Time Is the Most Powerful Tool of Them All

Ever since I discovered that I was suffering from time anxiety -- ever since I noticed that how busy I was, that what I had to do and was and wasn’t doing on any given day -- was causing me a lot of distress, I’ve been paying close attention to what’s at the bottom of the feeling. Every single time I’ve felt anxious or rushed or too busy, I’ve look closely at what’s going on, considering whether it’s inside me or outside of me or both.  And I’ve learned something sort of surprising:  How busy I feel doesn’t necessarily correlate with how busy I am.   But I’ve also learned – not just recently but over the course of many years -- that it isn’t that easy to change how I feel, although I can change how I act and that will change how I feel.

I’ve evolved a number of practices that have drastically changed the way I feel by changing the ways I use time and look at time.  These practices include planning my day every morning by considering what I’m going to do when; calling my time partner and telling her about my plan for the day as well as what I did and didn’t do yesterday; spending ten minutes every day, usually before I make my plan, sitting quietly listening to my intuition, my higher self, or whatever you want to call it (I call it lovely gracious higher power); consciously setting aside time to rest; watching myself for signs of time anxiety and whenever they come up, getting quiet for a second to check in with myself about what's going on; and more.

I’ve been following these practices faithfully for several years now, and they’ve changed my inner and outer life dramatically:  I hardly ever have time anxiety any more and when I do it doesn’t last for more than a few minutes; I almost never feel rushed, harassed, anxious, tense or too busy.  I’ve gotten way, way more peaceful and happy on a day-today, moment-to-moment basis, and I’ve come to feel a sense of personal power and confidence – confidence that there will be enough time to get everything done, confidence that I have the power to do whatever I need to do in life -- big things as well as small things – confidence that I can change or accomplish whatever I want to. 

I’ve always felt suspicious when people said things like that, in self-help books or elsewhere, because I knew it wasn’t that easy -- for me, at least -- to change.  And I also knew that sometimes I could fool myself into believing that I would change, even had changed, just because I wanted to or planned to.  I’ve got old journals from the 1970s and ’80s in which I filled pages and pages fantasizing about all the writing I was in the process of doing, blabbing on and on about the various screwed-up ways I used to be but that I wasn’t any more. But when I look back at those journals now I see really clearly, and with more than a little embarrassment, that I was still those ways that I said I wasn’t any more and I never did any of that writing.   And sometimes I wonder, when I read self-help books promising certain radical results or I hear people claim that they’ve achieved certain sweeping, permanent, fantastic changes, whether there’s something a little bit similar going on.   Because, as I’ve learned, there’s a long distance to travel between wanting to do something, thinking about doing something, planning to do something, and actually doing it.  And, I’ve learned, the key to bridging that distance is time – finding time, making time, to actually do things, even if it’s just to take a small step toward accomplishing a big goal.

I've heard people say “You can act your way into thinking differently, but you can’t think your way into acting differently.”  I’ve definitely experienced the truth of this, over many years of trying unsuccessfully to think my way into acting differently and eventually acting my way -- imperfectly, through many small daily actions -- into changing my thinking.  What I’ve also learned, ever since I’ve been harnessing time, is that the way to act your way into thinking differently, the way to get yourself to act at all, is to make time for whatever actions there are to be acted.  And that acting your way into changing how busy you feel no matter how busy you are – is a sure-fire way to truly become more happy and peaceful, and to get a lot more done.