Find New Time - Tap Compassion's Power To Overcome 3 Time Poisons

To find new time for productivity is one challenge. Ending your day genuinely satisfied with your time choices is another challenge! Your power lies in how you connect these two challenges. You can either create a cycle of success or a downward spiral of disappointment. Here's the key to providing yourself with the success you deserve:

Always base your relationship with yourself on compassion and unconditional acceptance, not on how much you get done.

Placing compassion first contradicts a Time Myth that is deeply ingrained in most of us.

Time Myth: You 'should' deprive yourself of feeling good about your time choices and about yourself unless/until you have produced "X".

In other words, you create a scarcity of approval and self-acceptance until you meet your goal. But this is like withholding food from a horse until it has drawn a heavy load for a long distance! This scarcity mentality leads to several serious time problems:

Time Problem #1: Procrastination: The harsher you are with yourself, the more you avoid tasks you fear you might not do well. Your guilt grows, the task casts a bigger shadow, and you become afraid to look over your shoulder!

Time Problem #2: Perfectionism: The more anxiety you generate trying to reach an impossible standard of perfection, the more control you lose over your time. Perfectionism can steal your sleep, further eroding your productivity, and poison your pleasure in the moment.

Time Problem #3: Overbooking: Perhaps you seek approval from others, and find it hard to say no. If so, you will feel like the day is spent filling a leaky bucket. With frustration comes resentment, and with resentment comes costly errors.

The Compassionate Antidote to the Time Myth: Always approach yourself with respect and understanding. Validate everything you accomplish.

Advantage #1: Compassionate self-trust encourages exploration. The less you fear your harsh reprisals as you approach difficult or uncomfortable tasks, the less you avoid them.

Advantage #2: Compassionate realism broadens perspectives. When you value your satisfaction more than an abstract ideal, your ability to balance your commitments increases. You will find it much easier to produce more and worry less.

Advantage #3: Compassionate self-acceptance builds assertiveness. As you genuinely accept that you can't be all things to all people, you weigh your options and reduce your commitments to what's truly realistic.

Compassionate self-acceptance helps you review your to-do list at the end of the day without flinching. Any mistakes can be befriended as lessons to support you. If you then incorporate these lessons into an improved game plan, you've coached yourself well. And you can end your day genuinely pleased with your ongoing evolution of time choices.

The way you spend your time is the way you live your life. Why not transform your life with compassion, one second at a time?

What is your next step in using compassion to find quality time?