Have you ever said, “I don't have enough time?”
Of course you have! We all have at one time or another. But today we're changing how we think and how we speak about time, and you're going to see just how powerful you are when you make this tiny tweak in your thinking.
Hello my friends! I hope you are having a fabulous day. It's a Monday morning when I'm recording the podcast. I love my mornings. It's been really, really nice and it's one of those things where you've got to design your day so that it feels really good.
I know that a lot of people that I talk to ask me, how do you have all the time to do the things that you do? I'll tell you all about it in the podcast.
RESOURCES MENTIONED
One of the things that I do to create more time is change my mindset around time.
I also have a lot of help, but a big part of what I needed to do to even ask for that help is recognize where I was spending my time.
So today we're going to talk about why we actually have more time than we think.
And one of the most crippling thoughts that I have ever heard and the one that I've had that was crippling is that “I don't have enough time.”
“The thought that we don't have enough time is one of the things that causes us the most stress, the most anxiety.”
The hard truth is you do have the time for what's most important to you and if you're telling yourself that you don't, then you're making excuses.
If you're saying you don't have enough time, you're not taking 100% responsibility, and when we're not taking 100% responsibility for our lives, then we're always going to be the victim, right?
Even worse, we're never going to achieve the results we want to create in our lives.
“Really it's not about having enough time.
It's about how you want to show up in your life.”
Chances are if you're saying you don't have time in one area of your life, you're probably saying you don't have it in multiple areas of your life, right? You're probably also stuck in a lack mentality in other areas of your life, so start noticing when you're saying things like, I don't have enough money.
“I don't have enough time.” “I don't have enough this.” “I don't have enough that.” Because that's a whole mindset that you have to start noticing in order to begin shifting it.
“The real issue isn't whether you have enough time to do what you want to do.
“The real issue is whether or not you want to achieve the result you want in your life.”
Whether that's being physically or mentally stronger, having stronger relationships with people in your life or creating a solo practice or other business you've had on your mind or creating a certain amount of money in your business. Now there are a few tracks that we fall into when it comes to this, right? This thinking, well, we're going to touch on four of them throughout this podcast and then talk about a couple of them right now. The first trap I want to talk about is the one where we say, we don't have time when we don't want to do something, which isn't true.
The truth is you have something else you'd rather do.
So let's say you've got somebody who comes up to you and invites you to something and you tell them, oh, I'd love to, but I just don't have enough time. The trap is when we say something to them, when our brain begins to actually believe it, right?
So when we start telling people we don't have enough time, when we really don't want to do that thing that they're inviting us to, we begin training our mind to just respond to everything: “Oh, I don't have enough time.” So the next time you're asked to do something that you don't want to do, consider telling the person who's asking you this, that you have a prior commitment or you want to focus on your family or your business right now. Try something that is true. It's going to help you train your mind to get out of that lack mentality.
And you'll also be in integrity with yourself.
You'd also be surprised at how easy this is to create a connection because when you begin being honest with people, when you begin watching your thoughts, and instead of saying, “I don't have enough time,” saying something like, “You know, I'm really committed to seeing my kids this week-end.”
Think about how you want to relate to the other person because that person might actually respond to you in a way that opens something up for communication and vulnerability.
So when we're honest with people, then it opens up this whole new area that lends itself to connecting rather than contracting. Okay? So that's the first trap I want to talk about.
The second trap that we fall into is that we change the result that we really want, that goal that we really, really want because it seems like we're not going to get it.
We want to soften the blow of not getting what we want. Please don't do this. Stick with the result you want to achieve and keep changing the actions you're taking. So for instance, if you are starting a business, then you want to recognize that you have a goal and that if you're telling yourself you don't have enough time to do all of the things that you need to do in that business, and then you begin changing your goal, maybe it's not such a big business, or maybe you're shifting simply because like a monetary goal. Let's say you're shifting a monetary goal. You said, well, I almost made that, but I don't have enough time to do all the things to make that other thing happen. So I'm just gonna settle for this lower amount. Recognize where you're settling. Recognize where the self-talk you're doing about not having enough time is actually causing you to settle.
