Managing my Time... and my Life

As part of my new job, I have been enrolled in a "Leadership Academy" which is attended by a lot of the Village's management and supervisory staff. The group I am going through it with includes people from all departments and provides a pretty interesting cross section of our employees. The program lasts about 9 months, and we meet every 2 weeks for 2 hours on a Tuesday morning. So far, I've had two classes, both of which I have found supremely interesting.
This week, the section was entitled "Managing my Time". When I saw the title, I thought, mange my time!? - I don't get to have that luxury in life, I work in local government, but ok humor me.

First she asked us to complete the following statement... Time is.....

My answers: precious, always getting away from me, structure, and hard to manage.

Then, she presented the following, life changing model.

THOUGHTS

impact our

FEELINGS

which impact our

BEHAVIORS

which create our

RESULTS

Now, maybe without the explanation this doesn't seem earth shattering or maybe because it was 7 am and my brain was still waking up, I was easily impressionable, but for me this is providing me a whole new way to view my life and my control over it.

Here is her example, and to me it makes a lot of sense. If my THOUGHT about time is something like "it is always getting away from me" this will created FEELINGS of a lack of control and a rushed "I better get this done quick" vibe, then my BEHAVIORS will exhibit a rushed attitude, which may or in my case, may not, provide the RESULTS I want.

The stinker is, often our THOUGHTS about things (Time, love, money, etc.) are long standing, often parentally infused, ideas that we don't even really "think" about. They are things that may have been put there by the actions and ideas of others, long before we really cared to worry about any of them. The great thing is, if we don't like the RESULTS we are getting, we can work backwards and figure out what core belief we have that might be causing this chain reaction, and work to reprogram our brains for different results. Now this is my kind of self-help.

For me, the time example rings 100% true. I have about a million things on my desk and in my head that require my attention. I often find myself rushing through things I enjoy, and I constantly worry about the next thing on the list and whether or not "there will be time". This isn't only in my work life, this is at home, on vacation and everywhere in between. I wake up on vacation thinking, "Oh my gosh, it is already 10:00 am! We are going to miss something, we are wasting our vacation!" In the same vain, I often find myself so overwhelmed with things I want to do at home, that I end up vegetating on the couch doing almost none of the things I want to do. I feel NO control over my time, or at least I didn't until I started thinking about it differently.
This week, I have decided to reprogram my brain to see Time as a commodity that I control and can choose to spend in a variety of different ways, kind of like money. I will no longer allow myself to think about time as something abstract that I have no control over. At home, this means that when I get home, I take the Rigby out for a walk and enjoy the outdoors (it is still nice out afterall, and I should enjoy it while I still can!) and I bring him home, get him dinner and play with him and the cat. Last night, after all the doggy fun, I sat down to watch TV and thought, is this really something I enjoy? Is this a VALUABLE use of my time? Of course the answer to this is a big NO, so I went upstairs and worked on my Gocco swap project until there was something on TV that I actually was looking forward to watching.

I know this might not sound all that exciting to anyone but me, but to think about this model for all the things in my life that I might be less than thrilled with really has made for an interesting week. I find myself feeling a sense of control over my life and the way I am spending it, which is pretty new for me. It has enabled me to live in the moment in a way I have been striving to do for a long long time.