And here was what I said.

I said, I am trying to be more intentional about spending the time that I have with my son, Oakley, before I become an empty nester.

And it was like, I don't know what is going on.

I don't know if we're all just so freaking busy that we've lost sight of how fast time is slipping through our fingers.

But it's very clear that you feel the same sense of urgency around time that I do.

And there are seven things that I have done this year that have really helped me prioritize the time that I have with Oakley.

The first thing that you need to do is you gotta say it's a priority.

And that's exactly what I did.

I said last year, it is a priority in my life this year to spend as much time as I can with Oakley because I've already missed out on too much.

I'm gonna say that again.

It is a priority for me to spend as much time as I can with our son, Oakley, before he leaves for college because I've already missed out on too much.

I know that that ice cube has melted and I was not there for it, but I'm gonna be there now.

And I wanna break down this statement because this is the first step.

It's kind of obvious, but there's two parts.

You have to say this is a priority.

You have to do that.

And I want you to stop and think right now as you're listening, who is it for you?

I'm serious.

Who is the priority for you right now?

If you could pick one person that was your priority this year to make sure that you make the most of the time that you have with them this year, who is it?

Well, I've got two people.

Obviously, Oakley.

Oakley's graduating from high school, but there's another one.

My dad is turning 80 in August.

And when I think about my dad being 80 years old, both my grandfathers were dead by this time.

Chris's dad died at the age of 69.

So for me, this is a real priority.

Like I have this sense that the time is slipping through my hands and we're not gonna get it back.

What about you?

Who's the person that you wanna make a priority this year?

Maybe it's your best friend.

You never see them.

They moved on, they have a big job or whatever, and every time you pick up the phone and call them, you're like, we should get together, we should get together, but you never make plans.

Maybe it's grandparent.

That time just keeps passing and you realize, oh my gosh,

I haven't seen my grandmother in three years.

I mean, she lives halfway across the country and she's in a retirement home, or maybe it's your siblings.

There's someone in your life that needs to become a priority.

And I wanna talk about the second part of that sentence, because the second part of the sentence is just important as the first part where you say, it is a priority for me to spend more time with this person.

The second part of the sentence that I said is, because I've already missed out on too much.

This is the recognition of the water and the puddle that the melting ice cube is sitting in.

This is the part of the relationship where you left the room while the ice cube was on the counter and time passed and you come back and holy cow, you realize there's a lot that I missed out on.

And it's so important for you to let yourself feel this second piece.

What have I missed out on by allowing myself to be too busy?

And I really want you to drop in and feel this because it's important and it's uncomfortable.

And there's a reason why, and I wanna unpack this a little bit.

It's because when you think about all the things that you missed out on, you're of course gonna feel bad.

But I wanna explain what that feeling is, that tension, that time that has passed, the things that you missed out on, like the things that I've missed out on with our son.

You know what that is?

That's grief that you're feeling.

And the thing that's beautiful about grief is that grief is just all the love that you have for a person that you haven't expressed or you didn't get a chance to express.

And it's an expression of love.

And I want you to sit with that for just a second and really think about what have you missed out on?

And it's a powerful motivational force when you really tap into that, wow,

I'm kind of bummed that this happened because I really love this person.

I feel that way about my parents all the time.

They live a 16-hour drive from here.

And I have a lot of grief about how much of my life has gone by without seeing them all the time.

And it's important for you to feel this because it is a motivational force to get you to wake up and take this seriously.

Because I think, yeah, yeah, yeah,

I know Mel, time's passing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But we're too cavalier about this.

And when I sit in the grief of what I've missed out on, for me, there's a lot.

I mean, boy, particularly with our daughters, because if I think back,

I was the only breadwinner in our household when our daughters were in middle school and high school.

I mean, I was responsible for earning the money.

And the thing is, is it wasn't just to pay the bills.

We were so in debt.

I felt this extraordinary amount of pressure to keep working, not to slow down.

I felt like I had zero freedom to say no to anything, to have any boundaries with work whatsoever.

And so I not only left the room,

I was gone while that ice cube was melting.

Because somebody needed to pay the lacrosse fee.

Somebody needed to pay the car payments.

Somebody needed to pay for the eighth grade

Washington DC field trip that so many public high school students go on.

I miss my daughter Sawyer's entire varsity lacrosse season.

I miss the majority of our daughter Kendall's varsity field games.

And there was a time even not so long ago when I was living separately from Oakley and Chris, because they had moved up to Southern Vermont and it was in the middle of the pandemic and I had to stay in Boston in order to keep the company afloat.

So I also missed out on like two and a half years of living with Oakley and Chris and being part of his day-to-day high school, even though it was mostly remote.

