Episode #12 Making the Most of Our Time: Choices That Show What Matters Most 💡⏰

Hey there, friend! 🌟 Ready to dive into another episode that just might change how you see the ticking clock in your life? Join Landy Peek as she takes us on a heartfelt journey exploring the concept of time—how slippery it can feel, and why we often think of it as something that slips through our fingers like sand. But are we really wasting it, or are we just not seeing its full value?

Landy kicks things off with some personal stories that might just remind you of your own. Ever find yourself lost in thought, wondering where all the time went? Yep, we've all been there! But what if downtime isn't the enemy we think it is? What if it's actually a secret ingredient to a richer life? Landy makes the case for why those moments of "doing nothing" are actually doing something pretty incredible.

And speaking of time, have you noticed how it seems to fly when you're with family? Landy shares why those moments with loved ones—especially our kiddos—are more precious than gold. I mean, how often have we been caught up in the whirlwind of responsibilities, only to look up and realize how much our kids have grown? Or how our parents, who once seemed invincible, are showing signs of aging? These experiences are gentle nudges, reminding us that time is finite.

But here's the good news: we have choices. We can decide how we spend our time and what truly matters to us. Feeling a twinge of jealousy seeing someone else's life? Landy suggests spinning that feeling on its head by recognizing we're all on different paths. It's all about embracing where we are and what we value.

So, what about those days when you feel torn between what you need and what others need from you? Landy’s got some wise words on balancing our own needs with caring for others. It's about creating a life where our time isn't just managed but aligned with what we truly value.

Takeaways:

Time might feel like it's slipping away, but it’s how we perceive and value it that counts.
Downtime is crucial—let's stop labeling it as wasteful.
Our values and priorities are mirrored in how we choose to spend our time.
Family moments, especially with kids, are irreplaceable and fleeting.
Aging parents can change how we view time, underscoring its finite nature.
We have the power to choose what we value and how we spend our time.
Jealousy can be reimagined by appreciating the uniqueness of our own journey.
Balancing self-care with caring for others is key to a fulfilling life.
Aligning time management with personal values enriches our lives.

Tune in, reflect, and maybe grab a cup of coffee as you think about how you're weaving the fabric of your time. Let's make sure it's something beautiful and full of meaning. 🌼

Remember, you’re not alone on this journey. 🤝💕 This episode is perfect for sharing with someone who could use a little pick-me-up. Let's join forces and start making life easier and better together, one step at a time.

Want to connect with Landy? Here's how:

Check out Landy's brand-new free workshop and workbook, "Get Unstuck to Get What You Want" workshop & workbook It's packed with tips and exercises to help you move forward.

Follow Landy on Instagram for inspiration and motivation.

We’re all in this together, so let’s lift each other up!

Episode Transcript

Landy Peek (00:00)
Welcome to the Landy Peak podcast. I'm your host and friend, Landy Peak, and I am thrilled to have you join me. In each episode, we will explore what makes life truly fulfilling. Happiness, deep connections, and self -discovery. Together we'll uncover that happiness is not a destination, but a way of living. Now, let's dive into today's episode.

Landy Peek (00:32)
Hello and welcome. I'm Landi Peek and I am so thrilled that you are joining me for the Landi Peek podcast. And thank you for spending time and taking time out of your busy life to do something that is good for you. So today we're going to be talking about something that impacts us all.

Something that we probably all struggle with. Something that often feels elusive and that we want more of.

And that something is something that we can waste and never get back.

And that thing is time. Have you ever noticed you can lose yourself scrolling on your phone for what feels like minutes only to realize that you've lost an entire hour? We've all been there. We've all frittered away our time and then beat ourselves up for spending that time on unfulfilling tasks, energy that was wasted.

with people who draining or just spent doing something that was joyless. but my question today is all about how we look at time.

because I'm not sure there are ways that we can waste time. I think there are ways that we can use time more effectively to get things that we want. But I also think that our brain needs downtime. And I think as a society, we often see that downtime as a waste. So let me share a story. gave you an example from my own life. So this past Saturday, I woke up and I...

was just in a rotten mood.

