A friend told me recently that what I offer sounds great and genuinely helpful, but she just doesn’t have the time and energy for one more thing.
I believe her completely. Time and energy really are in short supply for most of us, especially the women I talk to most. But the more I sat with it, the more I started to wonder if time was the whole story, or if it was just part of a more complicated story.
I think it’s worth asking, gently and without judgment, what might be underneath that feeling when it shows up. Not because the feeling is wrong. Because understanding it might actually help.
A few different things can wear the same disguise
Saying there’s no time can mean exactly that. Some seasons of life are simply full, and there’s no room to add anything else, however small. That’s real, and it deserves to be taken at face value.
But sometimes “no time” is standing in for something else. A few different things, actually, and they each deserve a different kind of attention.
If it’s disbelief
Maybe you’ve tried things before. Read the books, started the journals, had the conversations. And life is still life. So some part of you reasonably wonders why this would be any different.
That skepticism isn’t a character flaw. It’s earned. But every program doesn’t require turning your life upside down. There’s a difference between committing to overhaul your life and simply being willing to look at it honestly for a few minutes. Looking isn’t the same as promising to act. You can notice something true about where you are without owing yourself an immediate response to it. And that act of looking can be a small step towards a better life.
If it’s fear of what you’ll find
This one deserves real respect, because the fear isn’t unfounded. Looking honestly at your life can reveal a gap between where you are and where some part of you knows you could be. That gap can be uncomfortable to see clearly.
But here’s what’s also true. The gap exists whether you look at it or not. Avoiding the question doesn’t close the distance. It just keeps you from understanding it. And understanding a gap is not the same as being obligated to close it immediately. You can see something clearly and decide, honestly, that now isn’t the time to act on it. That’s a legitimate choice, and maybe sitting with the understanding will give you time to grow into the answers. What isn’t necessary is avoiding the seeing altogether because you’re afraid of what acting might require.
If it’s genuine depletion
If you are simply, truly out of capacity right now, that’s not a problem to be talked out of. That’s information, and it deserves to be honored rather than argued with.
The answer in that case isn’t to push through with one more obligation, however small or well-intentioned. The answer is rest first. Real rest, not productive rest, not rest you have to justify to anyone. The reflection can wait. It will still be there when you have something left to bring to it.
A question worth asking yourself
If any of this resonates, here’s a question that might be more useful than “do I have time.” How much would it be worth to you to feel less exhausted than you do right now? Not in some distant future. In your actual daily life, starting soon.
If the honest answer is genuinely nothing, that’s worth noticing too, gently. Sometimes the absence of hope is quieter than despair. It just looks like a shrug and a full calendar.
And if the answer is something, even a small something, it might be worth asking whether the real obstacle was ever really about minutes on a clock. Sometimes what we’re protecting isn’t our schedule. It’s our hope, because hope that gets disappointed again is its own kind of exhausting.
You don’t have to overhaul your life to take a small, honest look at it. You’re allowed to look without promising yourself you’ll act on everything you see. The door doesn’t have to open all the way for you to learn something true about what’s on the other side of it.