I remember in my early parenting days hearing moms complain that all their two year old would eat was hot dogs and spaghetti. I tried to picture the toddler shopping at the A & P and filling his cart with Hebrew National franks and Ronzoni pasta. Of course, I’m being facetious. While the child wasn’t in charge of the groceries, it appeared he was in charge of the adult.

I frequently hear my clients bemoaning the fact that there’s just not enough time to do what they really want to do–write, create, work on their marketing materials, etc.–because of the other demands on their lives. When I dig a little deeper, which I always do, I find that these clients are putting secondary priorities ahead of what they say they really want.

It’s fine to go for physical therapy, show up for your child’s teacher conference and take care of an ailing family member. We all have those necessities to attend to. What I strongly urge, though, is that you set aside sacred time for what is important to you and honor that so the car repairs, dentist’s appointments and grocery shopping are not done during your best working hours.

In a session yesterday, a client of mine with a global idea, just committed to spending 8 hours a week on research. That means that she may choose to go to the library each Sunday from 1-5pm in addition to finding one hour four times a week for this piece of her business development. By July she will have spent 64 hours digging into the topic she’s passionate about and will undoubtedly have increased her expertise exponentially.

After she experienced the feeling of having all that time for exploration, she said, “Maybe I’ll give up that tennis game we talked about earlier.” Her priorities and mission became clearer and she realized that she was in charge of how quickly her dream might become a reality.

If you find yourself thinking, it’s not happening fast enough, I’m not where I want to be, and everything else is taking priority in my life, you might want to ask yourself who’s spending your time.