Time Management
A different
view of time management. What is your emotional relationship with
time?
[Time
Management] The Clock is Ticking
By Charlie Badenhop
How
do you react to deadlines? How would you feel if someone said "Hurry
up, the clock is ticking and we've got to get this completed!"?
How well do you cope with stress? Isn't it amazing to notice how
radically your experience of passing time changes depending on the
circumstances, with little correlation to the steady flow of time
as shown on a clock.
Have
you ever sat in a waiting room with a clock on the wall that went
"tick tock, tick tock" over and over and over again, until
such time that you either wanted to run out of the room, or throw
the clock out the window?
This
kind of experience is especially excruciating when you are waiting
for something that you really are not looking forward to, like a
treatment from your dentist.
In
particular, when you are feeling stressed out you experience time
distortion. In some instances, like when waiting for your dentist,
one minute of clock time seems to take forever. At other times when
you are working towards a deadline, time appears to slip away without
your knowing where it went, and you are left wondering why you are
accomplishing so little.
Waiting
for a train that is twenty minutes late, when that train is bringing
your loved one back to you, is very different than getting to the
train station early with your loved one and waiting twenty minutes
for the same train to take your loved one away from you. The train
is the same, the station is the same, your loved one is the same,
and the time on the clock is the same, but somehow, your emotional
experience of "twenty minutes" is quite different.
It
is important for each of us to understand how the fixed passage
of time as measured by a clock, has little to do with our emotional
experience of time. Rather than being under the illusion that time
rules our life, we will do well to recognize that it is our emotional
experience and our mindset that determines how we relate to the
ticking of the clock.
Restrict
your breathing and tense your muscles and time invariably will appear
to speed up. You relate to time according to your expectations of
what will transpire. Expect that you will be successful and the
clock on the wall appears to offer you a bit more time. Expect the
worst and you will have difficulty keeping up.
What
can you do to have a healthier perspective in regard to time?
The
first thing you can do is breathe slowly and deeply. When you slow
down your body clock, the clock on the wall appears to slow down
along with you. The next thing you can do is check in with your
body. If you create a feeling of expansion in your body, by aligning
your posture and releasing your muscles, time will appear to expand
somewhat as well.
Furthermore,
you can notice your surroundings and extend your awareness out into
the space around you. When you extend your awareness to take in
the wide range of sights and sounds taking place in your local environment
you will also extend your concept of time.
Lastly,
realize that with any luck, you will have tomorrow to accomplish
what you were not able to accomplish today. Every new day, brings
new opportunities for appreciating your life and the people you
care about.
Go
From Time Management to Success Articles
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Charlie
Badenhop is the originator of Seishindo, an Aikido instructor, NLP
trainer, and Ericksonian Hypnotherapist. Benefit from a new self-help
Practice every two weeks, by subscribing to his complimentary newsletter
"Pure heart, simple mind" at http://www.seishindo.org/anger/index.html
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