A friend asks you to volunteer. Your spouse asks you to glance over a memo he��s writing his boss. You say you��d love to. Really! But…

��I don��t have time.��

It seems plausible. We��re all busy these days, right? But there are solid reasons not to use these four words, at least with yourself.

Here��s the big one: it��s not true. You tell yourself ��I don��t have time�� to exercise, but we all have 168 hours a week. If someone offered to pay you $100,000 a month to hit the gym for 5 of those 168 hours, you would probably find the space in your schedule. Since that isn��t going to happen, this is a more accurate statement:

��It��s not a priority.��

There are a million things we could be doing with our time; some are priorities and some are not, even if that��s not politically correct to say. Try it. ��I��m not going to read to you tonight sweetie, because it��s not a priority. Daddy��s priority is to check his Blackberry.��

Using the words ��I don��t have time�� keeps us from owning up to the fact that how we spend our time is a choice. It puts the responsibility for our lives on someone else: a boss, a client, a family member. Or else it puts the responsibility on some nebulous force: capitalism, society, the monster under the bed. Regardless, the power slips out of our hands.

Better to be truthful: ��I have another volunteer commitment on which I��m focusing my energy right now. It��s the cause that��s most important to me.�� That��s fair enough. Or, to your spouse ��I wish you��d mentioned this earlier. Right now my priority is to get our children dressed and out the door for school. I��ll be available around lunch time if you��d like to talk.��

See? That wasn��t so hard.

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