Which minute?

Life is too fast – you do not have enough time

We stay stuck/ill/on medications that mask our bodies’ warning cries., as often, we just don’t feel like changing.

NEED FOR SPACE
As we journey through different life cycles, we could choose to take time for private reflection and contemplation to allow the sifting through and re-cataloguing of thoughts and memories. This would al¬low and ensure that we retain and review an integrated sense of self.

To spend all of every day doing – rather than being – and to be busy every second disturbs our inner harmony. We end up with a clutter of half thought through and half completed ideas and inner tidy ups – all unfinished and all competing for attention within the busyness of every day.

More and more we need to stop and get our inner selves in order, and more and more there is no time to even think of doing this. Things that have really affected us are swept away out of sight and we keep the pace of the treadmill going – ever faster. This all leads to us becoming terse with those we love. We may become irascible and difficult. We just need to ‘defragment’ like the computer.

Regardless of the calls upon self, there is something you can do. By studying the hours available in a day, week, year and life, and planning their expenditure affords you the luxury of purposeful and enjoyable living. As with all time put for planning, this can on first sight look like an extravagance with time you do not have . . . .

Take Charge?

Claiming the first hour of every day for self, allowing nothing to interrupt, regardless of the hour you have to arise to have it as your own, will immensely enrich your whole day and life. Sitting in quiet solitude, with a journal, recording the events of your sleep cycle, the dreams, feelings you awoke with, plans that were there when you became conscious, will very quickly show in the experience of your daily life.

This may sound like pure indulgence. In times past people sat with God for at least 30 minutes a day – why not sit and be as a contemplative exercise? Try it for a week and see how more produc¬tive you can possibly be.

Setting aside private time again in the middle of the day, even if only ten minutes, to centre and realign all of who you are – rather than who everyone else sees, and reacts to and with – will grant you in¬ner peace that will give rich rewards. Purposefully become aware of the part of you that is precious, the essence of self, and consciously realign to and as this, particularly when feeling yourself being thrown up against old self-beliefs, will yield big inner changes.

HOW PRECIOUS IS YOUR TIME?

1 – Get a piece of paper and divide the page into eight columns – one for each day of the week, plus the extreme left hand one for the 24 hours of the day.
2 – Write each time, hour by hour down the page.
3 – Use different coloured marker pens, to colour in each activity, according to the time spent .. . sleeping, driving, working, shopping, food preparation, self grooming, housework, washing and ironing, and so on.
4 – List the things you wish you had time to do – like more quality time with children, spouse, meditation, leisurely walking (rather than power striding for exercise)
5 – If with a partner, either get them to do the same exercise,
or do it for their life, as a comparison, especially if you feel you are holding too much of the sky up.
6 – See the discrepancy of each one’s ‘free’ time.
7 – See, maybe for the first time in your life, the race living has become.
8 – Take a deep breath, pause to make a calming drink and take a protein nibble.
Is this how you wish to continue?

Which minute -1 – Please download and fill in

You will discover what needs to be shed or reorganised so that you can create a balance more in line with how you would wish to spend your time here and now? What is really important to you, and what is being done out of habit, or because another wants it of you, and you feel obliged? Is it freely given, or conditional upon what you get in return?
Regardless of the sense some of these suggestions seem to make, it is easy to put off.

There’s the weather, the time of the month, the lack of money – there is always a perfect reason why not.

Turning this around, and seeing this lack of apparent commitment as part of the problem helps us identify other ways of going through our lives. It appears that we (whatever ‘we’ think of as being self)
are not always in control, as though a little gremlin gets to be the doer. Then, sometime later, the reins are returned to us and we are expected to negotiate out of the mess created.

WHY WOULD WE BOTHER?
CHANGE OF EMPHASIS/FOCUS
We all know that especially when hard pressed for time, and when feeling as though every person wants more than there is to give, and when time restraints stop us from doing and being all that we would like – when things are NOT going the way we want them to – we can often be triggered into old ways/habits in dealing with events and people.

This often gets us into far more strife than we were in before. This also often leads the way into physical issues – especially headaches, fatigue and digestive distress and sleeping disorders. We may have been seeing various healers to try to resolve these as though they are discreet from our lifestyle and beliefs, which in fact cause them
to be there in the first place. Ill health has to be worked at also – usually trying to get rid of problems is met with no success, until we start undoing what creates it all within ourselves. Knowing his then is complicated by thinking we have ‘no time’ to deal with any of it.

The inner ‘landmines’ that trip us up in our lives are the upset inner distressed sites which have been glossed over. We may think at the time that hiding away from what really distresses us – as though time and inattention will dissolve our hurts. Unfortunately as most will attest, keeping things inside causes them to pop up later when least
able to deal with them – and they usually have grown/festered.