This is Optimal Living Daily, episode 1790, Three Quick Ways to Master Time for Stressed-Out People, by Ingrid Y. Hollander of ingridyehollanderlmft.com. I'm just a molic guy that reads you articles, or sometimes book excerpts, every day, including holidays, for four years and 11 months, covering personal development or self-help, how to live a better life, and a lot more. It's always with permission from the authors or websites.
Just hit the subscribe button or follow button in your podchats app to get new episodes for free. And with that, let's get right to it and start optimizing your life. Three Quick Ways to Master Time for Stressed-Out People, by Ingrid Y. Hollander of ingridyehollanderlmft.com.
You lead a full life, work, family, friends, homes, and even emails, texts, and phones added to the time crunch. You know that stress. There's too much to do and too little time. Where is your clone when you need it?
Today, it's easy to become a time checker, watching your phone or watch and setting frequent alarms to stay on schedule. In an effort to alleviate time stress, you may even ignore obligations, but later panic and feel shame about your growing to-do list. Here's the thing. If you worry a lot, time itself may be your anxiety trigger, and you don't even realize it.
Unfortunately, your nervous system does recognize this trigger and physically reacts to the added time stressor many times throughout the day. What can you do when the reality of time causes undue stress? I've come up with three ideas that simultaneously help you to rethink time and calm your body so you can get stuff done and still feel great. Number one, realize that time is relative.
In his 2008 bestselling book, The Big Leap, Gay Hendricks talks about his practice of using Einstein time rather than Newtonian time. When I first read this concept, I was both intrigued and a little shocked. As you know, Einstein knew that everything was relative, hence Einstein's theory of relativity. Hendricks explains that he uses this relative nature of time to his own advantage.
I suggest you use this reality mentality as well to promote calmness and keep time in perspective. Here's how to use Einstein time to calm. First, imagine the last time you were doing something you love to do. You may have been alone or with someone you adore.
Breathe and feel the good sensations you had when you were enjoying this time. Notice how in your mind, time just flies by when you're having fun. An hour can feel like 10 minutes. Now, shake off that feeling, breathe, and recall a time when you were doing something uncomfortable or difficult in an uncomfortable setting.
Maybe you had to change a flat tire in the summer heat, or maybe you had to spend time with a person you dislike while doing something you loathe. Feel your body and notice how time slows down during those moments. I recall sitting in a hot high school classroom in June feeling tired and uninspired. I remember blinking my eyes in amazement as the wall clock appeared to stand shock still.
Got the feeling? You can use these body sensations to change your relationship to time. Rather than feeling always behind the gun, unable to catch up, you can notice the relativity of time and use it to your advantage. When you feel anxious about having insufficient time, remember that the experience of time belongs to you.
Change your experience, change time. Breathe and practice belief statements that will change your perspective and relationship to time. For example, I make time, time belongs to me. I use these statements when I catch myself in old stressful patterns throughout the day.
When the frenzy starts inside, I remind myself that my experience of time is alterable and mine. How do you want to experience time? That is what matters. Number two, use time wisely with compassion and love for yourself and others.
Have you ever watched an old episode of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood? Talk about slow, conscious pacing. Even as a child, I would sometimes feel like it went too slowly.
Come on, Mr. Rogers, get to the puppets. The land of make-believe is my favorite part. The wonderful Fred Rogers clearly understood something about slowing down and utilizing time.
I love this quote from him. Imagining something may be the first step in making it happen, but it takes the real time and real efforts of real people to learn things, make things, turn thoughts into deeds or visions into interventions, end quote. Notice how he says real here, real time, real efforts, real people. So much time is wasted each day doing things that do not feed us or those around us.
If you catch yourself treating time badly in this way, taking it for granted because it appears to betray you when you need it, I encourage you to take yourself and your time more seriously. And remember, seriously is not the same as anxiously. When you slow down and calmly use the time you have in meaningful ways, time feels more friendly. It's a virtuous cycle.
As time feels more friendly, you calm down. As you calm down, you use time better. As you use time better, it feels more friendly, and so on. Number three, remember time for the gift it is.
In the 2017 book, The Soul of Money, Lynn Twist explains the importance of our mind's perception of resources. She says it best, quote, for me and for many of us, our first waking thought of the day is, I didn't get enough sleep. The next one is, I don't have enough time. Whether true or not, that thought of not enough occurs to us automatically before we even think to question or examine it.
We spend most of the hours and days of our lives hearing, explaining, complaining, or worrying about what we don't have enough of. Before we even sit up in bed, before our feet touch the floor, we're already inadequate, already behind, already losing, already lacking something. And by the time we go to bed at night, our minds are racing with a litany of what we didn't get or didn't get done that day. We go to sleep burdened by those thoughts and wake up to that reverie of lack.
This internal condition of scarcity, this mindset of scarcity, lies at the very heart of our jealousies, our greed, our prejudice, and our arguments with life, end quote. There's something so profoundly true in Twist's words. Each day, you have 24 hours to feel about them as you wish. No one can take that away from you.
It takes some conscious effort to look at the gift and abundance of time. But how important is that? It's everything. Take a moment this week to consider how you perceive your precious time.
Breathe deeply and become aware of both your thoughts and the sensations in your body. As you adapt in a calm and thoughtful way to time, you befriend this beautiful, free, and abundant resource. How will you use your time this week? You just listened to the post title, Three Quick Ways to Master Time for Stressed Out People, by Ingrid Y.
Hellender of ingridyhellenderlmft.com. I'm constantly thinking about how to optimize my health, what supplements to take, hours of sleep, what my diet should focus on. Superpower finally takes the guessing out of it. One simple lab test covers over 100 biomarkers, and their app gives you a complete picture of your heart, liver, hormones, metabolism, even environmental toxins.
Plus, it used to cost $499. Right now, it's just $199. And head to superpower.com and use code OLD at checkout for an additional $20 off your membership. Really interesting how time truly is so relative with that example of how it flies when we're having fun, while other times it's painstakingly slow.
Such a strange phenomenon when it's always just one second or one minute, one hour, or one day. And that's proof that it's all in our heads and we can control our minds, which means we can control time. I don't think I'm jumping to conclusions here. It's a really interesting concept that can be applied probably to many different areas of life.
One thing to think about today, thank you for listening and being here and for subscribing to the show. Have a great rest of your day and I'll see you tomorrow, where your optimal life awaits.