Do You Have Enough Time?

This past Sunday, many of us made the daylight savings time change. We all turned our clocks ahead one hour. This got me to thinking about time.

Do you ever feel that you have too much to do and not enough time? If you said yes, you’re not alone. Many people feel this way every day! This feeling will often result in feeling overwhelmed. It’s near impossible to be at our most creative and productive when we are overwhelmed.

When we are feeling overwhelmed, we are aligned with lack: lack of time and lack in general. As you know, whatever we align with or put our attention on, creates more of the same. Life or the Universe reads that we want more lack of time; and in turn, it gives us more that needs to get done.

Here are a few things that have helped me from feeling that I am running behind, or will be late, or whatever your version is that you don’t have enough time.

First, you need to become aware you are feeling this way - from an observer’s point of view. Often, we get caught up in the feeling, and are reacting to it, versus just noticing the feeling. We need to remind ourselves that it’s just a feeling and we don’t have to put attention on it and make it more real, or amplify it.

Next, start noticing what you’re thinking. It may be, "I don’t have time to get everything done and that is causing me to feel overwhelmed." When these thoughts come up, you can push an internal pause button so you can halt the direction your thoughts and feelings are taking you. Then you want to take a few deep breaths to calm your nervous system down.

We can also calm ourselves by knowing that time is a manmade construct designed to help us interact with each other.

Einstein said, "If you spend one minute with the love of your life – it goes by in a second; hold your hand over an open flame for a minute, and it’s an eternity."

Time is malleable to our thinking or our perception of it. We just turned the clocks ahead by one hour. Again, it’s a manmade construct.

Once you calm your nervous system down, you can tell yourself a new story about how much time you have. You might say, “I have all the time, in a relaxed and easy manner, to complete everything that is required.“

What this will do is further calm your nervous system so you are in your parasympathetic nervous system – your "rest, digest, and create" nervous system. From this energy, it is easier to recognize which things are most pressing, what you can let go of, and what you can do later or delegate. You will also have better access to ideas that will help you get things done more easily and quickly, because you have shifted your alignment.

If you’ve ever heard me speak, I almost always teach the "results formula." I teach this because it is a powerful foundation to build upon. The results formula goes like this: our thoughts cause our feelings, our feelings cause our actions, and our actions or inactions create our results.

Next time you are thinking you have too much to do and not enough time (your thoughts), you’re feeling overwhelmed (feelings), you may be going in circles or moving too fast (actions), and you're creating mistakes (results), remind yourself that time is just "made up" anyway. Know that you can make up that you have plenty of time; which will change what you’re thinking, how you’re feeling, the actions you take, and therefore, your results.

Let me know how this works for you by emailing me or posting below.

To your success,

Cyn