If you want to create more time in your day, you have to think differently about time. Get five life-changing mindset shifts to create more time inside this post!
Time can feel like a thief. It seems like it’s always taking and moving at a speed that is hard to keep up. If we’re not careful, we can live our lives wishing for more while feeling like we never have space to live. Of course, time is an unlimited resource. We all only have so much. But it’s not actually the minutes of time that dictate how much you have. It’s what you do with it.
If you want to create more time in your day, you have to think differently about time.
Albert Einstein demonstrated that space and time change depending on the observer. Time is relative.
In other words, the rate at which time passes is based on your frame of reference. It’s a perspective. A perspective that shifts based on how you view time or spend it.
Our current way of approaching time is most often around the idea that you don’t have enough. Scarcity creates an unsafe space inside your mind that fixates on what you don’t have. When you feel like something is lacking, naturally, you long for more. But in the process of wanting more and chasing more time, you’re actually wasting what you have.
The good news is that you can create more time in your day!
The ‘disease of more.’
I know we don’t mean to, but chasing time or waiting to live time, is a self-sabotaging pattern that can become what is known as the ‘disease of more.’ It’s easy to catch this ‘disease’ in a world reminding you what you’re not. Keeping you stuck in the trenches of FOMO (fear of missing out). But if you fail to get rid of the ‘disease of more,’ it will prevent you from ever being satisfied with where you are. It will keep you stuck believing that you would become satisfied if you had just a little more time.
But the problem with chasing more, even if it’s time, is even though you have it, it doesn’t mean you’re going to enjoy it. It doesn’t mean you’ll value time, making the presence of time a fleeting experience you fear rather than enjoy.
Here’s what you need to know. You don’t need more time. You need to learn how to live it. Because it’s in the living that you experience life, expanding time to help you see you have exactly what you need.
If you want more time, try these 5 life-changing mind shifts to create more time in your life.
5 Life-changing Mind Shifts To Create More Time In Your Day
01: Stop living for yourself and Live for something bigger.
One of the greatest downfalls of humanity is the belief that the best life is a life devoted to yourself. In the age of self-help, we land in a sea of trying to fix ourselves. We’ve devoted our lives to believing that the best life happens when you create your best self. But happiness research proves the opposite.
Research shows that our connection to the world and others drives happiness. It also proves a life well lived stems from a belief in something greater than ourselves. When you have that, it changes what you do with your life and, likewise, your time. When you fill your time with experiences you feel good about, experiences that are a part of your purpose, the time spent feels worthy. It feels meaningful, not wasted.
Living for something bigger than yourself changes what you do with your life. It changes how you live the time you have. When you fill your time in a passion-filled way, it makes you feel like you have more because you’re living more of it.
02: Stop wishing for more time and start living what you have.
I’ve spent a lot of my life wishing for the next season. When I got there, I wished for more time in the previous season. It sounds counterproductive because it is. Wishing away time while also wishing for more of it. This led me to wonder, how much time do we all waste hoping for more time?
Wishing for more time never creates more time. The only thing that expands time is how you live it. Whenever you feel the urge to wish for more time, ask yourself, how can I live it right now? We can’t go back and change anything, but we can change today and tomorrow by showing up no matter where life has you. Let go of the need to wish for more time and start living what you have. I promise, this alone changes how you view time.
03: Become the master of making trade-offs.
There is a saying that says, ‘if you don’t fill time, time will fill itself.’ It makes a valid point. Time is constantly being filled even when you aren’t conscious of what you’re filling it with. But when it comes to time, we’re often more concerned about finding more than understanding how we’re filling it. We fail to question if what we’re doing is the best use of time.
Instead of racing to find more time, become a master at making trade-offs with your time based on the value you get out of it. That begins by paying attention to how you or your life is filling your time. Next question, is this the best use of my time? If not, make a trade-off based on the value you want to experience.
Life is not a matter of how much time you have but the value you receive from living. If what you do provides life, then the amount of time it takes doesn’t matter. Take health practices, for instance. Tasks that many people excuse away because of a lack of time. But if you look at the value it adds, the energy and focus you can achieve from them, or even a level of self-confidence, then the time it takes carries value. In the process, it gives you time, not take it.
Rather than more time, you need to see how to trade what you’re currently doing with something that is more life-giving. What can you trade for better quality time? Like all things, everything you do costs you something. It’s called opportunity costs. The question isn’t how much time but what you gain from the costs.
04: Stop trying to improve yourself all the time and learn to nourish yourself.
I believe fully that we all would value living with a growth mindset. There is nothing wrong with wanting to become better. Learning is one of the greatest assets you can hold onto in life. But like all good things, too much can become a detriment.
Living trying to improve your life leaves you with the mindset that where you are isn’t enough. It compresses time by increasing the scarcity mindset. This leaves you clinging to the fear that you may miss out on an opportunity, on living, if you don’t figure out a way to arrive.
But what if you don’t need to arrive? What if you don’t need to fix yourself? It took me too long to realize that just because something can be improved in my life doesn’t mean it should be. More than fixing and improving sometimes, you just need to nourish yourself. Letting life grow you and shape you and form you – not you spending your days trying to fix yourself.
What would happen if you stopped trying to improve yourself all the time and just started living? When you shift your focus from improving to nourishing, you open up time to experience life right where you are. You gain time.
05: Choose how you’ll live it.
If we’re not careful, we let life, others, trauma, and our past fill our current way of living. We let our subconscious ‘chatter brain’ take the wheel of our lives, driving us in a direction we don’t want to go but feel like we have no option but to travel.
In the process, we spend our days wishing for something different without understanding we have the option to make it different.
You get to choose how you show up. You get to choose what you do with time. You get to make decisions. Maybe not all of them, but most of the hours you have each day are in your control. The question is, how are you choosing to live them?
Take time to observe your life. How satisfied is it? What are you living for? Can you shift your perspective and start taking action?
Remember, you can choose something different, but the most important thing is you choose to live it, not wait for it, waste it, worry about it, or suppress it.
You have time. The question is, what are you doing to create more time?
Need help getting your life on track?
I didn’t mention it above, but writing out a plan, keeping track of lists, and having space to dream is essential in changing what you do with time. Don’t forget, if you don’t plan to live, you never will.
If you need help planning while putting an end to schedule shaming, check out the Nourished Planner! The wellness tool that will transform what you do, how you live, and what you achieve.
