Heart—wise women are women who:
- Have had a cardiac event of any kind, or
- Know they have significant risk factors for cardiac disease.or
- Are intelligent enough to know their stress-filled lives can kill them
Harried women are:
- Overly-busy women who can’t seem to find enough time to exercise, meditate, and do all the things they know are good for them
- Working women, women entrepreneurs, women with families, women being caretakers……
- Just about every woman we know!
As a Certified Life Coach and teacher, I work with overly-busy women who are concerned about their hearts and who can’t find the time to relax or meditate because they believe they have “delegated everything they can delegate and let go of everything possible”. I help them to shift their perspectives, identify hidden time-wasters, change habitual thoughts and actions that rob them of time, energy, and power, and discover time for life-enhancing activities.
Looking for Time in the All the Wrong Places
Feeling rushed seems to be a by-product of modern life. We work to have a better life, but discover we have to spend time commuting to the home we were able to provide because of the job. We take up activities to stay healthful and involved in life, then discover we have increased our commitments to the point where we no longer enjoy these “leisure” activities. We want to do a good job in every aspect of life: work, relationships, child-rearing, home care, and we feel buried in joyless responsibility.
Take time to go to a weekend meditation retreat? You know it would be good for you, but if you can’t even find the time to sleep in a little later on a weekend, how could you possibly set aside two days of doing nothing?
Many of us keep looking for time in all the wrong places. Such as, “After I’m through with work, and my commute, and my personal banking business, and my food shopping and meal preparation, and my commitment to other people ….then I’ll have a little time to relax. And it never happens.
Don’t wait until everything else is done. There’ll never be anything left for you. Do as personal money managers advise: Pay yourself first. If possible, spend a few quiet moments at the start of the day meditating. You will start your day feeling more clear-headed about what you plan to accomplish.
Other ideas for managing your time better:
- Manage your transitions better. Enter every new task and encounter after you’ve spent a few minutes doing some deep breathing and clearing your mind. Your loved ones, your boss, even your pets will thank you for being more relaxed
- Stress makes you stupid. Remember “Ready, Fire, Aim”?. Slow down deliberately when starting a new task; write out a plan of what you are going to do (writing it forces you to slow down and think), even (heaven forbid!) read directions first. The time you spend will be more than repaid by the time you save not having to go back and correct mistakes.
- Live in the present, not the past or future: Rushing to an appointment, reviewing in your mind the coming topic, you park your car, slam the door, and walk away. An hour later you search frantically for your car in the parking lot or on a city street because you can’t remember where you put it. Stop when you leave your car, note small landmarks that will orient you, then walk to your appointment mindfully noting passersby and scenery. You’ll arrive more refreshed and clear-headed, and you won’t waste time searching for something that shouldn’t have been “lost”.
- Give up too much caretaking: Unless you have a very young child or a helpless invalid in your life, you may be doing a lot more caretaking than is good for you…..or for the other person.. Son forgot his homework and wants you to deliver it to the school? Maybe once, but after that he is responsible for the consequences of his behavior. Give up obsessing about the possible negative outcome of a friend’s behavior if you can do nothing about it. The rule is: If you don’t have the authority to do something about it, don’t take the responsibility.
Following the above guidelines may not get you immediately to that two-day meditation retreat, but you’ll find you can create “islands of peace” in the middle of your chaotic days, and perhaps this will be the start of a new way to live, and to love your life.
