“There isn’t enough time.”
“There just aren’t enough hours in the day.”
Sound familiar?
As I have begun to focus more of my attention on a mindset of Abundance rather than Lack, I have found myself being increasingly grateful for the many blessings in my life: An abundance of friends and family. An abundance of knowledge and skill. An abundance of opportunities. A safe, comfortable home. This life, all the more precious to me since losing my Favorite Person more than six years ago.
I have even been consciously grateful – if somewhat reluctantly – for the lemons from which I can choose to make lemonade. (That’s the problem with lemonade, you know – it requires lemons.)
So I was brought up short recently when I had a big Aha! moment. I was talking to someone in one of my mastermind groups, and I was bemoaning the fact that I just didn’t have enough time to work on a project that excites me.
“There is enough time,” she said.
What? No there’s not.
“There is enough time.”
What?!
Her message: There is enough time, and I get to choose how I spend it. (Gah, there’s that Free Choice/Responsibility thing again.)
There is enough time, and I get to choose how I spend it. What I do with it. How I fill it.
I realized that while I have made some good progress in looking at my life through a lens of Abundance, I have been thinking about a fundamental part of my life – Time – from a perspective of scarcity. And that is a real dissonance. A dischord.
So I have started practicing thinking about Time differently.
When I think about the things I need/want to do, and I think about the time I have available, instead of saying, “Oh my, there’s not enough time, how am I going to get all this done?” I practice saying, “There is enough time. What can I do right now?”
And something interesting is happening: I get more done. And I feel good about what I get done.
Do I get everything done? No.
But I get more done. In the same amount of time.
Why? How?
I think it is this: Instead of letting Scarcity keep me from even starting, I start things I would otherwise postpone. Instead of letting Scarcity create a sense of urgency that has me in a continual panic, I have a sense of being more in flow, which lets me get more done. I don’t distract myself with negative What Ifs.
It is as if I stop trying to pound square pegs of activities into round holes of time.
That change in my frustration level, that being in Flow rather than turbulence, makes a big difference.
Try this:
The next time you hear yourself thinking (or saying), “I don’t have enough time,” stop and say, “There is enough time.”
Say it again: “There is enough time.”
Say it a third time: “There is enough time.”
How does it feel? What pops into your mind about what to do next?
Want to change your relationship with Time? Read more here, and Join Us for a conversation in which we explore ways to enjoy a greater Abundance of Time. Click here for more information.
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SOOOOOO true! :>
And thank you once again for sharing this – it’s really caused me to start thinking about these things.
I too, have been acting in Abundance in terms of money, working on it with people, but time?
Didn’t even think about it until you brought it up that day.
Thnx for the reminder today – oh, have I needed it!
:>
Thanks Birdy – I still struggle with it, but it gets easier as I pay attention to it. And I’m finding that it also forces me to up my Responsibility ante and just accept that sometimes I have to prioritize and communicate the reprioritizations to people. It’s not as hard as I feared.
There is enough time.
There is enough time.
There is enough time.
There is enough time.
I like it!
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