It was one of those days where people breathe next to you and it just irritates you. Or as they're chewing, it's driving you crazy. There was nothing really wrong. It's not like I could identify something in my life that was making me mad. I wasn't mad at anyone. I wasn't upset at anyone.

I had just woken up on the wrong side of the bed. And all morning, no matter what I had tried, whether it was a little time alone or trying to exercise or turning on music, my mood was the same. I was still cranky. And I was being cranky with my family and they weren't doing anything but being themselves. So I came to a point where...

I had to tell my husband, hey, I'm not mad at you. I just need some space. I can't be with you right now. I can't be with anybody right now. And so I went upstairs, I climbed back into bed, closed myself off from everybody, let my husband handle whatever was going on for the day and read a good book. And I was cranky reading the book, but I was still reading a good book.

And as I let myself just be in my cranky mood, where I wasn't impacting anyone else with my cranky mood, what I started to feel was that I had wasted the day. I had wasted all of that time where I had a huge to-do list to do over the weekend. It's fall here in Colorado, so there's a lot of different things that I just needed to get done in general weekend stuff and...

getting ready for winter coming, putting away the hoses, putting the garden to bed, always stuff that I need to do with chickens and kids and house and all of that kind of stuff that's just daily living stuff. And I had a huge list and I didn't get any of it done.

And by late afternoon, I was really feeling guilty and bad about myself for wasting the day. But here's the kicker. We had an event with some friends that evening. And by the time dinner rolled around, where it was now time for us to like eat and then get ready so we could go out with friends, my mood had shifted.

So my question is, I didn't get anything productive done, but did I really waste the day? And I think a lot of times we have this artificial sense of time. When I looked up time on the internet to just see what I can find, like what are the searches on time? What I found is all about time management, all about how we can be more efficient with our time, better with our time. And I think if we shift it,

and look at more how do we want to spend our time and how are we okay spending our time? Because I can tell you, in my early 20s, and probably teens as well, but early 20s, spending the day reading a good book felt very good and valuable. It wasn't until I really stepped into parenthood and being a real adult,

that I started having all of these beliefs around time, around how I had to be so productive, around how I had to manage my time. And yes, having kids and having a business and having a partner and having all the animals that we do, they are all things that take up my time. And I do have to manage my time differently because I have other beings, my children, that I have to get places and I have to take care of.

and I have to follow schedules because school gets upset when you drop your kids off several hours late. So there's things that I just in the world that I'm living in have these constraints around my time. But did I really waste the day?

While I felt that I really wasted the day, and I felt guilty, and I felt frustrated, because when I woke up on Sunday morning, I still had this list of things to do, and I didn't get any of it done on Saturday.

I didn't go through the day making other people sad and unhappy. I also was able to shift my mood. So by the time we went out with friends that evening.

I had a really amazing time. equally important, my husband and kids had a really fun time. It was an event that was really fun as a family, and we got to enjoy it with some really awesome friends.

And I think that was really valuable because I think if I continued to push like I had pushed through the morning and I was just grumping at everyone, no matter what I was doing, and I was grumping at the activities and I was not pleasant to be around, I think I would have held that energy instead of giving myself time and space to step back and say, okay, I'm just giving myself a break. I don't have any idea why I'm grumpy.

but I'm going to give myself a break. And the really awesome thing when we're taking these breaks, sometimes we still need to feel that we're supported. And so as I've locked myself in my room, my husband sends me this meme and it's just that beautiful merger of I'm giving you your space.

but I'm still here and I love you. I love text. I think there are so many ways and so many times that upsets have been diffused in my household because of a text where we can send a text and there's a little humor in it. And it's enough to just shift because you're not face to face with that person where you're start arguing again, but it's enough to be like, hey, I'm here, right? And you can bring in that humor.

and deactivate the situation.

My daughter has a gizmo watch and I can't tell you how many times it has worked beautifully with her when she is mad at me for who knows what and I can send a text and it's just that little reach out that kind of deactivates and allows us to come back together.

So as I'm sitting in my bed for my Saturday afternoon, and I'm spending the time first reading and then grumping at myself for wasting the day, I grabbed my phone and I started looking up time.

and got curious about time.

