinion, this part is no less important than the other two parts by any means.
This is my work for living and that supports me financially and upgrades me every single day by learning something new.
By profession I’m a scientist so I need to be updated on new discoveries, findings, and innovations every single day.
To accomplish my professional goal, I need to work efficiently and smartly, otherwise, my ‘me time’ and ‘family time’ of my life would be affected.
The most difficult part in life is to make balance in ‘me time’, ‘family time’, and ‘professional time’.
It doesn’t happen automatically, it needs a little bit of extra effort and practice.
There are many reasons why it’s difficult to balance but I’m going to mention one which affected my life the most.
In our life, each of these three areas needs to grow without narrowing the other areas.
But, trust me, nobody is perfect even the most charismatic public figure that we have seen and heard, have problems. And, of course, I’m not the exception.
There are a lot of people who are struggling for this balance and have failed, and many are ended with bankruptcy, divorce, and chronic disease.
I’m learning and trying to nurture this balance but my life doesn’t know this balance automatically unless I practice and dedicate my time on how to balance them.
This balance started to appear in my life once I started to say ‘no’ at least a few times very politely and gently to the activities which have no meaning in my life.
But the majority of us are very weak including my dear wife to say ‘no’ to, because we don’t want to offend anybody around us.
There is nothing wrong, this is our human nature.
We have been taught since childhood not to say ‘no’ to people around us.
If we say no, we look rude, bad, and undisciplined in society’s eyes.
In the past days, I didn’t offend anybody by saying ‘no’ then I started to offend myself, most importantly, my health, my confidence with many regrets. So, this became my conscious choice to whom I should offend, myself or other people around me.
Nowadays, I’m matured a bit and if somebody invites me or proposes to me to go somewhere or to do something, and if I don’t want to go or don’t like then I simply say ‘no’, ‘thank you for the invitation’.
I don’t want to give answer, why? Most of the time, this is unnecessary and just waste of time.
This was very difficult in the beginning but I practiced a lot now.
A pause time to look into our own heart and mind for a few minutes daily is never a waste of time, it is an investment of time on our health
I don’t say and will never say, “oh I’m busy, I don’t have time.”
I’m aware that there are always 24 hours in a day, same for all, for me, for Elon Musk, for Donald Trump, for Oprah Winfrey, and for my 9th grader daughter.
It’s not true that I don’t have time, I have time but maybe not for that specific task.
I simply say, “little longer ‘noooooo’ with a nice smile, thank youuuu, though.”
This part is really hard if we don’t practice, I’m still working on it.
The most recent type of ‘no’ that I have learnt is ‘no’ to political news, gossips, and binge watching. In many past years, the amount of time that I spent on political news was insanely high when I look back on my life. I regret a lot, how stupid I was. But, past is past, learned the lesson, move on with a lesson.
To be honest, I never learnt anything from political news and political gossips.
I absorbed every political news just as an addicted habit, it didn’t help a single ounce to improve the quality of any area of my life.
Finally, I realized with the help of my mentors that this is a total waste of time. If you are not a political activist or make a living doing politics, then this is absolutely a waste of time.
Bryan Caplan, Professor of Economics and author of ‘The Case against Education‘ said, “Time spent reading political news should be redirected towards more impactful causes.”
By the way, his book ‘The Case against Education‘ is a persuasive indictment of his own education industry as a professor. In ‘The Case Against Education, Caplan argues that education is grossly overrated in the USA and the primary function of education is not to enhance students’ skill but to certify their intelligence, work ethic, and conformity to signal the qualities of a good employee.
As said by professor Caplan, I also experienced that spending so much time on political news and opinions is not helpful at all.
Most of the political news is intentionally motivated to hook us like binge watching on Netflix to influence and addict us, and finally make us morally and intellectually bankrupt.
I thought, does it really matter to my life which party leader said what in where?
I don’t think so unless I’m a political leader or I make a living by doing politics.
Of course, there are some exceptions.
But exceptions don’t rule our life.
Exceptions are just exceptions.
For youngsters, If you divert the time and attention that you spend on political news to the area of your interest in life that matters the most, you gradually move in the direction of your success.
I’m not saying as a guru or any motivational speaker.
I belong to none of those categories.
I make a living by doing science so I know little bit about the science of body and mind, and how they are connected chemically.
Largely, this is from my own personal experience which is somehow connected to scientific facts.
Political news and binge watching, I believe, are bidirectional.
On one hand, they give us a world of entertainment from early morning that could be quite addictive and can go till late night. On the other hand, they tend to fill our mind with crappy information which has no meaning in our lives.
Not very far in the past, I used to be a young person in a hurry because I used to watch a lot of news on CNN and Fox. All of that time was going from my actual ‘me’ time or ‘family time’ or ‘professional time’.
I used to think consuming CNN was not a waste of time because I’m learning.
