LIFES 6th ingredient: Your free time, how do you choose to spend yours? What makes you feel happy and satisfied? These choices make you your unique self.
How many people know what it is that they wish to do in their free time and then keep time spare to do it?
It is so easy to be distracted by life’s doings – work, home stuff… surfing the internet! – not leaving time to play and to BEE…or is that just me?
JFF! – just for fun – time is so important to keep up GOOD-VIBES. May this ingredient of the recipe for Brilliance and BLISS inspire
you to keep time for you and to make some time to just BEE!
I include our free time as an ingredient for life because making time to do something that makes you happy adds positive VIBES to your being. When we add joyful experiences to our life our vibeage is boosted.
Your choices for this ingredient for life are the reflection of your own uniqueness. Once we have done all we need to do in terms of earning a living each week we all have some free time, how do you choose to fill yours?
You might like fast cars or have a passion for baking, our different choices about how we spend our time makes us who we are and adds interest and colour to our lives.
What is it that you wish to experience in your free time?
What are your choices for your freetime?
ACTION: In your birthday book start writing down what it is you wish to do for you next year & what your JFF wishes are – just for fun!
As mentioned previously in this recipe what we focus upon increases and so if you are adding joy you will find more things to feel joyful for!
It comes next on the list of ingredients after career, since they are in the order that I began to sort them out. Back in 2008 when I was a worker 
who was not just busy… but buzzed out! I finally chose to happy by stopping giving too much time – and all my focus – to climbing the corporate ladder. I then actually had time some free time and so had choices to make about
how I filled it, so began filling out my WOO list for this life ingredient.
The beauty of putting some focus into your free time is that if you feel like some of your life’s ingredients are currently pulling you down e.g. you are not in a job currently that you enjoy or
have not yet found your true love then a 
way of increasing your vibeage is by filling your spare time with things that will bring you joy. You can always find something to make you smile and that
you take an interest in at some point in your day or week.
Whatever your situation always take the time to do something to make yourself smile, no matter how small. Over time these small things add up to a HUGE difference to yourVIBE.
For me making time to take a tailoring class where I made my own coat at an evening class, was key to getting me through the time when I truly disliked my work and wanted to quit every day. I was
so fed up with hearing about and having to push for and focus on things at work that to me felt so vacuous. I knew that working for a FMCG company in a corporate sales role was no longer for me,
yet I could not just quit. I had a mortgage to pay and a life that demanded the salary I was earning, so I needed to keep going for another year and a half. I was forced to patient, whilst I planned and executed my change from corporate to creative, in order to begin to fulfil my dreams.
Being creative – it just for a Wednesday evening each week at my class was an
amazing way to keep me inspired and boosted my confidence in myself. It offered a highlight to my week – an escape from what felt like walking through treacle at work – I felt filled with
inspiration and was beginning to appreciate how creative I am. It also felt truly for me to wear my customised coat at the end of the course. Never before had I felt such a feeling of satisfaction in all of the 7 years I had given of
my time to working in sales. I thank this course for boosting my self-worth and confidence to believe that despite not having previously studied anything arty, I could creative!
FREE TIME IS FREEDOM – WHEN YOU ARE FREE TO CHOOSE WHAT TO DO
The amount of free time we have will of course vary dependent on age and situation. Generally we think of retirement to the time to have a lot of hobbies or at least much more so than someone might have with young children to care for. Whatever your situation it is important to
find some time where you can do something that is uplifting to you, even if it is just for a short time each week it will make a HUGE difference to your VIBE.
Remember the point of this recipe is to evaluate your time:
Time can easily slip through our fingers. If we do not view our free time as important and plan carefully how and where we spend it – with the same importance as other areas of our life – then it can shoot past and we can feel out of balance, by feeling that we have not devoted enough time to things we enjoy. We are naturally creatures of habit and can easily get stuck in a routine that does not allow for fun or new experiences, if we do this we risk missing opportunities to make ourselves smile… and smiling is what keeps our VIBES high!
JFF – Just for Fun is SO important!
Back when I was in FULL on buzz mode before I carved out some time to 
creative I was working too many hours. I felt too tired at the end of the day and week to do much else than zone out in front of the TV and numb
myself with food and drink.
TV and socialising has its place of course, it is just that a balance of different things is what makes life colourful
If you plan your time so that at some point in your week, no matter what is going on you have some time to 
creative or to exercise or just have fun, then I promise you that you will feel more boosted overall.
I practice getting this balance now myself by marking out time in my week for me and my own activities. If I let this slip and do not make room for my interests and for fun things (even if they are just in busy times an hour or two a week), I find that I can feel a bit flat. Without the fun or me time, I feel as if I am just in a cycle of working and doing the things we have to do, such as the food shopping, washing and all the things need to be done at home. I find if I do not keep to my general week plan that I set out in the 1st ingredient (see it here), then I can easily slip into watching TV and frittering away time on the internet. This for me has its place, yet if zoning out and being passive is all you do in your spare time e.g. watching TV and watching what is on the internet, you are not offering your senses their full range and not allowing your imagination a work out, so no wonder you may feel flat.
Aside from watching a few interesting shows a week or a good movie, zoning out to too much TV does nothing for me. Not when I compare it to; being creative by getting crafty drawing & painting something, or studying something holistic or writing. But you must find what brings you your own joy and make more time to do this.
Creativity and exercise are amazing ways to boost our VIBE and self-worth. When we are making something we are filled with inspiration. When we exercise in a way we enjoy we are uplifted.
Inspiration and being uplifted are keys to unlocking one of the HIGHEST VIBEfeelings…satisfaction!
Exploring our interests can also open new doors sowing seeds of new ideas that can potentially grow into ways to earn a living. They too offer an amazing chance to meet like-minded people.
So if you do not already have uplifting creative interests or plan in fun things why not make time to try something new:
it:
- Exercise –running, walking, swimming…there are so many choices
- A new hobby
- Learning something new music, language
- Cooking
- Art of some sort
- Reading – something new, or something you have wanted to for ages and not got around to
- Playing music or just listening to something that you love
- Dancing
- Experiencing something new.
My absolute fave of this month
was going to the Enchanted Woodland with my
Star. I cannot recommend this highly enough to anyone who loves being outside amongst trees and who too finds something magical about fairy and coloured lights, it
is truly wonderful to take this evening woodland walk wrapped up with a mulled wine. This for us is a new winter tradition – thank you Syon Park! 
This ingredient I think is particularly important to give some focus to at this time of the year, winter.
In the winter it is dark on way to work and dark on way home so it is good to brighten up your routine with something uplifting mid-week and at the weekend. A lot of folk can feel low, flat and heavy especially in January and February so why not now plan something to try and take up for the upcoming new year as opposed to beginning to focus on what you wish to give up?
What do you choose to take up- JFF?
I am just so glad that I decided to open the door to my own creativity by taking the tailoring class in 2008 which led me to try creative interests that if I put them to paper would read longer than my CV.
By making a note of the things that you wish to make happen this year in your free time, by your next birthday I guarantee that you will be feeling more by adding these things = GOOD-VIBES into your memory bank…so long as you make time to actually do them ; )
STEP 12 – to complete the next step of this recipe, Life’s 7th Ingredient: Your beliefs click HERE.
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