And so much of what I found was how to use it better, how to use it more effectively. And yes, I think there's times where we need that, right? There's times where we need to figure out how to manage our time and budget our time so that we can get the things that we need to do in the day. But I think the biggest waste of our time, if you want to call it a waste, is the time that we're shaming ourselves around the time that we spent doing something that we didn't see as valuable.

scrolling on our phones, laying in bed and reading. So it's those times that I think are really the waste is when we're hard on ourselves because I don't think there's a misuse of time. I think we get a choice and we can choose how to use our time in different ways. I think the misuse idea comes because we don't value certain tasks over other tasks. And I think we need to allow ourselves to have that downtime.

where we're not so hard on ourselves because we're giving ourselves a break.

So as I sat there scrolling on my phone, looking up time.

What I found was so much of the information out there is how to use time better.

how to really be effective with our time, time management skills, more judgment on how we're using our time.

But I also found some really key things that I thought were so valuable.

And one of the things that stood out was time reflects our values.

Time shows who we really are.

There's so much out there, time is a gift, it's not to be wasted, we all have the same 24 hours in the day. So and so made millions, shouldn't you be more effective with your time? I don't think it has anything to do with time and how somebody made millions and you didn't or I didn't.

I think it really comes back to time reflects our values. Time reflects who we are.

because that's really where we're focusing our time, right? And we get to choose it every day. We get to choose how we spend our time.

don't many of us like daydream that we wanna go on vacation to just be able to lounge around and like have all the time in the world to do nothing. But then when we do it in our real life, spend that time and do nothing, we shame ourselves for doing that. But maybe if we come back to time reflects our values, time shows us who we really are. I love those two quotes that came out.

that it really comes down to.

how we spend our time and how we view how we spend our time really does show us what we're valuing most and how we think about ourselves. So giving myself time and space is what I needed. It's 100 % what I needed. And I was able to honor that, but I didn't value it because I sat there and tried to shame myself for spending that extra time.

And I think as we look at how we spend our time, it really is an aha in a lot of what we truly value in the moment. Are you spending your time with your family? Are you spending your time on your business? subconsciously, this is showing us what we truly are valuing and putting out in the world.

So if my whole focus is on my business, even though I say family is a high value for me, but if I'm spending all my time on business, focusing on making money, truly that is what I'm valuing in that moment.

And it happens in reverse, right? Where we say, want more money, I want to grow my business, I want to do big things, I want to be known. But that's not where we're spending our time.

where we're spending our time is what we value and how we see ourselves. Because I think there's some overlap in there. I think sometimes we spend our time on the things that maybe we don't necessarily value or want to value, but it's how we see ourselves. We see ourselves as a mother, so we spend time as a mother. We see ourselves as a worker, so we spend time as a worker. We see ourselves, this is part of our inner identity. We see ourselves

as a volunteer, so we spend time volunteering. It really is showing us who we are and what we value. And if we wanna sit down and say, okay, this is how I'm living my life right now. This is showing me who I am and what I value. Does this align with who I want to be and what I want to value?

And I think it's such an aha thing that just like really let me see over the weekend. Okay, here's a dissonance in I really want to be somebody who values giving me my system what I need. I really want to be somebody who values spending time with my family. But am I actually spending the time?

to do those things? Am I actually aligning with the things that I want at the same time?

So it was really interesting. As I'm diving into these ahas of, my gosh, time really is who I am and what I value. I also came upon a statistic by 1000hoursoutside.com. That's where I found it, it's on the website. And it says 75 % of the time that we spend with our kids in our lifetime will be spent by the time they're

at the age of 12.

And that floored me and made me incredibly sad. there was another quote I found that shared by the time that we are 20, 20 years old, we have spent 90 % of the time that we will spend with our parents.

The last 10 % is over the decades.

that we are adults.

And that really hit me. So I'm in this really interesting sweet spot that I think a lot of people my age in their 40s, are finding themselves where I'm revisiting my life. I'm looking at that kind of midlife. Hopefully 50s is closer to midlife than 40s, but like to live over 100.

