In the blink of an eye, the first month of 2013 is gone. Do you ever wonder where the time has gone.
As The Happiness Project bestselling author Gretchen Rubin observes: “The days are long but the years are short.”
At times, we worry so much about getting through the day that we lose sight of the bigger picture.
“The greatest challenge for most families is keeping track of their priorities,” says life coach Sharmini Hensen, 42. The founder and CEO of LifeWorks has spent the past seven years coaching individuals as well as parents on how to be more in tuned with the things that make them happy.
“A lot of parents aspire to have more time with their children, but the actions and decisions they make do not allow them to do just that. They’re caught up in work and making money because there are bills to pay and they want to upkeep their lifestyle. So they feel they have to be more committed and spend more time at work, and they start to lose track of the very fact that they wanted a more fulfilling lifestyle to begin with,” she observes.
Indeed, it was not until Ben-G Ng’s son, Li Xin, turned three that it hit him that all of his spare time was spent in the office, rather than at home with his family.
“My son goes to bed at 8pm so most of the time, he’d be asleep when I get home from work. Before I realised it, he was three. That’s when I knew I had to sort out my work-life balance straightaway,” recalls Ng, 37. He and his wife, Tracy Lew, 36, are co-directors of a manufacturing company.
The first step that Ng took was simple: Je made the effort to rise earlier in the morning.
“Now it’s become a habit – I wake up at 6am and we spend some time together playing or just making breakfast before we send him off to school.”
The next step was changing their mindsets. “We started turning everyday chores into fun activities for everyone. For instance, cooking involves the whole family. Sometimes, Li Xin gives us ideas for the dinner menu. There’s washing the car together and it really was an event when he said: ‘I want to do it too!’. Whoever thought that something so mundane could actually light up a child’s life?” shares Ng.
Now that Li Xin is five, Ng’s priorities have evolved beyond just spending time with the family.
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