Silver-Linings from the past three years.
A good portion of my life’s work has centered educating and coaching others about the value of filling your free time with positive and productive leisure pursuits. A subject, outside of the clinical setting, had little to no exposure on the national stage. It wasn’t until March 2020 that things changed. For the first time ever, the discussion of what to do with free time was brought to the forefront of our minds. Secretly, well I guess not so secretly if I’m telling you here….I was THRILLED to hear this discussion. Everywhere I turned I heard the words “Bored” or the phrase, “I don’t know what to do.”
People started revisiting past leisure interests, honed skills, took the time to learn new things, found new ways to connect. Others struggled. Some found it hard to muster any interest in doing anything with their time or even further numbed-out on alcohol, drugs, food, and the like. In the end, what is underscored, at least in my mind, is the following:
What you do with your Free Time is directly related to your Quality of Life. What you do with your Free Time matters. Just the mere fact this is now part of the conversation means EVERYTHING. Once we know this, we can then look at our communities- our children, our families, those with disabilities, and the aging population and understand how important it is to stay on the positive-productive track of free-time.
As Maya Angelou so famously said, ” Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”