Surprising Solution for Not Enough Time

For many of us Daylight Savings Times means “an extra hour.”  In reality it means one extra hour that first night, followed by feeling sleepy earlier and waking up too soon in the morning, at least for the first few days as our bodies adjust.  Does this change in the clock make you feel more relaxed about your busy life, or is the feeling just a temporary adjustment?  If you want to have more time and feel less stressed, you might consider a more permanent solution to your lack of time.

Slowing down actually gives you more access to time.  I find that when I’m in the Sticky Swamp of overwhelm, there’s no opening in my schedule to do anything and my to-do list becomes a huge ogre that threatens to swallow me whole.  I not only worry about today, I think about tomorrow, the weekend and next week.  Time collapses as my mind does a hopscotch through past, present, and future, and then I feel lost.  When am I?

However, if I spend 20 minutes meditating on the present moment and counting my breaths, which is my favorite mindfulness practice, I use my magic to expand time, which makes room for the sacred work I do.  I come back to my everyday consciousness knowing that all the work I do is sacred, and there’s time and space for everything now that I’ve slowed down.  Maybe that’s an illusion, but it’s a convincing one!  Somehow, it seems that I’m able to go from the twig to the branch, the little square to the big one, and everything that has to get done gets done.  Whatever doesn’t get done, I don’t worry about.

When you hopscotch from past to present to future to present to past, and back again, you end up rushing time.  Then it takes forever to get anything done because you’re frittering away the hours worrying, venting, procrastinating, and wishing for what might be instead of staying in the present, making it happen.  This is when time feels like it begins to speed up and contract.  The more you affirm that there’s no time, the less of it there is.

Slow time and you find the clarity to see what the way out of the Sticky Swamp is to ease up, prioritize, and then do something practical and simple.  When you are going too quickly you don’t have time for being fully present in any given task, and that lands you back in the those difficult emotional landscapes.  You ignore all of the big red flags that say, This person is not on the up-and-up, because you just want to get things done – and whoops, what you didn’t have the luxury of dealing with is now going to end up taking far more of your time and energy. 

How have you worked through your feelings of overwhelm?  What tools do you use to get yourself refocused and calm?  Please share your insights in the Comments section below.  I’d love to hear what works for you.

In service and love,

Colette Baron-Reid

(The preceding is an excerpt from The Map:  Finding the Magic and Meaning in the Story of Your Life, Hay House, 2011) https://www.colettebaronreid.com/en/products/