Life is full of obligations and distractions. There’s enough to do to fill your daily schedule, easily, almost every day. When there’s not something to do, there’s plenty to distract us from the things in life that we don’t want to have to deal with. Between obligation (both urgent and non-urgent) and distraction, it gets tricky to fit in what we actually need. The things that fill our wells, the things that make us better at what we’re trying to do, the things that center us – the things that matter. What we need to do is make room for the things that matter most.

What gives you energy? What helps you to do better and be better? We each have things that help us to be our best selves. We just have to make room for them. What excites you? What do you get excited about when you think about things? These are the things that help you to bring energy into every part of your life. When you do these things, they give you energy, they make you happy, and you feel creative and alive.

Too often, we tell ourselves, “I’ll feel creative when…” or, “I’ll be happy when…” We make creativity or happiness an outcome. Even worse, we tie those outcomes to future states that we may not have control over. “I’ll feel better when this project is done”, or “I’ll feel creative when I can get through this pile of work I need to deal with.” We all know that project is going to be replaced with another one and that pile of work is going to have more added to it. When we make our happiness or creativity an outcome of something that we don’t control, we’re handing our creativity and happiness to somebody or something else. We have to take control over these things that are so precious to us!

Rather than making happiness, creativity, and energy outcomes, we have to create them. We create them by making room for the things that help to feed them. A healthy diet, exercise, our Blue Sky, planning – when we bring this with us every day, we create happiness, creativity, and energy ourselves. When we make room for these things, we feed our souls. When we don’t make room, something else will always come along to fill our time. When we allow them to do it over and over, we lose out on creating happiness, creativity, and energy. Instead, we allow obligations and distractions to create anxiety, low energy, and unhealthy habits.

To have what we really need to do the things we love, and the things we have to do, we need energy and creativity. This helps us to be happy, and helps us to bring our best selves to the things that we are doing – working on our goals, and working on things that are both important and urgent.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t clinical considerations that should be addressed by a licensed professional. If you do have these considerations, you should certainly set aside time to address these with a professional as well. Perhaps in addition though, making room for the activities that help you to bring your best self to what you’re doing would aid in that healing.

Personally, I created a framework and journal that I use just for this. I call it the MAKE ROOM framework. It’s the result of trying to find the best way to organize my own life in a way that helped me to bring my best self to each day. It includes both a planner and journal, so that everything is kept in a single place. I carry it with me everywhere. It really does help me to MAKE ROOM for what’s most important to me.

It may not always feel practical to make room for other things, but it’s more important than urgent. If you will find a way to MAKE ROOM for what’s most important, you’ll find different outcomes.