That's my goal. But I'm in this really sweet spot where I'm in my 40s and I also have young kids because I had kidd- kiddos later in life. So I have younger kids and I have aging parents and aging in-laws and I have aging grandparents. I am so fortunate. Two out of three of my grandmas are still here on earth with us and doing phenomenally well. And it's

really incredible to be in this spot where I'm seeing so many different generations of life and how

We're looking at this and handling this. And I sit with this quote, 75 % of the time that we spend with our kids in our lifetime will be spent by the team by the time that they're the age of 12. And I'm like, OK, my daughter's almost 10. I mean, they have little over two years to cram in as much as I can. So my brain is going and I do. I have consciously decided my husband and I have consciously decided that we are really

putting our time where our kids are and with each other. but that does mean that we are making choices that maybe aren't fulfilling us in other ways. Me specifically, I am consciously choosing to work during school hours so that I am there.

to drop off my kids, to pick up my kids, to be there at all class parties and field trips and all of that kind of different things because I really value that.

And it's something that I really have consciously chosen and my husband has consciously chosen to spend our time there with our kids. He is incredibly good at taking off time. So I have my own business. So I have the flex. I just block off the day. But my husband actually has a job that he has to take off time, but he's really good at taking off time. So he always takes half time for birthdays. If he can, he's there for class parties.

He's there for events. And I love that we have chosen this as a family. And this isn't saying that if you've chosen different, is mine's good and yours is bad. Absolutely not. We all get to choose what is right for us. We all get to choose what is best for us. And there isn't a right or a wrong because we're different humans and we're different people. And I talked to a client the other day and...

We were talking about how her family was her. Her mom was more disconnected from her and she's like, but that was good for me. So her mom didn't choose to be there doing all of the things, but she said it was really good for me because her mom's personality was overwhelming to her system. So that's a good choice on both parts, right? It is not a one size fits all. This is not a judgment zone. This is saying that

we do have a limited time. I was watching Scrubs. It's an old sitcom, if you don't know what it is, about doctors in residency and it into personal life and life as they go through becoming doctors and working in hospital. And one of the doctors, and I'm not going to get the quote exactly right, but one of the doctors in this episode,

was talking to one of the residents and the resident was upset because his patient was dying. And the doctor said, all that we do here is just buying time. It's delaying the inevitable.

and it hit me and it's so true, right? We all have a certain amount of time here on this earth to live the life that we have been given and we can get sad about that or we can look at it and say, okay, so I do have this time and I get to choose how I spend it.

And I think we can tip to one side where we cram everything in and there are people that have incredible, extraordinary experiences and they do so much. But I don't think that's any more valuable than the people who choose to stay in the same small town and grow up and serve their communities.

I look at my husband and my husband has traveled all over the world. He has an incredible career and such exciting places. And I get jealous because I sit here and I have chosen to be the parent that works part time that is here for my kids. I, yes, pre-kids, I did travel places in the world. I have consciously chosen those experiences.

But right now I'm consciously choosing to be here and I am primary parent and that does not mean that I never leave. I do get to travel out on my own, but it's not to the same degree that he does. And there are times where I am sitting at home and we are chatting and he is in Germany. One of my favorite things is like the German Christmas markets. So I get super jealous when he gets to go to Germany and he goes to the Christmas markets.

And it's so much fun and he tells me all about this and the different places and experiences and he is an adventurer at heart. And so he doesn't just go to somewhere, he like experiences places. And this is how I love to live too, like experiencing it. So he doesn't just go somewhere and sit in a hotel and go out to a restaurant. Like he goes and sees the sites. And I'm jealous because I'm sitting at home with the kids and I get to hear about this.

and I get pictures, but I don't get to experience it. And I could look at that and say, okay, so he is living his life better than I am because he is outright putting out all of these experiences in life. He's going to have so many freaking memories. And it's incredible. But does that mean my choices are less valuable?

I don't think so.

I don't think that my choice to be here with my family, to put on hold, because I do fully intend to like travel to the utmost when my kids are out of the house, but I do not think that there is a difference in value in how we choose to spend our time. I think we each got here on earth and we get to choose our own journey and we're on different journeys and this different journey idea.

has become like the thing to keep me from being jealous. Because when I see somebody that gets something that I want, that hits the million dollar business that I wanted, that gets to do the Ted Talks that I wanted, I could step into the jealousy. I could, as I watched my husband traveling all these amazing places and going, he has an incredible career.

