What is your relationship to time? Do you feel like there is never enough of it? Are you a master of time?
Our relationship with time can have an impact on our ability to cope throughout the day and on our resilience levels. As we are living in and influenced by a culture steeped in scarcity, a constant feeling of not having enough time will push us into stress response, increase anxiety and inflammation, and contribute to our doubting our abilities and worth.
If we are putting off the things that fulfill us and bring us joy until “someday”, we may be delaying meaningful experiences forever. We are trained into the requirement of “earning” time to do the things we enjoy and often buy into the ‘if, then’ mentality, only allowing ourselves to take time for ourselves after we accomplish something or even hoping that we will feel emotionally more fulfilled after we reach a certain goal or milestone.
As we look at our relationship to time, it can be helpful to assess where we are spending and where we are investing. Spending means that we are not expecting to gain anything in return, but rather are simply expecting that the time will be gone. Think of how we spend time doing things that we don’t want to do or that we are not passionate about like working all day every day in a job that isn’t fulfilling. When we are investing, we are expecting to get a return on our investment and can gain benefit from our investment. When we invest our time in good habits or activities that will pay off in money, health, energy, or relationships, we gain from that investment.
So, we must ask ourselves if the bulk of our time is spent or if we are investing our time in things that help us to experience joy, peace, ease, and health. Do the things that we do day in and day out support who we want to be, how we want to feel, and how we want to show up in our lives?
When we create routine in our day and in our habits, we can support the natural rhythm of our minds and bodies, and shift our relationship with time. When we schedule our daily habits in alignment with circadian rhythm, our bodies begin to move into thrive and we function with more efficiency and health. When we work in cooperation with how our bodies are made to function, we experience less inflammation, less stress, and we can begin to feel like we have more time and space. This, of course, takes practice, as well as a mindset of running experiments, recalibrating, and finding the version that best supports our individual mind-body system.
When we create time in our schedule for activities we enjoy, we can recharge and show up in a more effective and efficient way in other areas of our lives. Time away from daily tasks and problems can actually allow our subconscious mind to attend to what we are dealing with and we can have experiences of inspiration and more creativity regarding the tasks and problems. And in those activities, we can enjoy ourselves, relax our nervous system, and recharge our energy for when we do need to show up on task.
This week, I invite you to take a look at your calendar. See if you are spending or investing. See if there are things you can stop doing that have no return on investment and if you can add in things that bring joy and ease. Start with one thing so that it doesn’t feel so overwhelming and then run an experiment to see how it goes. And then try again as needed.
I will be assessing my calendar and experimenting right along with you.
Chat again soon,
k