Manage your emotions - manage your time

I often hear people complain “ I really have no time to relax”. “ I am too busy to even sleep or eat”. “ Not sure where the year has gone”. Often, action steps centers around –time spent on social media,  change of jobs or a passive acceptance of life as is. Rarely is there an enquiry around emotions.

Managing your time is about managing your energy—which translated means managing your emotions. Beyond understanding what emotion you are feeling,( and naming them)  consider what actions come up when you feel that way. What is the recurrent set of behaviour that derails your plans? Do you get consumed with feelings of overwhelm, of inadequacy or insignificance? Am I really capable of finishing this successfully? Does what I do matter? Despite all signs of success we may often feel like a fraud or imposter. 

Here’s another typical scenario: we start the day with a pretty good plan. Then we receive a message from someone –maybe your son, husband, father, a co-worker or Boss.  Stress. And we spent the rest of the day putting out someone’s else’s fire or trying to resolve issues that did not exist in the morning.. 

Emotions have a way of hijacking our actions.

 Our pre frontal cortex controls rational thinking, memory and creativity etc. However, its effectiveness is limited when under stress. Since our brain equates stress hormones with our physical survival, we tend to become reactive—a quick response is after all needed to survive an attack! So, managing our emotional triggers – in this  case what derails our plans- takes a bit of self reflective practice. Ultimately,  a deep understanding of our innermost feelings, acute sensitivity to the feelings of others and the will to condition our emotional responses to different situations is necessary to bring about our most desired goals. These are all core components of a highly developed Emotional intelligence. 

Here are some ways to start:

Target small changes. 

Begin with an exercise in self awareness. An effective method is a body scan. How is your body reacting? Are your shoulders slouching? Is there pain in your shoulder?

Identify patterns.

What loop are you constantly revolving around? What’s your favourite feeling that comes up constantly?  

A restful pause.

Take time during your busy day to pause restfully. It reduces our stress response and allows us to improve focus and attention. 

These are all self help skills. We naming our energy and our emotions. We try and understand where do we lose momentum. Anxiety and fear or anger drains us and we lose focus. Sometimes, we keep busy to escape strong negative emotions. Over time, we call the time management issues.

A life coach can help you to find the right balance inside yourself that will help you to spend your time meaningfully. A strong sense of purpose and meaning is the strongest factor in effective time management.