I could step into that jealousy, but I step back and say, you know what? We're on different journeys and we're choosing different things. Because I very well could say, okay, I am gonna run a million dollar business. I am gonna be on Ted Talks. I am gonna be on wherever, you know, big and famous. I'm gonna be as big as Mel Robbins. I am gonna travel the world.

And I could do all of that, but I'd have to make different choices than what I'm making. I'd have to use my time differently than how I'm using it. But I don't want to, because part of me wants that and I could be jealous that I don't get that, but I also look at other people's lives. I'm really fascinated with other people's lives.

When I see somebody that has something that I wanted or want, right, this is the lifestyle that I want, I start really looking at what they had to do to get there.

So I remember there's a business professional that I have followed since her career. Like I swear I'm like three years behind her career. So I have watched, you know, as she gets bigger and bigger and I started really talking to her and asking questions. What are you doing in your life? How are you meeting these goals? How are you reaching these, right? We don't have to reinvent the wheel.

There's a lot of, you just watch what people do and how people spend their time, you can see where they're going and how they got there. And then I start looking at, do I want to do those activities? And a lot of times it became no. I wanted to make different choices with my time. And so as I made different choices with my time, my life ended up in different ways.

And so when we look at someone else's life and we can get so jealous, we also can step back and say, they're on a different journey. They're making different choices. And that's why I'm not exactly where they are. And we are on different journeys. And so as we come back and we look at how we are spending our time, and I started to panic around, my gosh, like, 75 % of all the time I'm ever gonna spend with my daughter.

He's going to be over in two years. There's where my brain goes. My husband's always like, that's scary. Where I tell him where my brain goes. it goes way more graphic and negative than his ever goes. Like catastrophe. I can see it. you know, like we just, my daughter just went on a field trip out of town. They had to ride a bus for an hour to go wherever they needed to go. And I put my daughter in the bus and I caught myself.

But my brain instantly goes to, my gosh, there's gonna be a horrific bus crash and know, like da da. And I was sharing this with my husband and I stopped and I said, nope, you know, this is my brain really going crazy with this information, but it's not true, right? And if it does happen, then we handle it.

but it goes dark really quickly and easily. And I share this with my husband. He's like, my gosh. I would never go there. His brain doesn't go to the the worst of the worst. My brain instantly does. So as I look at, my gosh, my time with my daughter is almost over. Which is not, right? We can make choices and have different choices, but I'm...

Basing this off of a stat and my own life.

because I did pull away as I hit my teens, right? Because that's normal. And I already feel my daughter pulling away. I already see that where when she was younger, she wanted me to volunteer in her class. She wanted me to come on field trips. She wanted me to drop her off and pick her up. She wanted to spend the day with me.

And now this year, fourth grade, she does not want me to drop her off and pick her up. She tolerates me volunteering in class because that's non-negotiable. I am doing it this year. We'll talk about next year, but I'm doing it.

And if she has the choice, she'd rather spend a Saturday with her friends than with me. And that's normal. And I want her to grow. And I want her to have that independence. And I want my son to grow. And I want my son to have the independence. And this is where that little spicy spot gets of I love that she has more independence. I love that

I don't get her ready in the morning.

I love, I don't have to feed her. I mean, I cook dinner and stuff, but she actually can feed herself and she can make a sandwich and she can get cereal. And if she says, mom, I'm hungry, I say, go get something. I don't have to do it. I love that she can say, hey, I wanna go play with friend. And if that friend is in our neighborhood, she can get herself there and she can get herself back. There's a lot of.

Freedom for me is talk about having more time. There's a lot of freedom for me at the same time.

she has more freedom which gives me more time for myself to do whatever I want, it also means I have less time with her.

And while that's normal and natural, and I want her to do those things, I still hit those moments of grief where I'm grieving my little girl because she no longer will do those silly things with me and like dance in the streets and skip down the sidewalk and you know, things like that that are just fun and funny. No, now I embarrass her on a daily basis for living and breathing.

And there is that tug of war of like, my gosh, there's so much more freedom for me. And at the same time, I lose time with her and I grieve the little girl. And it's an interesting spot to be in because I really want this more time. And my first grader is definitely still in the like, he loves me and he wants me there.

