A friend asks you to be a volunteer. Your husband asks you to glance over an e-mail he is writing to his boss. You say you'd love to. Really! But..."I don't have time". It seems plausible( ). We're all busy these days, right? But there are reasons not to use these four words, at least with yourself. Here's the big one: _ is not true. You tell yourself "I don't have time" to exercise, but we all have 168 hours a week. If someone offered to pay you $100,000 a week to go to the gym for 5 of those 168 hours, you would probably find the time to do it. Since that isn't going to happen, this is a more exact description: " It's not a priority ." There are a million things we could be doing with our time; some are priorities and some are not, even if it's wrong to say so. Try it. "I'm not going to read to you tonight, sweetie, because it's not a priority. Daddy's present priority is to check my e-mails." Using the words "I don't have time" keeps us from admitting to the fact that how we spend our time is a choice. It puts the responsibility for our lives on someone else: a boss, a client or a family member. Better to be truthful: "I have another volunteer job on which I am focusing my energy right now. It is the cause that is most important to me." Or, to your husband "I wish you had mentioned this earlier. Right now, my priority is to get our children dressed and out of the door for school. I will be available around lunch time if you would like to talk". You can find this text in the  _  section of a newspaper.
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