What is your relationship with time? Is it friend or foe?

As a busy leader with significant responsibilities, you may see time as an adversary (particularly when you’re feeling overworked and overwhelmed). Have you ever found yourself trying to conquer time – to squeeze everything you possibly can out of it?

If you answered, “yes,” you’re not alone. Society trains us to be at odds with time. We learn that we must capture it, hoard it and use it wisely…or else we’ll lose it forever. This scarcity mindset regarding time leads us to live smaller, worried and less fulfilled lives…never quite feeling like we have enough time to do the things we really want to do.

Many of us have a soundtrack playing on repeat in our minds that goes something like this, “I don’t have enough time. I wish I had more time. Why aren’t there more hours in the day? I’ll never have time to do the things I want to do.” This background noise (it’s certainly not music, is it?) makes us feel frantic, worried that we’re running out of time and afraid that we’re not using our time well enough, no matter how hard we try. That doesn’t feel very good does it?

The truth is – time is a human construct. All we really have is the present moment. Humans created the concept of time to navigate our lives – our past and our present. A bird, a dog, a tree, the wind, water – they don’t care about time, do they? We are the only beings who need it. The great thing about time being something humans made up is that we, as individuals, can make up the stories we tell ourselves about it. We have the power of choice when it comes to time. We can choose to invest the time we have in a way that expands our positive impact and fulfills us. We can choose to enjoy the moments we’re living in, instead of deferring joy to an unknown point in the future that we never quite seem to reach.

If you tired of racing against the clock, we invite you to transform your relationship with time with these resources:

Remember, you have choices about how you see time and where you invest it. Once you decide to work consciously with time, you’ll enjoy a lot more of it!

See you in the DoP,

Get 25% OFF the I2L Time Management Challenge. Use coupon code ‘time’ at checkout through October 31, 2021.