REFLECT
Why do we need to befriend time? Many of us feel like we don’t have a great relationship with time. Maybe you’re trying to do a million things, and not able to complete a task. Maybe you have lots of to-dos and goals, but you're not making any headway. Or perhaps you simply feel like there’s too much to do and not enough time in the day.
Befriending time is all about establishing a healthy relationship with time. That means thinking about our time in a positive and uplifting way.
Time is the ultimate finite resource. On the most basic level, it’s the one resource that we can never get back. We can always make more money, but there’s no way to create more time.
So we really want to master our relationship with this very precious, finite resource and make sure that we are investing it in the things that move the needle most and that feel the most meaningful to us.
One of my favorite quotes is, "How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives."
How we spend each minute builds up to how we spend each hour, and how we spend each hour builds up to how we spend our day. How we spend our minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years is ultimately how we spend our lives.
In The Mother’s Empowerment Sisterhood, many of us have kids (not all!). You’ve probably heard the phrase, “Enjoy them while they're young. It goes by in a blink of an eye.” And yet sometimes we can feel like we’re waiting for it to go by. Time flies when you're having fun, but goes very slowly when you're not enjoying yourself.
So a big part of what we’re doing this month is maximizing the activities that feel amazing to us and minimizing the things that are not in alignment with how we want to spend our time.
It’s important to remember, it takes time to make time. You'll need to take time to work on your schedules, rhythms, routines, and time management tools to recalibrate your relationship with time.
ENVISION
Why do I keep calling it a “relationship” with time? Well, just like a relationship you might have with your partner, child, parent, or friend, we have relationships with inanimate objects, too. We have relationships with philosophical concepts, belief systems, our bodies, money, etc.
You likewise have a relationship with time. It might be a healthy relationship or it might be a dysfunctional or unhappy relationship.
What do I mean by that? Do you find yourself constantly complaining about time? Do you find yourself saying you don’t have enough of it, in a scarcity mindset? "I wish I had more time. There aren't enough hours in the day. I can't get everything done in time."
When we keep saying these things, we're not loving on the time that we have. We're not seeing it as this precious, sacred resource that we've been given, but rather we're speaking badly of it.
The truth is that we all have the same 24 hours in the day and if we treat time well, it will treat us well, too.
It's a two-way street. If we keep clinging on to time, crying because we're aging, or because our child has reached preschool age or graduated, trying to stop time in its tracks, it means that we're not okay with time taking its natural course. These are all-natural and common feelings, but also symptoms of an unhealthy relationship with time.
So what I want you to start thinking about is, “What are my beliefs about time? Do I have a recurring tape in my head that's always telling me I don't have enough of it or that I can never get enough done?”
If so, it's time to recalibrate and heal that relationship with time and start to craft your time deliberately, intentionally, realistically, honestly, and authentically in a way that you feel great about.
TAKE ACTION
Remember, how you treat your time is how your time will treat you. If you feel like time hasn't been treating you well, start treating your time well and seeing the gifts come back to you.
Time is going to go by anyway. Time is going to continue to flow like a river and the question is:
Are we going to spend it on something meaningful?
Are we going to choose to enjoy it?
Are we going to choose to capitalize on it and enjoy the ride?
In The Mother’s Empowerment Sisterhood, we go from being to doing, and then to having. To have a healthy relationship with time and a purposeful daily rhythm, you're going to have to be deliberate about how you spend your time, grateful for the time you have, and creative about how to use that time mindfully.
You're going to have to take time to make time, sketch out your schedule, routines, tools, and systems, and actually start to implement them in your day-to-day life so you can have the purposeful rhythm that you're looking for.
Now, let’s get to work and Befriend Time!