And I bet if you're a working parent or a working grandparent, or you're really busy in your job and you never see your parents, you're probably nodding along, right?

If you're that grandparent who lives really far away from your kids and you don't get to just show up at the soccer games, you're like, yeah, I feel this Mel.

I feel this deep in my heart.

If you're the parent that has been like just slugging away, trying to pay the bills, my God, like it's, what are you gonna do?

I get it.

And you're probably thinking about this and you're also thinking about how it relates to your parents as they're getting older.

And the reason why I want you to think about these things that you missed out on from a place of grief is so that you tap into the love that you have for people.

I don't want you to feel guilty about what you needed to do because it's not gonna make you wanna change if all you're doing is making yourself wrong.

And besides, if you're making yourself wrong about what you did in the past, is that gonna change it?

No, but when you reframe this feeling as grief that it's just the love like that you didn't get to express physically, it will fuel the motivation that you have to change and to wake up right now and to start to take this seriously.

In fact, research says that grief and regret can be really good when you use it to motivate yourself to change behavior in the future.

So that's the first thing.

I want you to say it out loud.

I want you to have right now the person or the two people that you're really gonna prioritize this year.

And then I want you to just sit just for a minute with that grief.

I want you to think about the things that you weren't there for, the things that maybe you missed out on because you got really busy or you had a ton of stuff that you needed to do or life just happened.

It's okay, but now what are we gonna do about it?

Because here's the second tool.

I'll tell you what you're gonna do about it.

You're gonna tell people.

You cannot keep this a secret buried in your heart.

And just for background, like a lot of you,

I traveled for work.

And when I wasn't on the road for work,

I would be on Zoom calls after dinner or on phone calls on the side of the soccer matches.

I've been the one that's been late to the parent teacher conferences.

If I made them at all,

I had never been in a position to be the person that was the sports team parent.

I'd never been the homeroom parent.

You know, I took 95% of my energy in the past and just aimed it all at paying off our debt, paying our mortgage.

And it was that way for a really long time.

And I just felt like I didn't have the bandwidth or the flexibility to do the things that I really wished I would have been able to do.

And maybe you don't either.

Maybe you don't either.

And I need you to hear that it doesn't make you a bad parent.

The fact is I didn't feel like a bad parent back then when I was constantly working, because I knew that what I was doing mattered.

And I knew that it was a way that I could support my family.

And I just tried hard to work on being there in other ways.

But there was something inside of me just recently when I saw this study, the American Time Study, and I stopped and I truly reflected on this statistic.

Holy cow, this is it for me.

Like, this is it.

I mean, this is my last kid in high school.

This is the last year of high school.

I'm not missing out on a chance to be a bigger part of his high school life.

And that doesn't mean any drastic changes.

And this is the good news.

It's not like I quit my job.

It doesn't mean I changed a thousand things.

But I did do a few little things.

And it started with first saying, this is a priority because I'm not gonna miss out on anything more.

And the second thing is I got very vocal.

And this is a big change for me.

I had to tell Chris, I had to tell Oakley,

I had to tell everybody that I work with that this is a priority not to miss out on all the things that I've been missing out on.

This is a priority to not be working on the weekends.

This is a priority to stop working certain days at three o'clock to be sure that I can be there.

I'm doing the same thing with my parents.

I mentioned earlier that I don't want the time to slip through my hands with my dad.

You know, what's funny about my parents is turns out my parents haven't been waiting for my call.

You know, I'm like, I wanna see you guys more.

Let's make a plan.

They're busy.

They're getting their haircuts and doing Mahjong and playing golf.

And I keep saying, we doing something for your 80th dad?

My dad's like, I don't want a surprise.

I don't know.

I might do something with the golf guys.

It's okay.

You know, I don't wanna do this.

I'm like, okay, okay.

You gotta tell the people that are a priority to you that you're gonna do something different this year, that you're gonna take the lead.

And here's one other thing that I need you to do.

You know that person that you had in mind that you're like, okay, I gotta make them a priority.

Whether it's one of your kids, whether it's a sibling, whether it's a parent,

I want you to share this episode with them and just send it to them in a little text, just, you know, forward them this episode and say, this really made me think about you.

And I wanna see you and I'm gonna make it a priority and I'm gonna call you later and we're gonna make a plan.

I love you.

Time is slipping through your hands.

It's like a melting ice cube.

Isn't it amazing how there can be an ice cube on the countertop in your kitchen, or maybe it drops on the floor and you're like, oh, I'll pick that up later.

And an hour later, you walk back in, gone.

That's exactly what happens with time.

The time that you have with people that you love is a melting ice cube.