This week on Real Talk with Rachael, I'm talking with author Christy Wright about her new book Take Back Your Time: The Guilt-Free Guide to Life Balance. Christy is a #1 national best-selling author, personal development expert, and host of The Christy Wright Show. Since 2009, Christy has served at Ramsey Solutions, where she teaches on personal development, business, and faith.

Key Points from Our Conversation:

• The #1 question Christy gets as a business coach is "How do you balance everything?" What she's come to realize is that balance isn’t something you do, it’s something you create in your life that looks like peace and confidence in your choices, as well as how you spend your time. You want to enjoy your life and be proud of how you spend your time; the path to that is not productivity.
• “Life balance is not doing everything for an equal amount of time, it’s about doing the right things at the right time.”
• 4 reasons we feel out of balance: We're doing too much. Our time is finite. We have to make choices; we can’t fit it all in. We're not doing enough. Possibly triggered by something major shifting in life leaving you feeling bored and out of balance. Doing the wrong things. As long as you spend your life doing things that aren’t important to you, you’ll feel stressed, resentful, anxious, and angry. Not doing the right things. We should be spending time on the things we actually care about - the things that are life-giving and valuable.
• Doing the wrong thing out of guilt or obligation, getting distracted, or even doing good things in the wrong season will take away time from what's important to you.
• We tend to swing to extremes because we love the impressive. But it’s not sustainable to be focused on everything all the time. It’s less impressive, but taking a small action is more sustainable and allows you to better engage in things that fill you up. Some is better than none. It may look different in different seasons, but what matters is you're spending time on something that’s important to you.
• You can help determine what matters to you most by asking what’s important right now? Ask yourself who you want to be. As you determine that, it will bring clarity to what you’re supposed to do and what matters most to you because it’s more about who we are than what we do.
• You get to determine what does and doesn't matter to you. We have more time than we think we do, we’re just spending it on things that are not the most important things to us. Ask yourself where you lose time.
• We've become addicted to productivity. You have permission to not do things that don’t matter to you. Every commitment on your calendar/task list represents a deeper motivation in you.
• You might be addicted to productivity if you can't sit still or are always thinking about what comes next. We feel the need for contact input, but our brains were created for rest to reflect and pray. It takes practice.
• “Productivity doesn’t lead to balance, doing the right things leads to us feeling balanced.”
• This is your life. No one gets to tell you what you should be important to you. How you spend your time is how you spend your life. Spend it on what matters most to you.

Let’s Get Real Practical:

There is no such thing as balance, but there is such a thing as pressing into doing the right things that matter most to you in this season. Getting clear on what we’re called to helps relieve decision-making pressure.

Make a list of all the things you do weekly/monthly that require a commitment from you. Circle the things that are non-negotiable. Strikethrough any items you need to lay down or outsource. When a new opportunity comes up, look at the list and see if it fits with what matters most to you in this season.

Resources Mentioned:

Ep. 107: Get Back to You with Christy Wright Humor, Seriously: Why Humor Is a Secret Weapon in Business and Life (And how anyone can harness it. Even you.)

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