What To Do With "Free Time"

There is so much social programming around the idea of free time and what to do with it. I want to highlight an area of confusion that I see many people facing when choosing how to view their free time and what we can do with it. So tune into this episode to learn how to TRULY FREE your self with your "free time"

Enjoy!

Transcript

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You're listening to the authentic life connection Podcast, episode number 165. Welcome to the authentic life connection podcast. I'm your host, Seth Lusk. I'm a master certified life coach, author, personal trainer and nutrition specialist. For over a decade, I've been helping people with their dreams and goals for their life and health. I spent many years watching people get frustrated with their journey in life and giving up on taking actions towards their goals. So I dug in deep to find answers to why so many of us face this same frustration and struggle in life. So in this podcast, we're gonna dive in deep on topics surrounding what it means to consistently live a fulfilling and authentic life, where you are unstoppable and taking action towards your dreams and goals. So the only question is, are you ready to start living your most authentic and fulfilling life once and for all? Then let's get started. Shall we? Hey, everyone, welcome back to the podcast. For those of you listening in for the first time, welcome, welcome, you picked a great episode to join in on, it's going to be short and sweet today, so that I free up some more of your time, you're gonna know I'm saying that here in just a minute. Today, I actually want to talk with you all about this concept of free time. And where I see so many struggles in people's lives, both of my clients, friends, families lives when it comes to this concept, this construct this idea of having free time and planning our time. And I wanted to, since we're at the beginning of the year, readdress this topic and kind of put it on your radar to pay attention to, because it's, we're at this time of the year where we are thinking about what do we want to do with our time this year? What do we want to do with our time this year? And what I see so many people doing when they think about how they want to spend their time I hear so many people talking about, oh, I would just love to have more free time, I want to have more free time when I have more free time. You know, and when I when I ask people about Okay, tell me about your idea of free time. What I end up hearing what story I get from the majority of people? Is this idea that free time is this time in which nothing is in your calendar, there's nothing in your calendar. And then I'm like, Okay, well, what do you do with that time, then if there's nothing in your calendar, and the majority of activities range from having drinks, to watching something on Netflix and binge watching binge eating whatever, just, you know, doing something that's, that's really just kind of about checking out of their life numbing out of their life. And other people, it's just kind of like, oh, I don't know, whatever I feel like doing in the moment. And there's this whole idea of spontaneity. And there's something to be said about this. And I want to address these, these two approaches kind of separately. Number one, let's address this approach of when people have free time, they spend it to try and kind of numb out of their life to try and take the edge off their emotional experience of life with doing things with, you know, food, or drinking or watching something or playing some sort of game that sort of mindless and gets there gets their brain out of thinking about their life. And I find it so interesting that so many of us have this goal about the fact that they just want to reach this point where they're not thinking about their life. And when I hear people say this, I'm like, why don't you want to be thinking about your life. And it's usually because they're not living a life that they want to live, and they're not making any plans to change that. They have no idea of even what is the life that they want to be living and how do I create that they're not taking any time to consider this and make plans for it. So they just they would rather just numb out of their life, just kind of check out of it. And you know, kind of take the edge off that pain of surviving a life that they really just cannot stand. And so when they have this quote, unquote, free time, that time is used for just whatever thing that they can think to do that brings them pleasure, and allows for them to numb out of their life. And they're like, you know, that it's like, almost a badge of honor to them that they've they've earned this time where nothing is in their calendar, they have nothing to do. And then they can't even stand to actually do nothing. Because when they get bored, then they start recognizing how painful their life feels to them. Because they're not doing anything in it. They actually want to be doing not doing anything to create a life that they actually want. So their life becomes so obviously painful for them in these these bored times of boredom that they just they need to do something that's a distraction that's a numbing out of their life. And this is what people call having free time. And the other approach that I've Hold you about was this idea of, you know, being not having anything in your calendar and just being spontaneous doing kind of whatever comes to you in the moment, which is usually a numbing out activity. But it can also just be, you know, someone asks you to do something and you're like, oh, yeah, that sounds like fun, let's go do that, or you know, something, someone sends an email to you get an invite to something, and you're just like, oh, yeah, we'll go do