And I love that. And I love when he comes out of school, he runs and hugs me. And my daughter and I will make eye contact. And it's kind of like that, like, can I approach you? Do you know me? Or we just walk into the car, right? Because she's with her friends and she's fun and she's like engaged. And I love seeing her so confident. But there's a difference between the barreling out where she used to do this. She used to barrel out the door and give me the biggest hug.

And now she doesn't. It's coming back to how we want to spend our time and how we value our time. I still want to spend that time with them. I don't want to lose that time, but I also have to honor that they want to spend their time in different ways.

And as I look as in the kind of flip side of my life where my in-laws are aging and my parents are aging, and I look at how much time I actually spend with them now because I am an adult. Like I was that percentage that my parents lived in a small town. So I...

I graduated high school and I went to college and I didn't move back. My parents moved from the small town when I was in college, but still I didn't, like my goal was never to move back and move down the street from my parents. So I went on my adventures and I lived on the East coast and I lived in the Southwest and I lived now in Colorado and they don't live here. And so I've had all of this amazing experience.

and living in different places. And I value that. I value understanding different ways that people live and experiencing different things. And I wouldn't change that. At the same time, I look now and I say, okay, so we spend probably a week, a year in total with my in-laws and with my parents.

like adding up all of the days that we spend, is probably a week. And if we look at, okay, we spend a week a year and say we have 10 more years.

together that they are here still on earth. Hopefully it's a lot more, but we'll use 10 because it's easy. I have 10 weeks left with my folks and my in-laws. And hopefully it's more, hopefully it's closer to 20.

But that was a really sobering look at time. And it made me really greedy. And both my in-laws and parents have had phone calls with my greediness. But what I looked at was it's not fair. I'm not ready to just have 10 weeks. If I have, if you say, okay, my folks are gonna live for 20 more years. Fantastic.

That feels like so much time. There's no urgency in that time. But if we say, okay, I have 20 weeks with my folks left in my lifetime, I'm gonna cry.

That's not even a year that I actually get to see them and be with them.

And that's really sad to me. At the same time, when we talk about where we're spending our time and what we value and who we are, I look at my parents and my in-laws and I gotta tell you, I called my parents when I realized this and I called my in-laws when I realized this and I told both of them they need to move to Colorado, like flat out, sorry. Because this is where

We are. And is that fair? No, it's really selfish. And I'll go into why. Because we live here in Colorado. We consciously chose Colorado because A, it is someplace that my husband can actually have a job. His job does limit us in where we can live. So it is a place that he can have a job. That's important. That is important because he loves his career, right? This is something that we value. We also

love being near the mountains. We love the outdoors, so Colorado fits our lifestyle. And we live in a community that has a really good school system, which is something that we highly value. And it's a space where my kids can really thrive. And I did think about this when we moved here, because my husband and I grew up in Montana, and once you kind of leave Montana, it's really hard to get back.

At least it has been for us. And so as I looked at places to live, Colorado was one where my kids could come back after they leave. Because I fully expect them to go and live their lives. But when they decide to settle down, I want them to move back so that they can live near me. Because I don't want to 75 % of the time that I'm going spend

in my lifetime with my kids to be done at 12. I want them to live close. I also understand my folks wanted me to live close. It just wasn't possible. I will rephrase that. It wasn't the choice that I made. And they can make different choices too, right? They could love living on the East Coast, decide Colorado's not it, and that's it. But as I look at, I possibly have

10 more weeks of time or 20 more weeks of time with my in-laws and my parents.

how do I wanna spend that time? So I am really conscious of calling and connecting and texting because it's fun for both sides to send pictures and have that connection. But it is something that I'm now really feeling that time is slipping through my fingers.

And as I want to spend more time with me and my partner, and I'm really feeling that push of like, I have just been in the thick of things, right? When you have itty bitty kids, it is all consuming. It is overwhelming. There was much of that time I felt like I was drowning. And I now have this taste of freedom where they can go to the bathroom by themselves.

It's incredible. And I know and I feel that. At the same time, I also see I'm losing that time.

and it's a balance and it's just an adjustment, right? As I step into different things because I do have more time and they step into different things because that's the agent stage. I also look at wanting my parents and my in-laws to live here so that we can see them often because when we live states away, it's really hard.

