I wonder if the thought, “There’s not enough time” has gone thorough your mind recently?
The sense of not having enough time can bring lots of stress to our lives.
And the more we rush and hurry, and think, often the less sense of time there is.
Not-enough-time beliefs are so believable too, because they are cultural beliefs.
If you tell a friend that you don’t have enough time, then they are likely to agree.
It can be much harder to look behind beliefs when everyone else around us believes them too.
The wonderful thing is, that our children often haven’t acquired the not-enough-time belief yet.
If you see them playing a game, really engaged in it, you’ll see what its like to live without that belief.
In fact, some of our biggest frustrations as parents can be when we are with the ‘not enough time’ thoughts, and our child just won’t buy into them.
For them, there is plenty of time.
We want to get out of the house, and they are slowly putting on their clothes, or playing a game.
2. We can invite ourselves to put ourselves in our child’s shoes for a bit.
What does it actually feel like to be without that belief that there isn’t enough time.
How do you feel?
What do you perceive?
How do you act?
Instead of trying to get our children to be more like us, we could let ourselves be more like them.
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3. When you imagine being like your child/ren, and being without that belief, you might find core beliefs coming up;
“Nothing would get done,” or, “The house would be a mess,”
or whatever it was that came to you when you thought of being more like your children.
Those are the core beliefs you’ve learnt about having plenty of time.
Those beliefs are why you identify with that thought that there isn’t enough time.
And because you want to get things done, or have an ordered house, or whatever it was that came up for you, that keeps you identifying with the “not enough time” belief.
Once upon a time, you were a child without those beliefs. You were playing, and being-in-time, and you gradually learnt the time-beliefs from your parents and other adults.
4. But are those beliefs really true?
If you were more like a child, and knew that you had plenty of time, would those unwanted things really happen?
If you were relaxed about having plenty of time, would you get less done, or might you actually be more efficient?
Might you do things more effectively, with more presence?
And even if some aspects of the belief were true, would it even matter so much?
Would you feel so relaxed, so connected with yourself and what you really want to do, that the things that aren’t so important would fall to the wayside?
We do things for important reasons.
There is a reason why you believe that there isn’t enough time.
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6. Another similar approach is to ask yourself what it’s protecting you from, the thought that there isn’t enough time.
What might happen without it?
How would your life be if you didn’t believe that?
What would you do?
Who would you be?
What would you achieve?
And is there something scary about that?
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7. Core beliefs like this can also just be things that we’ve acquired, from our parents, from being at school, from our experiences as children.
And like any other core belief, as adults we get to choose what we still carry with us, and what we don’t.
Do you still want to believe that there isn’t enough time to do what you want to do?
What would you prefer to believe about time instead?
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8. I believe that our experience of time is really malleable.
I’m sure you’ve had an experience of an hour dragging slowly, as if it were a whole day, or an hour going by in the blink of an eye.
The experience of time is really subjective, which means that we really can influence how we experience it.
We can shape our experience of time.
I highly recommend the book, “The Big Leap” by Gay Hendricks, where he talks about really taking responsibility for our experience of time.
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9. Doing things because we think we “should” be doing them can fill up our lives.
Questioning our “shoulds”, and choosing to do things because of our values or our needs, including the need to contribute to others, can make a really big difference in our experience of time, and our capacity to get things done.
I’m sure you can recall an experience where you did something from a “should”, and the time it took you, and the amount of energy it took, and how different you feel when you do something because it is deeply connected to your vision, your values, your sense of purpose, or something that is really meaningful for you.
Connecting with your power to choose what you do and don’t do can create a lot of spaciousness around a sense of time.
10. You can play with this too!
If you catch yourself thinking, “There’s not enough time, there’s not enough time,” and you don’t seem to be able to shift it on any of these levels above, you can play with it.
You could exaggerate what you’re doing; you could say those words over and over out loud, but in a slightly silly voice.
You could exaggerate the speediness of which you are doing things.
If your children are with you, you could make it into a silly game, where you are all rushing round, in mock funny ways, trying to get things done.
Or you could really exaggerate that part of you; “I’m not-enough-time mummy” and be that character.
Let it be like a sub-personality, and fill it out.
That part of you, with those thoughts and feelings, moves in a certain way, she thinks in a certain way, she sees things in a certain way.
By play-acting that part of you, it already becomes just a part of you, and not the whole of you.
You start to be able to dis-identify from that part of you too – to know that those thoughts, feelings and actions are not who you really are.
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11. Another trick to side-stepping the rushing that comes with the not-enough-time belief is to become present.
And becoming present is as simple as being present with what is present.
Just allowing yourself to receive a conscious breath.
Just noticing your body and where it’s making contact with something – the chair, the floor, the air – that point of contact.
Look around you and actually see things; really see them.
Being present requires us to slow down.
In the present moment there is only now. The passing of time doesn’t exist.
Sometimes words like; “I’m here now,” can help us connect with this sense too.
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12. Set loving limits with yourself when you’re rushing; “I’m not willing to rush right now.
I know I’m worried about time, but I’m not willing to rush.”
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13. Set loving limits with things that you do use your precious time that leave you feeling depleted or don’t nourish you.
Instead of aimlessly scrolling through Facebook, or flicking through a newspaper or magazine, put on a timer, and give yourself 10 minutes of Present Time.
Let yourself receive a conscious breath, feel your body being supported by the floor or chair, and do something nourishing for yourself.
Being truly present with a self-nourishing activity for 10 minutes will show you how malleable time is.
That ten minutes may well feel like an hour!
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14. Plan how you ‘use’ your time.
Use timers on your phone so that use your time the way you want to use it.
If you have some emails to write, decide beforehand how long you will take to do them, set the timer, and stick to it.
Being clear about how much time you are going to spend on something allows that block of time to stretch out.
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15. Give your child/ren Present Time.
Blocks of highly concentrated connection will fill up their cup and will make everything easier.
They’ll cooperate more because they feel connected and choice-ful, and that’s likely to make you able to use your time effectively, as well as have more time to do what you want to do, because they are more likely to feel full and be able to entertain themselves for a while.
16. Remember self-empathy.
Simply being with yourself, and saying lovingly to yourself, “it really seems like you don’t have enough time, and you feel agitated, and you really wish you had more time?” can really help.
Connecting with ourselves compassionately at those times when we are really immersed in this experience, can bring relief.
Judging ourselves for not being able to have a more fluid sense of time will only lead to more suffering!
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I hope this gives you a taste of how much power you have to create your sense of time, and how much you can get done.
I’ve found that using various of these strategies at various times makes a huge difference to my life.