that. And there's, there's this whole idea that you're just going to wait until the moment and kind of see what's available around you and pick the most, obviously, pleasurable experience out of all the ones that are available to you. And people act as if this is some sort of, I don't know, goal in life like this is somehow advantageous for them that is somehow, you know, so beneficial to and I'm not here to completely knock spontaneity, spontaneity has its place, I will agree that there's a certain amount of spontaneity in life that has a benefit to it, you know, not getting too rigid with our plans. And, you know, being able to say, You know what, actually, I put that on the calendar. But I think I'm going to do this, this, I wasn't expecting this opportunity to pop up. And that sounds like something I don't want to pass up and just doing something spontaneously, that is really enjoyable for you something that's or it may be something that you just truly value that suddenly you had the opportunity to do. And so you just, you spontaneously without planning, you grasp, you seize the opportunity, and you go for it. This kind of spontaneity, I see the advantage of it. But what I see people doing and calling spontaneity is completely failing to plan anything for their life, because they don't even trust themselves to know what it is that they'll want to do, or to follow through on it. So to them, it's more advantageous to not just just not plan anything, and kind of like, let life reveal itself to you in the moment. And you just kind of go with the flow. And oh, my God is just being spontaneous, and a free spirit and Lala YOLO, and all this stuff. And I just, I find it a bit sad, because when I look in these people's lives that live in this way, there's, there's no idea of the purpose for their life, there's no idea of what their next steps are in their life, that they're excited about building something that's important for them in their life with the time that they have in it. It's just kind of like, who later knew like, life is just lengthy. And I'm just gonna wait and see what it offers me and just take it and they think that somehow this is, I don't know, it's almost like I think it's a virtuous thing to do. And I'm here to say like, This is sad, you have no idea what you want for your life. And you're convincing yourself so much that you that it's not advantageous to even look at what you want for your life, so much to the point that you're just going to survive whatever circumstances flop in front of you, at any moment in time without any idea of a plan of this is what I want for my life. This is what I want to build, this is what I want to do, this is what I want to spend my time contributing to the world into the universe and the energy I want to put into it. It's just you reacting reacting to life, constantly. And a lot of the reactions are about like avoiding tension or avoiding stress or avoiding, you know, difficulty. And I'm sorry, but when we build the life that we truly want, there's going to be an amount of uncertainty, there's going to be a certain amount of, of stress in it. That's how we strengthen things. I mean, everything in our body literally grows from stress. It's granted, it needs to be a healthy amount of stress and enough recovery time in between. But plan stress is how we grow with how we grow muscles. That's how we grow. Memories is how we learn. It's how we do anything. It's how we develop any skill in life is plant stress and recovery. And I see so many people that have, you know, they've gotten this idea in their head, that life is about trying to avoid planning, and just trying to have as much quote unquote, free time as possible. And so today, I want to I want to put something on your radar to begin thinking about that free time. Isn't this this idea that we have, where there's nothing in our calendar, it's just us being bored and trying to avoid our boredom and numbing out and pleasuring ourselves and just kind of reacting to whatever life throws in front of us and, you know, YOLO, whatever. This is not really free time. You're not free in this time at all. You're surviving. You're surviving a story of life that you don't even like you're surviving a story of life that you have no power in. You're surviving a version of life in which you can't decide for yourself even what you want to do so much so that you wait for other people around you to tell you what you should be doing with your life. And then you just kind of INS that'll do it there. Oh, yeah, that's what I'll do right there. and you don't plan anything. And this is this is not free time, it's actually time where you are, you're a slave to a version of life, that you you feel like you just kind of reacting to and surviving. And it's not free, it's not free time at all. And true free time. True free time is time that we actually plan. But it's time that we plan, doing things that are authentically important for us doing things that help us build a life that we see as being valuable, and that contributes things to the world that we are sensitive to, and that we want more of in the world. That is free time. When I look at my calendar, free time has stuff written all in it, things that I want to do, there's so many things that I want to do so many next steps, you know, one step after the other after the other, that when I have when I have quote unquote, free time I fill it up, I fill my calendar up with things that I want to do in it. I fill my calendar up with things that contribute values to the world, that i i value I love, I want to bring more up to the world. I plan out, you know, this is where I am in this chapter of my life. This is this is where I'm going. These are the steps. These are the things that I do in this chapter that helped me build towards