People are a good use of time

I recently had the opportunity to travel and reunite with a range of friends from different parts of my life who I hadn’t seen for a number of months. It was a bit challenging initially to organize all the meet ups, and it didn’t work out to see everyone I had wanted to see. And nonetheless it was so nourishing and restorative to connect with so many people.

Some of you may be familiar with the author Laura Vanderkam, who writes about time management. At least, on the surface that is her subject matter. But really what she writes about is how to be intentional with our time so that we can live our lives the way we want to live them. Sounds pretty similar to our goals at Intentional Therapist! (No wonder we love her work!)

One of Laura’s time management principles is that ‘people are a good use of time’. Meaning, connecting with the people who hold meaningful places in our lives is rarely going to cause us to regret how we spent that time. Given my recent experience, I couldn’t agree more.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that it will be easy to create time for others, as my own experience also attested. And it doesn’t mean that there won’t perhaps be challenging decisions to be made and energy to be protected. And yet it can really be worth it. Both for the relationships that are fostered and the replenishing of our self-care reserves.

As we move more fully into the summer months and intentional or spontaneous opportunities for connecting with friends and loved ones arise, we hope you will remember that people are a good use of time!

We also are excited to share that in the coming months we will be offering more opportunities to connect with other female mental health clinicians - and that we are now approved to offer continuing education credits through the Canadian Psychological Association (CPA) for these activities!

It is so validating to be a CPA approved sponsor of CE activities, as it really underscores that self-care is a PART OF our work, not just something we try to fit in the margins. So please stay tuned for more details in the weeks and months ahead.