I remember when I was working as a trial attorney thinking, “I don't have enough time to do things like go to the gym, make healthy food date, clean my apartment.”
Well, all of those things were not true. It's just that I wasn't thinking thoughts that really served me and I certainly didn't take the time to think about how I felt. I didn't have time for that.
Before we get to some of the other thought traps out there, let's review the thought cycle with the thought, “I don't have enough time.”
When you start breaking it down so that you can see the parts, when you really start looking at this objectively, really when you really begin understanding why we have these thoughts and the impact that these thoughts are having on our lives, then you can really see where the changes are that you can make.
The little tweaks you can make. If you've been listening for a while, you may have heard me talk about the thought cycle. A quick overview. I want you to picture around clock. Okay? At the top, the 12 o'clock on the clock is the evidence or the circumstance that you're faced with. The evidence is an objective fact. It's evidence every single person could completely agree with, for instance, there's a sky. There's a sun, a moon. There are 24 hours in a day. Then we move clockwise on that circle at the three o'clock I want you to picture a line with the thought we're talking about. It's a sentence, I don't have enough time. This thought is about the objective evidence that has been presented to you. It's like when you come to the office on a Monday, when you ask people how their weekend was and they say it could have been longer.
They say this as if it's a fact, but a week-end is 48 hours. It's always been 48 hours. 48 hours would be the objective fact. The evidence, the thought that you have that it could have been longer. That is the thought that goes in the thought line.
As a side rand, this is one of those non-starter conversations I dislike. It's like, “Wow, I can see you really wanted to talk to me and share anything about yourself with you.” It's starting a conversation with a complaint. Come on guys! I should start responding with something like, oh, that's too bad. My week-end was awesome. You know, just recognize when you're closing things off with sentences and complaints like that. It's just a really interesting thing. Once you start noticing it, you're going to want to shift because you recognize you're really just complaining.
So back to the thought cycle, our thought that I don't have enough time or my weekend was too short.
It's our interpretation of a piece of evidence of a fact, right? So you may believe they're true, but they're just thoughts. They're your interpretations of a fact.
Not everyone thinks the weekend was too short. Some people are excited to get back to work. I know. Hard to imagine, but it's true. Some people love what they do and if you don't, then maybe you're working at the wrong place. Or maybe you can begin changing the work environment with your attitude. It all starts with one person, my friend. I know it's hard sometimes, but it all starts with one person and not everyone feels that they don't have enough time.
The thought that we have generates a feeling in our body.
What we're going to do is work our way clock wise to the six o'clock position. And there we have a line where you're going to put one word for the feeling that you have that's generated by that thought.
Anytime we feel like we don't have enough of something, we're in scarcity mode. So the feelings that are most likely being generated are low energy. So pick one feeling that you feel the most when you say something like that and enter it into the thought line of the thought cycle. And we so seldom actually notice these feelings, which is why it's so important to carve out space in our life to notice the thoughts that we're thinking and the feelings that we feel because they really impact what happens moving forward. For me personally when I felt like I don't have enough time and if I feel that way at all now is anxious. That would be the word that I would use in that feeling line. A really good starting point on learning to spend more time with yourself as the podcast I did on meditation for people who can't meditate and I will link to that in the show notes and I'll also link to some free meditations you can get them below.
“If you have the feeling that you don't have time to go to the gym, the novel you've been meaning to write, start the solo practice you've been meaning to start, et cetera, et cetera, then you're working from that scarcity mentality and that never ever serves us.”