that next chapter. These are the things that I fill my calendar with, because they're exciting for me, because they're helping me to build a life that I truly desire, not avoiding a life that I don't want. And this is what I see so many of you all doing and calling free time is using your time to avoid, avoid life, or at least avoid 50% of it. When instead we could be filling our free time with choosing our 50% struggle and choosing our 50% is comfort. So that we can also build a life where the 50% comfort and things we do like are the ones that we want, the ones that we truly want more of. And then we choose the struggles, we choose the uncertainties, we choose the uncomfortable parts of life that help us build more of that. But there's got to be the 5050. And I'm sorry, but if you're spending your time trying to avoid putting things in your calendar, then you're letting life choose the 5050 for you, instead of you choosing your 5050 to build the life you want. And I want to encourage you all to begin thinking that true free time is time that we plan is time that we get into our calendars. And we write out the things that are important for us to be doing in this chapter of our life. That's true free time. It's free, because it is time in which you are doing things that you truly value and want to do. And freeing yourself from a story of victimhood and survival in life. freeing yourself from stories about life that other people handed to you and told you that you had to accept that's true free time. True free time is time in which we empower ourselves and free ourselves up to do more of the things that we value. And I'm not talking about doing more of the things that bring us pleasure so that we avoid the discomfort of life. That's not what I'm talking about. And I get that a lot of you get that really confused. When I talk about doing things that we value. A lot of you are like oh well I value pleasure I value eating food because it's good and it's entertaining and I value you know this and that and all the comforts and, and I value comfort I value security. And yeah, I get to some to some extent we all value comfort and security we have we have a human brain that desires that. But there are also the things in life that you value that are going to ask of you to choose certain amounts of uncomfortableness, certain amounts of discomfort, certain amounts of stress, certain amounts of uncertainty, certain amounts of doing things that you're not familiar with, and not practice that and grayed out yet. And filling our calendar up with those things that allow us to build a life that we truly desire. That's free time. Free time is not a blank calendar. My friends, if your calendar is blank, your time is not free. Because you are merely surviving a version of life that was handed to you. And that is not freedom. If you are not out there using your life to build something that you authentically want. All for the sake of having an empty calendar, my friends, your time is not Free. Your time is not free, if your time is being spent reacting to a version of life that you are told is all that exists for you. And you're just reacting to it, and avoiding the parts of it that you don't like. That's not free time, my friends, true free time. Looks a lot like a very full calendar. And I get that a lot of you are so confused by this. Because so many of us have spent so much time filling our calendars with things that we're doing to people please other people, things that we should need and have to do. Instead of the things that we want to do because it's building the life that we truly desire. So I get how it could look like free time means an empty calendar. But it's truly what free time is as a calendar that is empty, of inauthentic have to need to insured's free time is a calendar that is full of authentic desires, and once and authentic projects and authentic steps of action to build a life that we want my friends, I want us to re imagine our free time and 2024 reimagine it reimagine what free time would look like with a full calendar? What things would you be doing to build a life that is truly valuable and important to you? What does your free time look like when it's when your calendar is full of those things? That is true free time, because you are freeing yourself from surviving a version of life that someone else told you you had to survive. That's all I've got for you all today. Let's get out there. Let's fill our calendars with true free time this year. And let's see what we can build. I'm here to help anyone who's ready to step into that process of truly understanding what is important for you on an energetic and value based level on a purpose level. And truly build a life that you value. And you want to be in all parts of including the uncomfortable parts. I'm here when you're ready. I'll talk to you all again here next week. Until then, ciao. Thank you for joining us today. I hope you enjoyed the content of this podcast. If you did, please subscribe so that you're one of the first people to know when I release a new episode each week. If you have any questions or if you have interest in learning more about the coaching that I do with my clients one on one, then just head over to my website at WWW dot life coach seth.com that's www dot life coach seth.com there you're going to have the ability to reach out to me for questions that you might have or to book your free discovery call with me to discuss what one on one coaching with me might be like for you. You can also check out and order your copy of my book to get a taste of what I'm all about as a person and as a coach. I'm so happy that you joined us today and I hope to have you here again next week. So until then, let authenticity be the guide to your most unstoppable and fulfilling journey of life.