How to create more time and less stress with ease

I’m writing this at the end of the day, which is unusual for me, as I much prefer to write first thing in the morning, with the morning sun streaming into my dining room table and a nice cup of ginger tea wafting in the air. However, tonight I am in my office, the sun is setting, and it is the end of a very busy day, I think my tea is also cold!?

I don’t mind busy days at all, I like the variety of going from one thing to the next, ticking things off my list, seeing clients, being in meetings – whatever the day brings. However, I’m having more and more conversations with clients about the stressfulness of busyness, the pressure of having too much to do and not enough time to do it in, worrying that something will get missed or left undone. I’m not saying that I don’t feel like that from time to time, because that is human nature, however I also remember feeling like that?all?of the time and when that happens, not only does life feel hard and unenjoyable, we are putting ourselves at risk of ill health or even burn out. You could say I’ve been there and got that T-Shirt!?

So how can we be busy but without the stress? One thing that I learnt from my journey was that the quieter my mind was, the more I could get done. Now I wasn’t a quick learner at all, and some might say that I subscribed to the body of thinking that I needed to be stressed to put myself under enough pressure to get stuff done – so I had a lot to learn! One of my first realisations was how distracting my busy mind was, and how much time it took up. It’s something that I often invite clients to become aware of, how much time it takes to think about how much you have to do, how you’re not going to get it done, and the consequences of that. I remember one client honestly reporting that she could lose maybe five or ten minutes just panicking about what she had to do – she then got really curious as to how much time she spent during the day, before she exclaimed ‘I could get loads done in that time!’.??

The other part that we so often forget is that for the vast majority of the time, we always get the work done, we don’t let things fall off our radar, and that when it does happen we figure it out and we are ok. Really seeing this as the truth of things, enables us to see how little help our stressful thinking is – if you know that you will somehow get it done, because you always do, or you’ll figure it out, because you always do, it starts to make less sense to worry that it won’t. It’s a bit like worrying or getting stressed about the sun not rising tomorrow – it always does, so it doesn’t make sense to worry about that.??

Having these two insights certainly enabled me to be a lot quieter in my own mind, I paid less and less attention to my stressful thinking, I took it less seriously, and pretty soon it quietened down of its own accord. The impact of that meant I was happier, I had more space in my mind, but I also had more time as spending less time thinking, but also, because I was less distracted I could focus more on what I was doing – which meant I was more efficient! So it really was a win win situation!??

with love,

Andrea x

p.s if you would like to learn more about how understanding your state of mind can impact the success of your professional career or business, let’s have a chat. To find a time to suit you?click here

Andrea Morrison is a Transformational Business Coach, Tedx Speaker, Writer and Columnist for The Yorkshire Post. Find out more about her forthcoming events and programmes on her website:?www.andreamorrison.co.uk