Ep 164 Not Having Enough Time

Episode Notes:

Today I am talking about not having enough time.  A lot can be put on your plate this time of year and today I am talking to you about the biggest lie you tell yourself, the action steps you can begin in order to not be so overwhelmed and how you can make this the most peaceful holiday season yet. 

In This Episode:

• Never having enough time lie
• Setting boundaries 
• Doing more of what you want
• Activity management vs time management 
• Gary Keller – The One Thing
• Brendon Bouchard – Friday Finishers
• Setting priorities

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Episode Transcript:

Hello, hello. Hello. Welcome back to the podcast friends. How are you doing today? I am pretty amazing. I just came back from a course in Charleston. And it was my first time flying since pre COVID. It was my first in person meeting which as you know means everyone actually had to put on some real pants or skirts or dresses because we were able to see each other in full length. Right? It was nice. And I hope that we are able to continue that because there are just so many benefits in learning and networking and sharing best practices. Unknown Speaker 1:18 Oh, and we had such a fun keynote speaker for the kickoff of the course now, the course was around treating cancer pain and honoring an amazing woman, Dr. Lisa Stearns, you want to talk about empowering women, helping patients, she was out of this world. And they started the program with a speaker discussing the benefits of therapy dogs. And you will never guess who spoke. David free the host for over I believe two decades of the West minster dog show. He had a ton of great stories from his work with the organization angels on a leash. It was so heartwarming. And I mean, would you expect anything different right therapy dogs do wonders. And let’s face it, Aren’t most dogs, therapy dogs, just some work undercover. Right? And Charleston was so beautiful. Like I said it was my first time there. And I actually had a couple of hours to walk around before the meetings and take a look at all of the sites, it was such a nice balance of work and enjoyment and making the best of the time that I had. Now, speaking of time, it brings me to today’s topic of not having enough time. And I want to talk to you about this today because I had to come up with a colleague and one of my doctors recently, and I want you to start paying attention to when you say I just don’t have time to do that. Now my colleague was telling me a story about how she had been so busy with work. And she didn’t have any time to do anything else. And I stopped her. And I told her that is a lie. You’re telling yourself. And then I asked her. I’m super curious how much time and energy does she waste either thinking that she should be doing something else? Or thinking she should not have done that other thing? Or worrying of what others are thinking about what she is or is not doing? And of course her answer was a lot. We have to stop telling ourselves that we don’t have enough time, or that we don’t have any time. Because it just reinforces this belief. And we continue to find more evidence around it. Remember, we’ve talked about the reticular activating system here, that is the part of your brain that will find all the evidence for what you believe to be true. So if you believe that you do not have enough time, guess what you will find more of examples of not having enough time. Unknown Speaker 4:08 And that belief usually comes along with the victim mentality, which sometimes might sound something like this. On the show, you just don’t understand. I’m so busy. I don’t have time to do what I want. And if this is you, I want to bring your awareness to it. Start paying attention to where you tell yourself a similar story and pay attention to how you feel when you tell yourself that how do you feel Unknown Speaker 4:39 resentful, overwhelmed, stressed. What is it for you? I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that the feeling does not fall under the umbrella of anything close to amazing. Now, Unknown Speaker 4:54 let’s dig into this. And the reason I am so adamant about not joining you Unknown Speaker 5:00 In your story and agreeing with you, but how terrible it all is, is because it is not useful for you. Now, listen, I had the same story for a long, long, long time. And my job as a coach is to speed everything up for you. So that I can tell you ideas and tools and concepts that can make it easier and faster for you to see the changes in your life. And I have done a lot of work around this, to know that that belief is simply not true. It is not true for me, it is not true for you. And oftentimes, we want to argue for our limitations. No, no, no, let me tell you how I was working till 10. And then I had to prep for a meeting. And then I had to, on and on and on, right? Or, Oh, Michelle, you just don’t understand, I can’t do that. Because I don’t have time with my kids. I want you to all stop. We all have the same amount of time. We just choose to do different activities within that mental construct of what we call 24 hours in a day, right? We choose to do different things, and use different ways of spending our time Unknown Speaker 6:25 you have the exact right amount of time. Unknown Speaker 6:30 You can try that belief on because you know how I know that. It’s exactly what you have. Now what Unknown Speaker 6:37 what is it that you want to do with your time and telling yourself that you never have enough time will eventually lead to burnout, because you will always be going and going and going and never feel like it is enough. It’s old school Society Program thinking that we have to be doing in order to be successful. And if you stop to take a minute and breathe, you will be left behind. But what if that wasn’t true? What if you stop to take a minute and breeze and confirm that you even want to be on the journey that you are on? Maybe there’s a shortcut that you don’t even see. Because you are just plowing through the day. Maybe there’s a way to take care of one thing, which then takes care of others by a domino effect. And Gary Keller talks about this concept in his book, The one thing, what is the one thing you can do every day that allows you to finish work and get home on time? Unknown Speaker 7:48 What is the one thing you can accomplish in this meeting today and finish early? What is the one thing you can do today to