I don’t have enough time.
How many times a week do you say this phrase or do you hear someone else say this phrase?
That use to be one of my go to phrases. I never had enough time. Yet the funny thing is, out of all the years I have used that phrase, as I look back on these past few years with all that I have accomplished and all that I have done with my time, and I wonder what in the world I was actually doing with all my time back in college and in our earliest years of marriage where all I did was work.
The past few years I’ve managed to travel more, read more and write more all the while maintaining a full time job as a nurse along with hustling on the side with writing and blogging. And the irony is that although I have a lot more that fills my time now, I don’t feel like I don’t have enough time nor do I respond with the answer of ‘I don’t have enough time.’
We often approach time with a scarcity mentality. We didn’t get enough sleep so we wake up already exhausted and running behind because we hit the snooze button a few times too many. We scramble to get ready to be at work on time, we sacrifice eating breakfast and having a quiet ritualistic morning because we don’t have enough time. We only get a portion of what we hoped to accomplish because we didn’t have enough time. We jet out of the office with a list of errands to run on our way home, hoping we’ll have enough time to get to all of them. We skip the gym because we don’t have time. We grab take out because really, who has time to cook?
When we approach time from a standpoint of scarcity, we will never have enough.
When I began to realize that this was how I approached my time, I made a cognizant effort to not use the phrase ‘I don’t have enough time.’ Now I approach my time as an opportunity that I get to decide what I am going to do with it.
This shifted everything about the way I saw and spent my time.
We can choose to approach our time one of two ways; we can approach it from the scarcity mentality or we can approach it with an opportunity mentality.
Viewing time as an opportunity will inevitably change the way you see it. It creates choices for you to consciously make rather than having your time dictated by all the things you don’t have time for.
When you approach time from a place of scarcity you will never have enough. But if you approach time from a place of opportunity, you just may be surprised with all that you are able to accomplish
You now control your own time, you don’t let others control it for you. Be intention and be strategic with the time you’ve been given.