Dr Sarb Johal, Psychologist + Author 11.04.22

My heart has beaten almost 2 billion times. I have burned 1378 candles on all my birthday cakes. I have travelled around the sun 53 times - that’s about 50 billion kilometres. The moon has circled around me 706 times. I’ve been on the internet for over 31 years.

And today, I am 19,301 days old.

The reason that I am telling you this is that we live for around 30,000 days.

I’m almost two-thirds of the way there.

So what have I done with my time? This is something I’m asking myself more and more. Not to punish myself for not achieving enough, you understand, because I’ve done a lot. But it’s more so that I can focus on the things that I enjoy doing and want to carry on doing. And it’s so I can figure out what I can stop doing to make space for more of this stuff I love doing.

Because making space is actually creating time.

I spent one day being a postman. I hated it. I stopped doing it straight away. I’ve spent about 2200 days in my life being a DJ. I loved that, but gave it up because I had other things I needed to finish, and I just couldn’t do both things together. Such is life sometimes. There are seasons for things, and that was my season as a DJ. I’ve spent 4000 days being a dad - which is an ongoing journey that is ever-changing, bringing its own joys and challenges. But the biggest chunk of my time - 12000 days - has been spent being a psychologist. And I’m asking myself now: is that something I could somehow change to make space for other things? I’ve really enjoyed becoming an author in these last 2 years, as well as speaking and creating videos. And I’m wondering what needs to change for me to do more of that in my life. To create time.

We humans are fantastic at going on auto-pilot. But unless we make time to check in with ourselves to figure out whether what we spend our time on is really what we want to be doing, then that time can just slip by.

So what does this mean for me?

I know that multi-tasking means I end up doing each thing less well than if I gave it my full attention, and then moved on to the next thing. I need more of that in my life. The good news is that the odds are in my favour still. Out of 100,000 people born on the same day as me, approximately 91,065 are still living. So, I’m making some changes in my life for connection, joy, and meaningful work and service. I’m going to create that time, but it also means that I need to stop doing other things to make that space.

How are you going to spend your 30,000 days? What will you stop doing so you can create space and time for things that bring you joy and connection?

Join me as I launch my new newsletter and we can talk more. I can’t wait to see you there, and I can’t wait to hear what you’ve been thinking about and how you’re going to bring that forward in your life.

Written by Dr Sarb Johal