The stories we tell ourselves about time E50

July 12, 2022

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Time, time, time. Such a hot topic – all the time, right?!? So this episode is all about time. How we think about time, how we act around time and how we feel about time. You don’t need another time management tool. You need a mindset shift about time. That’s what we all need – including me.

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Where to even start when it comes to time? Let’s take a helicopter view of the stereotypical thoughts, behaviours and feelings we have about time.

Let me introduce you to my favourite 5 statements about time and what I think about them:

1. I don’t have time.

So my comment to that is: Correct! You don’t have time. Because time does not belong to you. Time is a construct to make sense and describe how we move through space in this dimension. If we want to go from A to B, in this world, we have to drag our bodies from A to B and that takes time.

2. Time is precious.

Well, it depends very much on what you do with it. I don’t think you will find your time precious when you are sitting at an airport and your flight is delayed by 4 hours. As Albert Einstein says time is relative. And so is this statement that time is precious.

3. Time is money.

OK, 2 sides to this statement. On the one side, I agree but just when it is taken seriously and in the context of for example business. But a lot of people throw around this statement when they want to hurry you up. For example, someone tries to get their kids to get quicker into the car and says: Common, move quicker. Time is money. What does that actually mean? And what should the kids think about that?

4. It’s about time.

Again, one of these very relative phrases. For example, it’s starting to get warmer outside and you say well it’s about time that the summer starts. But I would have preferred for it to be spring weather still because I don’t like it to be too hot. So it’s all very relative and just because you think it’s about time for something does not mean it is for the other person. Just think about that next time you use the phrase: It’s about time!

5. And the last one I am going to comment on is actually Time Management.

Think about it, it does not even make any sense. You cannot manage time. Time is what it is and it cannot be managed up or down, to be slower or quicker. It is what it is. What you are saying when you talk about time management is rather the management of the activity you are spending your time with. For example, how you manage your work or how you manage your work-life balance. So rather call it work management or work-life balance management – because you are not managing time. Just my 2 cents.

So why did I start with these statements? I wanted to shake up your thinking about time. To see in how many phrases and how much we use the word time and we don’t even realize it. And that can be your actual problem with time. Not time in itself, but rather what you think about time, your actual thoughts about time.

The stories that I tell myself about time

Let me give you an example from my life that I just observed the other week. Spoiler alert: I still have a lot of work to do when it comes to time. So this episode is a good exercise for me, too!

So the other week I caught myself stressing about time because I still needed to get something done that day and had not started it yet. I was very conscious of what time it already was in the day and I created this feeling of scarcity (Episode 33). That there was just not enough time to get it done and at the end of the day I will have the experience that time has just run like sand through my fingers.

But when I reflected on this experience I started to see the other side – how I experience my day sometimes differently.

If I got my most important task of the day done before 10 o’clock then I feel like I can relax about time, I don’t feel the same pressure as in the other example and I go about my day much more relaxed. At the end of that day, I will feel like I accomplished a lot. That it was a really good and productive day.

Time is always the same for everyone

But both of the days are the same. The difference was how I thought about time on that day. In my first example, I looked through the lens of time pressure, scarcity of time and feelings of stress – and all of that was created by myself just in my mind. I did not have less or more time on that day.

It is my doing that I felt not as good at the end of the day of the first situation where I created pressure and stress. Do you see that I created my reality about time through my thoughts and my perspective?

I even discover a program in my subconscious that says: If you have not got your big project done by now, you probably just won’t get it done at all today. That is a literal program that is in my subconscious and that gets run as soon as I start thinking about how little time I have left in the day.

How do you act when you tell yourself the old stories of time?

And then what happens when we do start having thoughts like that? How do we start acting? Because we are already in a stress mode, we get less organized, we might procrastinate, or we look for easier things to do first to release the stress that we are feeling. But of course, that is not going to help us – rather the opposite. So when we have limiting thoughts about our time we start acting in a way that is supporting these thoughts which is not helpful What So Ever (Episode 40).

How do you feel about time?

And what is coming next, are the feelings that result from these experiences. We start to feel pressured, our stress increases, we feel rushed and start making mistakes, we become moody and we might snap at someone – which we will later regret.

And these feelings of pressure, stress, overwhelm, and helplessness will just create more negative thoughts and we find ourselves in a spiral in our inner world. Because time has not really changed. It is still exactly what it was the day before and what it is to everyone else. We just created a scenario by ourselves, inside of us that makes us perceive that we don’t have enough time and that we are running out of time.

The consequence of telling ourselves these stories about time

And I get it. As I just said, my example is literally from last week. So I find myself in these scenarios as well. But it does not help me one little bit. It is so unproductive and even counterproductive. Getting myself into that cycle of thinking and feeling and feeling and thinking, makes me waste my energy, it lowers my vibration and my frequency to a level where I am less productive and it gives my body a lot of negative emotions to deal with. And just because I make this story up inside of my head.

Change your perspective on time

So my advice is to shift your mindset about time, your perspective about time and how you think, act and feel about time (Episode 07). If you are in a place where you are rushing through your life, you feel like you never have enough time in your day and especially never have any time for the things that you love.

Please do not believe that you need another time management tool! You don’t!

You want a reset of how you think about time. Start to think differently about time. And don’t take time so personally. It’s not limited and scarce just to upset you. No, if you feel like that is the case then it is just because you are creating this scenario in your mind. So say to yourself: Stop it!

How to change your stories about time

I know you will tell me now that you have no time to do this and still I am going to ask you to sit down and write down all of the thoughts that you keep having about time. Write them down for once and look at them (Episode 42). And you might actually realize that you are creating your problem with time yourself. And while you are at it, write down some new thoughts that you rather want to have about time.

So let me write some down for myself that I would rather like to have:

There is always enough time.
I have all the time in the world to get this done.
Time is on my side.
My time is now.

Looking back at these, they are probably similarly incorrect as the statements at the beginning of this episode. But you know what? I don’t care. They make me feel good about my time and that is all I want.

They help me to improve my mindset about time and I know that if I think more useful and positively about time, then I feel like I have more of it! I am the creator of my life and therefore as well the creator of how I feel about time. And you can do the same!

Thank you for being here with me. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Sorry to disappoint you if you thought you would get time management tools in this episode. But if you are still reading, I guess it struck a chord inside of you. Make the most of it!

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