Have you ever considered that time might not be the tyrant we often portray it as but rather a misunderstanding? I reveal how to find 'micro-moments' to support your parasympathetic nervous and social engagement systems.
One of my clients' biggest misconceptions is that they can feel better if they have more time. When I teach them, it's looking at micro-moments and changing their perception of time to prioritise mental health and happiness in the pockets of life. Join Calm the Chaos FREE Masterclass to ease stress and anxiety
Have you ever considered that time might not be the tyrant we often portray it as but rather a misunderstanding? I reveal how to find 'micro-moments' to support your parasympathetic nervous and social engagement systems.
One of my clients' biggest misconceptions is that they can feel better if they have more time. When I teach them, it's looking at micro-moments and changing their perception of time to prioritise mental health and happiness in the pockets of life. Join Calm the Chaos FREE Masterclass to ease stress and anxiety
Speaker 1:
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Come Compass podcast. So in today's podcast episode I want to talk to you about time, and we often think that you need more time to do X, y and Z, or we can't do self care because we don't have enough time. And a lot of the time we are looking at time as almost like the enemy. Like you know, I just don't have enough time, and sometimes it's not the enemy, but it's how we're prioritising tasks and it's looking at where we can look at little micro moments that we can sort of utilise time as a way to do some breath work or do some self care, rather than thinking that we need a whole day so we don't even think of it as an idea. And I want to talk to you about this, because this is something that I talk to my clients about. Really, about time is never the problem. It's how you are prioritising other things, and sometimes what happens is the reason that you might feel resentment or you start noticing that you're feeling really triggered and really reactive, is because you're saying yes to things that are not aligned. So that's where maybe you could be someone who has a tendency because you've got a beautiful big heart to say yes to everyone because you don't want to upset them. So what happens to you is your well-being, your mental health, is becoming less of a priority and so your needs are forgotten. And so in your eyes, you're putting everyone first, because that's what big hearted people you believe do. But that is far from it. It's looking at the ability to create and implement boundaries so that you can hold yourself, and sometimes we get really uncomfortable with this because we really just it brings up so much of that anxiety, and I completely understand. And it's also looking at your inner core needs and what actually contributes to your experience with stress and anxiety. And sometimes we don't know what that is until something hasn't been met, and sometimes it's just a basic thing of.
Speaker 1:
For me it's communication, communication. I need to know sometimes, because sometimes you can feel like, when you're an anxious person, that they're going to judge you or they're going to say you're a liar or you know all of these things that you could catastrophize everything. So in your mind you're thinking well, saying yes is just easier until it's not, and then what happens is you're doing it not to your fullest potential, because it's not really what you have. You don't have full capacity, time, energy, space to be able to do that next project, and so your mental health is not a priority and so your ability to respond and do that is not being served right. So I always I've taken a little bit of a tangent, so stay with me, but I really wanted to put that caveat of sometimes we are big-hearted people and we really find saying no is incredibly challenging and difficult, and we have also this belief that saying no we're going to be judged or crucified or they're going to say all of these things. So it's.
Speaker 1:
I always say things are such a journey point, it's not. You do something once and you know you have to be consistently understanding how you can make, create and implement those boundaries very subtly and put it in your life. So, no matter what, you're always prioritizing mental health and your well-being and you're looking for opportunities rather than seeing time as the problem. You're looking for opportunities of where you can practice some self-care that is actually going to support your ability to cope and no stressful times, for example, if you're someone who commutes right and, let's be honest, commuting is an environment where it does evoke such a stressed reaction because you're concerned that you're going to be late and sometimes you can't change that. You could possibly leave earlier, but sometimes, unfortunately, you know, sometimes, two things just happen, even with all of the planning, and you may have left two hours beforehand and there's a huge accident on your way to work, on the way home. Usually you'll find that you get more stress going to work because you don't want to, you don't want to get into trouble and I think you know being in an environment such as being in traffic is such a stress-invoking activity and if we don't regulate ourselves and look at those little micro moments where we can actually activate our parasympathetic state, we're going to get to work and we're going to feel triggered and we're going to feel angry and we're going to feel really stressed out.
Speaker 1:
So what I invite you to do is, rather than going I don't have time we it's looking at where you might have some time that you could possibly utilize. So, on your way to work, maybe at a certain you know place or locality, you start doing some, some breaths. So you might be doing some box breathing, you know, counting in for full counts, holding at the top, exhaling out for full counts, and again and so forth, and what you're wanting to do is you're wanting to slow down the exhale. When you're exhaling out, you're activating what's called the parasympathetic nervous system, so that's your ability to rest and digest and that helps you heal, and we need to be in that. That you know we need to be in that state. We need to learn how to activate that and if we are in a stress state, we need to learn how to teach our body to get out of that quicker.
Speaker 1:
Okay, so that you could practice this, you know, on your way to work, you may have 30 minutes of lunch, so you might, instead of being in the office and sometimes people are. Every environment is so different, but a lot of environments they're toxic because they're inside All this artificial light. We're not used to being just solely inside. So a way that you could practice self care without feeling more stressed out that actually support yourself is just changing the scene, going outside and, you know, being in the sunlight that really supports your circadian rhythm, that supports your wellbeing as well. You need sunlight that is really, really supportive, and it could be also looking at. Okay, who? What conversations do I need to have to be able to go to a class? Or what conversations do I need to have in order for me to be able to go for a walk tonight. And no matter what, we can always feel like there's something more pressing and it's not. It's just looking at. Okay, well, I'm just going to go for a 30 minute walk and then you'll come back. You'll feel more refreshed, more focused and you're showing up in a way that's supportive, and walking is such a brilliant way of creating mindfulness.
Speaker 1:
If you're someone who finds meditation really difficult, start with walking and really noticing what you see by practicing mindfulness. You know noticing the trees and you know all of the different, how many things you can notice and see and hear. And yeah, I think it's just, we've got to train our brain. So I hope you found this podcast episode helpful. I am running a masterclass coming up Calm the Chaos which is going to give you some stress, relieving techniques to support you without all of this overwhelm and exhaustion. So all of those details will be in the show notes. Bye.