Instead, I’d think if I sit quietly doing nothing for a few minutes, that was a huge waste of time for me.
But I recently learned that how we look at our time spent also changes with time.
More years on our living also teaches us how we are maturing daily, weekly, and yearly.
Now I understand that a pause time to look into our own heart, mind, and inner organs for a few minutes daily is never a waste of time.
This is an investment of time on us and especially on our health.
In my view, this is one of the most rewarding investments we can make in our lives.
Remember, physical exercise does good for our health by its repetitiveness, but quietly looking at the mind and soul is internal cleaning. The reward is enormous in the long run.
In my opinion, consumption of political news is only good for career politicians who make ends meet doing politics or the job is related to it directly or indirectly.
Majority of news is motivated by unidirectional political philosophy or by some hidden political motives.
Many political journalists inform us of the twisted news which affects us physically and emotionally.
As far as I have understood, any journalist’s job is not to teach people, nor twist the news.
Their job is to let people know what exactly the news is, as it is, unfiltered.
It’s up to us to decide the right and wrong and make our own decision.
If we learn how to say ‘no’ in many unnecessary things in life, we bring a clear alignment between what we actually do and what we say we will do.
Our mind produces many random thoughts based on our life triggers but our body produces different emotions based on responses, which are completely different.
If we don’t align our thoughts with our emotions then we are doing something wrong.
My experience says that without this alignment, we never produce any happiness in our life.
This misalignment indicates that we are doing something which is not long lasting, we are doing it for temporary purpose.
That’s the exact moment I realized when I was spending my time with political news in front of a television set or on youtube videos.
I was involved and doing one thing by my emotions but my thoughts were completely different and were giving me different instructions.
We humans have the power to pause and think slowly, this is basically a habit to check alignment of our emotions and thoughts, no other animals have this power.
I love Daniel Kahneman‘s book ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow‘ in this regard. Kahneman reveals where we humans can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking.
When any thought, especially after slow thinking, the work of the brain, aligns with emotion, the work of the body, we are in the state of quietness.
This state of quietness is required to break any wrong habits in our lives.
I completely broke my habit of watching too much political news, opinion, and analysis after realizing the state of quietness in my life.
Though, again, I’m not perfect but moving in my direction of happiness slowly.
Knowing this state of quietness is one of the best tools to go from good to great in our lives.
Conclusion
What controls our mind and body is very important and knowing it is extremely powerful.
Sometimes, it’s very difficult to see a fine line between cause and result.
In my view, politics itself is a good discipline of life, it helps to understand our footsteps in society. But in my case, I was not aware of its influence, it controlled me very quickly deteriorating my life.
Remember, If everything is intoxicated including our body, mind, and daily work then treatment becomes our full time job.
We become deprived of our life choices if what we do all day is to fill our mind with toxicity.
Is treatment our full time job?
Possibly, if we feed only toxins in our mind. Many quick ‘yes’ turn into toxins pretty quick in our lives. Learn to say ‘no’.
Nowadays I would rather feed cheerios, milk, and strawberries to my son, play with him, and watch with him than to say ‘yes’ to every things.
I read ‘Selfish Reasons To Have More Kids‘ by Bryan Caplan. One lesson I learned is that we have to mold our kids less and enjoy our life more. By doing this our kids will still turn out fine, and I believe it.
I have watched ‘The Boss Baby’ multiple times with my son, I don’t know the exact numbers but surely many times.
This is a computer animated comedy movie.
My boy especially loves the boss baby character so I’m watching it with him over and over again to make him happy.
Many dialogues and scenes are vivid in my memory.
These dialogues from the movie I use frequently at home to create a fun and healthy environment around the house.
The ‘Boss Baby’ runs the company ‘BabyCorp’. Some of my favorites from ‘The Boss Baby’ but I use them all the time in my life.
“Either you run the day or the day runs you.”
“Success is not linear, it’s a wild ride.”
“Aim for failure, then only you get success.”
“No, no Jimbo, puppies are evil, we babies are losing and puppies are winning.”
“Is this my team? A musclehead, a bunch of yes men, and doodlers.”
My personal favorite is, I believe, it is adapted from Henry Ford, the founder of the Ford Motor Company.
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t – you’re right.”
Remember, the balance of me time, family time, and professional time is for our own health, longevity, and fulfillment.
Never ever compromise your health with anything else in life, there is nothing bigger than your own health, learn to say ‘no’ and invest on your health.
When you get chance, watch this TedTalk by Dr. Caryn Aviv: Say ‘No’ To Say ‘Yes’.
Yam Timsina, PhD, writes primarily on health basics, scientific progress, social upliftment, and value creation.
Disclaimer: “Please note that some links in this post are affiliate links, which means I may receive a small commission if you make a purchase through them, at no extra cost to you.”
