I’ve worked with a number of people who want more spaciousness in their lives—more time for rest, play, reading, reflecting, self-care, and hanging out with friends and other loved ones. The challenge isn’t that it’s hard to create more time (although, for some people, it’s actually very hard). The challenge is that no matter how much time we have, we aren’t likely to experience it as spacious, restful, joyful, or playful.
We can create all the time in the world, but the truth is that we’ll probably have a very similar experience in that spacious time that we have already. If you take a sabbatical, you’ll probably experience some openness for a little bit, but then restlessness and fears will start to take over, and you’ll create a lot of things for yourself to do and a feeling that you need to be productive (for example)….