If it’s important, you’ll find the time

Joe wanted a Rubik’s cube a few months back as he’d seen an older kid with one and was fascinated by it. He wanted to know how to solve, so hello YouTube and a 10 minute “beginner” tutorial. Did the first bit ok, kind of got the second bit. No idea about the next 5 or 6 stages. Joe lost interest and so did I.

Fast forward to the last couple of weeks and it seems like every kid in Joe’s class has a cube, and Joe is asking daily if I’ve learnt to do it yet? Solving it has moved from a nice to do, to has to be done. Did it the first time with the video. Not sure how but I’ll take it. First two layers without the video? Done. The rest, I got bits of it.

So time to practice what I preach.

• Break it done into bitesize chunks (helps that the video allows this!)

• Keep repeating the initial steps until it’s second nature

• Build on that with the following step and keep repeating

• Once the previous step is in place, then and only then build the next one

Suddenly I’m obsessed with it. Every time I have a few minutes now, I’m seeing if I can beat my time.

Whatever you’re looking to do, you can find the time if it’s important enough. That sounds trite, and as if I’m ignoring everything you have going on, but it’s still true.

We all say we want to be healthy for our kids, but do our actions follow that? If not, why not? Our kids are undoubtedly important to us, but it’s easy to look to the future and think we have plenty of time to change. Or what we’re doing now isn’t what we’re always doing. The truth however is the habits you’re following or forming now will play a huge role in the person you’ll be in 5, 10 or 20 years from now. It’s true that it’s never too late to start looking after yourself, but I can guarantee you it’ll be a lot easier and effective if you do it now than in 10 years time.