When you fail to follow your calendar, be gentle and curious...
Channel: George Kao
Date: 2017-09-18

Let's say you've scheduled with yourself to work on an important project.

The "appointment" passes, and you didn't work on it like you planned to.

The three most common reactions:

1. Ignoring the fact that it came and pass

2. Self-blame for having failed to follow your calendar

3. Or if you keep the appointment, suffering through it

None of these are healthy responses. Let's talk about each, and then I'll share my recommendations.

IGNORING appointments with yourself:

Each time you schedule to work on something, but then you ignore it when the time comes, you are practicing self-disrespect.

You know the project matters, and you planned to do it at this time. It's a subtle commitment or promise to yourself... which you then break. You wouldn't schedule with a client, and then just ignore the appointment, right?

Wake up to this fact: You are your most important client. 

Nobody else's career, health, relationships, life, has a more powerful effect on *your ability* to experience life to its fullest, to fulfill your mission, to serve the world with your unique light and valuable experiences. You are your most important client. So why would you make an appointment with such a client and skip it?

How you treat your own promises to yourself, your own schedule, is either building your self-confidence and self-worth, or eroding it.

Think of an important client in your business right now, someone you highly esteem. If you are making an appointment with them, you'd be thoughtful about their schedule right? You would come up with a time that works for you both, and certainly for them? And then you'd prepare (energetically and/or logistically) for that appointment, and then show up to give your best, I hope?

Make a decision that starting today, you will treat yourself like your most important client.

Your calendar, your schedule, is like the schedule of your highly-esteemed client. Respect it. When you make an appointment with yourself, look at it as important as any other client you have.

Yes, you are welcome to move your own appointment around a bit if you need to, but to cancel it again, and again, is highly disrespectful to your own sense of self-esteem.

And, if you keep pushing back the work on that project, you'll either never do it, or you'll do it at the very last minute and miss out on the benefits of gradually working on it and letting your subconscious bring you better ideas.

So don't schedule with yourself so casually.

**

BLAMING yourself for failing to follow your calendar, is another common response.

The next time this happens, I encourage you:

Be Gentle.

Take a few deep breaths.

Yes, you should acknowledge that you missed an appointment with yourself, the most important client.

However, imagine that another important client has apologized to you for having missed an appointment. Do you criticize or berate them? I hope not. You’d still treat them with resepct. And together, you can figure out how to schedule the next appointment at a time that is going to work better for them, to be more spacious, and less stressful to be on time for the appointment with you.

Similarly, when you fail to follow your calendar, be gentle, and then *get curious*.

Don’t ask self-blaming questions. Instead, ask this: “What’s something I can do differently next time, to make it more likely that I’ll keep a self-made appointment?”

Answers include:

Read the rest of the article here:
https://plus.google.com/+GeorgeKaoCommunity/posts/FQ6KACwGcWJ