It takes two full days of driving to get to my folks' or a plane ride. It's not like going down the block.

I also look at that they have their own lives. And as I am feeling the freedom of having more space and time for me, it's really not fair, although I did ask, it is really not fair to say, okay, I get that you have been,

living your own existence for a very long time. But now it's time to shut all the things down that you are doing and come live near me because I want more time with you. That's not fair because they each have their own full lives, right? I look at my in-laws and my in-laws have lived in the same house in the same community for over 40 years.

My parents have bounced multiple times, so they don't have the same deep roots as my in-laws. And so I'll use them as an example. They have their solid friends that they've had for over 40 years. They have the volunteering that they do. They have Pickleball. They have supports and community already built in.

It's really not fair to ask them to give it up and start all over because I want more time. And they are really incredible at coming and visiting us so that we do see them.

But it's not fair to ask my in-laws or my parents to give up their lives because I want that more time. Because they are on that side of freedom where they are no longer taking care of me, where they are no longer feeling the constraints of having kids.

Even though we value that time and we want that time, right? That's a transition. And it's such an interesting space to be in where I can see it from both perspectives. And there's that little girl in me that literally wants to stomp her foot and say, move here now, that may or may not have happened. But there is that little girl in me that just really wants that time.

And I see it from the parent perspective of, wow, like I spent a lot of time and energy and I value that. But it's also really nice to have that flexibility to just say, I'm going to do what I want to do.

And it's so interesting as we look at time and how we perceive time.

And it's so interesting how we spend our time and how we value our time.

and it's an interesting space to be in, a curious space to be in.

to see both sides and also to be able to see my parents as humans. Because I think so many times we don't see our parents as humans, they're our parents.

being able to step back and really seeing that they are living their lives. And as I parent, I really see the humanness and understand my parents more, they had their own struggles and they had their own fears and they had their own dreams and they had their own hopes. And as a parent, you're trying to balance all of this, all of the things that you want.

that you fear, that you need, that you're stressing over with trying to give your kids what they need, what they want without giving them things to stress over. And it's all about balancing the time. And there's a give and take in that time.

And there's wanting to be there for your kids and wanting to be there for your parents.

and still honoring yourself and being there for yourself and making sure to carve out the time that you need to.

So I think more than looking at how you can manage your time more effectively, it's really looking at how do you really want to spend your time? What do you value most?

And what does your time say about who you are?

And it's that key idea that when we are spending our time in alignment with what we value and who we see we are, that we're truly content with life. We're no longer jealous because somebody got something that we wanted. We're no longer worried and critical and shaming because we did something that wasn't a good use of our time.

but we're really accepting and this is how I'm choosing to spend my time. And I think there is such power in choice.

So next time you feel like you've wasted time or you're out of time or you're short on time or time is a factor in any of the stress and struggle in your life, I invite you to take a step back and really question is what I'm doing aligned with what I value and who I wanna be? Because if it's not, then change it, shift it.

You can change your life at any point in time. It's never too late and you didn't waste it unless you spent it being really hard on yourself. And then maybe you can turn that moment in time into a lesson learned. So for today, get curious about how you wanna spend your time, what you value and who you are.

I wish you all the happiness in the time that you have today.

because we don't hear it as adults.

I want you to know that you are smart and you are talented and you are loving and you are loved and you are valuable and you are worthy and you are deserving. And I am so grateful that you are here in my life. I love you and I like you and have a great rest of your day.

Landy Peek (46:55)
Hey, before you go, just a little bit of legal. This podcast is designed for educational purposes only. It is not to replace any expert advice from your doctors, therapists, coaches, or any other professional that you would work with. It's just a chat with a friend, me, where we get curious about ideas, thoughts, and things that are going on in our lives. And as we're talking about friends, if you know someone who would benefit from the conversation today, please share.

Because I think the more that we open up these conversations, the more benefit we all get. So until next time, give yourself a big hug from me and stay curious because that's the fun in this world.

Episode #12 Making the Most of Our Time: Choices That Show What Matters Most 💡⏰

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