make these the best holidays ever. And then continue to do that one thing each day, in order to build a chain of consistency. Busy, remember does not equate to productive. And I know in this industry, there is an underlying agreement that if you’re busy, somehow you are doing it right. And I want us to challenge this because let’s be honest, there’s also some times where there’s a component of fake busy now, I think for sure there are times in the year that more may be on your plate. But you are the one filling the plate, my friend. It’s not like you go up to the buffet and all the folks around you start placing things on your plate, you do that, right. So make sure you are putting the good things on first, so that when other things fall off, you’re okay with it. You have to know what your priorities are. And you have to live on purpose from those priorities. If you want things to change, you need to be able to be the one to take control of your time, it’s your time and decide. How do you want to change it? Unknown Speaker 9:20 Spoiler alert, the only way to change it is to change the way you think about it. You don’t just miraculously find time. You make time with the way you choose to prioritize, to say no, to cut things out of your life, to put timeframes in place to set boundaries. And we say things like oh, I want to find time. Almost like the way we say I want to find my purpose. Listen, purpose, doesn’t just come down from the sky and knock you on the head saying hey, I’m here. You have to decide and the way you do that, the way you say it Unknown Speaker 10:00 You want to find time is that you start experimenting with different ways to consider how you currently spend your time, and how you want to spend your time. Because time is not like your vacation days, friends, you don’t get a back, you have to use it wisely now, or you do lose it right? We just expect that each day, we get up, and we get more of it. So we don’t always be intentional with it. We don’t always do what we want most with it, you have to be able to first own it own that everything you do in your life is a choice. And I get it, it might not always feel like that. But it is. And this topic is especially important this time of year, because I’m guessing there are a lot of things that get put on your plate, you have to be able to ensure that it’s a bunch of the good stuff. Now, you might be saying, but I have so much to do, I don’t even know where to start, or I don’t know what I would stop doing. You might even tell yourself, you’re not sure what you want to do at this point. Because you have just been yessing everyone and saying yes to everything over the years. So first, let me just fill you in. Confusion on where to start, is what keeps you over whelmed, you are only confused, because you haven’t set the priorities that I mentioned, which is good to know. Because now you can start doing that. And I love the idea of having Friday finishers. Brendon Bouchard talks about this concept, so that at the end of the day on Friday, what are the five things you want to have accomplished? What are your needle movers, and this ties into the same idea of the one thing concept from Gary Keller each day? What is the one main thing that if you did it, you might be able to knock out a couple other items, from your list of things to do. It makes you start getting very intentional with what is important. And I promise overwhelm never comes from lack of time. It comes from you thinking there is a lack of time, it comes from you thinking you don’t know where to start. Unknown Speaker 12:37 Want to know how you figure that part out, you just get started, do something because sitting around thinking that there is a quote unquote, right answer, which a lot of my perfectionist friends like to do is holding you back, you decide what the right answer is. And you decide to learn from each decision as you go. And the part that I mentioned about maybe not knowing what it is that you want to do, just take a guess, if you had to guess, what would it be? The truth is, you know what that answer is, you just have to take a minute and listen to yourself. Take a minute from the noise, and the people pleasing, and the doing doing doing. And looking to everyone else for approval. Take a break from thinking, you have to be the one to keep it together for everyone. Instead, listen to that voice within, you know the one it whispers to you. But you get to approve of yourself. And you don’t have to do do do for the approval of everyone else. You don’t have to be the one to keep all the things together. For everyone else. You just have to be the one to keep it together for you. And I promise you, things will start changing. And I want to be sure you heard what I just said. Things change. When you start changing the way you think about them. The way you look at them. We don’t need all the external things to change. Now listen, some might and that’s great. But we don’t have to be so dependent on thinking that everyone else needs to adjust for us. We start adjusting. You be the leader of your life. You own being the leader of how you spend your time and from there, you have so much more power and intention to make the changes. You will surely blow your own mind with what is possible when you do that. Okay friends. Now listen. I have three spots open to start the new year with one on one private coaching Unknown Speaker 15:00 So if you need help with this, it is totally my jam. Go to Michelle Bourque coaching comm forward slash connect, hop on the calendar for a call, it’s free. If you don’t see a time that works for you simply send me an email contact at Michelle Bourque coaching and we will get it on. We talk about the goals that you want to accomplish the plan to get there. The work is seriously life changing. And I saw that more than ever this weekend in Charleston and I want it for you. The chance to be able to know that you can excel in your career and not be stressed and overwhelmed. The chance to know that you can be amazing at work and shut it off when you’re home. The chance to know you can be happy in your life and want to evolve to your next best version. It’s so much fun okay, that’s what I have for you today. Let’s circle back next week but for now, make it a great day. Take care Unknown Speaker 16:10 Did you know you can take this work to a deeper level with me one on one, go to Michelle Bourque coaching comm and click on get started to begin