In my example of the gym, you probably feel a bit anxious, you know that's the feeling I get when I know I quote unquote should be doing something, but I don't do it. You may feel something different. Put that one word, feeling in that space. Then we have two more lines to fill to complete the thought cycle. At the eight o'clock we're going to have the actions that you take as a result of your feelings and at the 10 o'clock we're going to place the results that you get, the feeling that you have, anxiety, fear, disappointment, joy, excitement, whatever it is will always dictate the actions that we take to get our result.
If you feel excited, it makes sense that you'd take action in alignment with that feeling, right? If you're excited about feeling amazing in your body, then you're more likely to take action that gets you that result, like going to the gym or eating healthy foods. If you feel stressed or you feel shame that you aren't doing what you think you are, quote unquote should be doing, then it makes sense that your actions are going to be in alignment with that feeling, right? You're not going to take actions that feel amazing when you feel like crap. We actually have to work from the feeling we want to have in order to create the results that we want, and that means taking a really close look at the thoughts that we're having. The important thing at this stage that we are right now is that you notice that's where you're working from right now.
Once you notice that, then you can begin to create a shift. It can be a subtle shift at first if you just can't get yourself to believe, so instead of going from, “I don't have the time,” you're not going straight to, “I have so much time, I have an abundance of time. There's more time than I could possibly imagine,” you'd go from, “I don't have the time” to something like “I have the time to do what is most important to me” or “I want to prioritize my time.”
Then eventually you would get to, “I have enough time” or I even, “I have plenty of time.”
FYI: when you repeat a thought and a feeling over and over again, this becomes a belief. This belief is basically a thought habit. That belief feels like it's true. It's now a shortcut in your brain that you need to rewire and that's what we're doing when we're starting to recognize our thoughts and recognize our feelings.
And that's another trap. We begin to identify so closely with the belief that we are unwilling to look at it more closely. And one of those examples is “I don't have enough time.” We really truly believe that because we've repeated that thought and feeling so many times. I walk you through a process on how to rewire your brain and the Lawyers Soul Roadmap. I'll be opening that up soon. So if more about how your brain works and how you can rewire it interests you, make sure you are subscribed.
You don't want to miss the announcement when enrollment is open. In fact, better yet, make sure you're signed up for my weekly emails!
You can get on the email list by downloading any of the free coaching guides on my homepage right here (or anything on this page). Like this…
“The thought that our beliefs are true is what stops so many people from changing their lives.”
They feel stuck because their thoughts are stuck. If you feel stuck, then it's time to start thinking different thoughts.
Let's talk a little bit more about this trap about your belief becoming part of your identity.
If you say things like, “I'm just a stressed person,” or “I'm a lawyer, so we never have enough time” or “I'm a mom, so I never have enough time,” you're making that belief part of your identity.
“Everything we create in our lives is a result of our identity. It's who we are being. It's who we think we are at our core. We must consciously think about how we want to feel and begin identifying those thoughts and feelings that don't serve us. Then we can begin feeling better. We can start seeing those feelings we want to have and start working from those instead. And when we make the time to sit with ourselves, that's where we can begin to really dive into this work and feel better.”
This article is a great starting point for you to begin thinking about those thoughts that don't serve you and begin to weed them out, but unless you are doing the conscious work, unless you have somebody who can be there for you to recognize what your thoughts are, what you're saying, it gets really difficult to differentiate between that belief that we have solidified into part of our identity and separate that into thoughts and feelings and also to recognize that it's not our circumstance. It's not the evidence that we're working from because so many of us, once we create that belief we're working from, I don't have enough time in that 12 o'clock line, right where the evidence is. That's your evidence. “I don't have enough time.” That's what you're looking at.
Well, that is not the evidence. All you would put in that line is “24 hours.” That is the evidence.
Everyone would agree there's 24 hours in a day. Everyone would agree that we have the exact same amount of time in the day. That is what you're working from.
You're not working from, “I don't have enough time.” But if you don't have somebody who's there for you, like a coach, to start helping you comb through what your thoughts are, then a lot of times we simply won't recognize it because it's not something we're practiced at. It took me a really long time to do that and I definitely needed a coach to help me begin to understand where my thoughts and my beliefs weren't serving me and I still have a coach like that's still something that I need to recognize when I am putting together my thoughts and my feelings and creating a belief. Then I start working from that belief in that 12 o'clock line, that evidence line rather than where I need to see where it's separated and where it's not serving me to believe what I'm believing, so just don't listen to this podcast and forget about it.
Really sit down with a pen and paper and start writing down the thoughts that you have and start recognizing: are you working from a circumstance or are you working from your belief?
You're probably noticed that there are a lot of things that you say to yourself that aren't all that nice too. Now we are our harshest critics, so think about how you would feel if someone said those things to your best friend or to your child. So when you're starting to beat yourself up on things, that is also something that we do. We beat ourselves up and we put that in the evidence line of that thought cycle, and we work from that. And so we get really hard on ourselves anyhow. Then you start deleting the phrases that don't serve you.
One more trap to watch out for: not continuing to take action despite a “failure.”
You try something just one time you do one thing, you fail. Then you give up. It's like when we start a brand new new year's resolution to go to the gym. Oh, we missed a day at the gym. You know what? I give up? Oh, I missed that day of meditating. I missed that day of eating healthy. I forgot to do something that day. And then you give up.
You don't keep taking action to change your results. I used to fall into this trap as a recovering perfectionist. If I couldn't do something right the first time, then why bother? When we began looking at the thought cycle as a process, then we can understand that we work from our feeling to take an action that may or may not get us the result that we want.
We have to keep taking action towards the results that we want.
I didn't automatically make myself a morning person.
It took lots of trial and error and noticing what I was doing and why I was doing it. It becomes a simple math problem rather than anything that means anything about you or the circumstances. It doesn't mean anything that your action didn't get you the result that you wanted, so you didn't make time to go to the gym today. It doesn't mean you give up prioritizing the gym or your health. You see why you're allowing yourself to skip the gym. You recognize the thought you're having, you recognize the feeling you're having and then you take action in a different way.
We are 100% responsible for our results.
We just keep taking action until we get the results we want. That's it.
So here's your homework and have lots and lots of compassion for yourself when you do this. No judging yourself or rating yourself for any of this, okay?
Today, think about any time you mentioned how you didn't have time or said you couldn't do something because you didn't have time. Write them down. Were you in when you said that you didn't have the time? In other words, could you have said something like, I'm prioritizing my work right now so I can't make it to that party. Could you have made a connection with someone instead of talking about how little time you had? So this pops up in different areas. For instance, if someone asked you how you were this weekend, could you have shared something that happened instead of saying that it was true short, or when someone stopped to ask you how you were doing in the elevator, could you have shared something rather than talking about how busy you were? It's amazing how often we talk about our lives in terms of time instead of making a real connection.
Then tomorrow try to stay in integrity and connection. Hmm, okay, that's all you gotta do and like something you're willing to try. Now when you do this, you will live with fewer regrets and you're going to show up differently in the world. You begin to build self confidence too because you're taking 100% responsibility for the world you're creating for yourself. It's pretty freaking amazing. So be sure to go to Dina cataldo.com forward slash 60 to get those free resources I've talked about or download any other free coaching guide to be sure you're the first to know when my free training videos are out and when the lawyer's soul roadmap is open for enrollment. Again, because these are all things that are going to help you learn to train your brain to get the results that you really want in life and if you need help with this.
That's why I coach. I know coaching has made a difference in how I approach my life and how I approach my goals. And I know that I reached them when I'm coached. So next week we are going to talk about goal setting. We're going to talk about how do we evolve to achieve our goals. I'm excited to talk to you about this topic because these are skills I wish we were taught when we were kids. It's so simple and yet it's not always easy. All right my friend, I will talk to you next week. Have a wonderful day.