Transforming Time: From Relentless Taskmaster to Benevolent Ally

Time can be a relentless taskmaster or a benevolent guide, depending on how we engage with it. Join Angie Costa and me, April Sabral, as we unravel the emotional threads that tie us to the ticking clock in our latest podcast episode of Incurable Positivity. Together, we navigate the often stressful waters of time management and offer a fresh perspective that transforms time from a foe into an ally. As you tune in, expect to discover strategies to reshape your dialogue with time, turning it into a conversation as enriching as those with a trusted collaborator or dear friend. Say goodbye to the pressure and welcome a newfound control over your daily schedule with grace and positivity.

During the episode, Angie blows out the candles on a profound birthday revelation, showing us how to put 'worst first' and conquer our days with confidence. Inspired by the wisdom of "Eat the Frog," we dissect the psychological lift you gain by tackling the most daunting tasks right out of the gate. As we balance the scales between urgency and importance, we also delve into practical steps such as journaling and setting reminders, ensuring that your relationship with time is consistently nurtured. Expect the unexpected as we share personal anecdotes and transformative insights, all woven together to help you master the art of positive time management. With Angie and me as your guides, embark on a journey to make time work for you in a whole new way.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey there, positivity seekers, Welcome to another episode of incurable positivity the podcast where we explore practical ways to shift your thoughts from negative to positive.

Speaker 2: 0:11

I'm April Sabral, and with me is the incredible Angie Costa. Together, we co-authored the award-winning book Incurable Positivity, and we're here to bring those pages to life in this uplifting podcast.

Speaker 1: 0:25

Absolutely, April. Our mission is simple to help you think and feel better. Life does challenges our way, but it's how we respond that makes all the difference. Today, we've got some tactical tips to share with you that can truly transform your mindset.

Speaker 2: 0:41

For more positivity, head to wwwincurablepositivitycom. Stay positive, stay inspired. This is incurable positivity. This relationship with time.

Speaker 2: 0:56

Time can cause a lot of stress and angst and anxiety in our life. It's funny because, you know, I used to hear all the thought leaders of our times, like Louise Hay, wayne Dyer, eckhart Tolle, all these thought leaders a lot of them are published on Hay House, louise Hay's publishing house, and they say you know, time's not real. And I have a hard struggle with that because I'm like no time is real. We have a clock, we have to get things done. It takes a certain amount of time to get things done.

Speaker 2: 1:25

However, when we start thinking about the relationship with time and how we view it and how it makes us feel, I think that's what's really important, because it can cause anxiety, it can cause stress, it can cause relaxation, it has a lot of outcomes. When you think about your relationship with time, which I find really, really fascinating, and I've been examining it more and more now, just because it's one of those things that comes up all the time when I'm coaching leaders, doing workshops, it feels like and I know people used to say this to me when I was younger older people always say it feels like time speeds up. I don't know if you feel like that.

Speaker 1: 2:02

I certainly do.

Speaker 2: 2:03

Yeah, and is that? Is that age, or is that just? The world is speeding up.

Speaker 1: 2:07

I think the world is speeding up, because I'm hearing that comment from younger people now. There was a time when it was only you know, older folks who talked about that, but now I'm hearing millennials in particular, but you know, just young folks, even my 16 year old daughter. Oh, she's 17 today, it's her birthday. But even my daughter said it just feels like time is moving fast, a lot faster than you know, than before, whatever perception of time she had before. It just feels like this is faster.

Speaker 2: 2:42

Yeah, yeah. So when you went up, when if I see the question right, because we were asked this question at a summit I recently attended by a manifesting teacher she asked us to think about what our relationship is with time. So if I was going to ask you that question, what's your relationship with time? Like, imagine time is sitting in front of you as a person and you're invited time for dinner. Yeah, what kind of relationship do you have with time? It's a good, it's a really good question.

Speaker 1: 3:14

It's a fantastic question and I've been thinking about it since you and I sort of chatted about this over the last couple of days, and I have to be honest and confess that if I'm more a person sitting in front of me, I would say to him or her I feel like I'm always chasing you, I feel like you're not working with me, you're working against me, and and I would also have to say that that I'm not, I'm not managing time extremely well, because I do feel that I there's always more to do than than I have time to get done.

Speaker 2: 4:02

That's really interesting when we say you're just making me really hear you saying I'm not managing time extremely well, which is interesting because I teach people to manage people all day, right, like that's what I do for a living. I'm teaching people how to manage people. So if you were managing time in the way that you were managing people, or the way that I help leaders manage their teams, the dialogue that we have with time would be completely different. I'm sure if I could listen to somebody's brain, like you just said, having a conversation with time and then listening them talk to probably the person that they love the most, or their children or their team members, the dialogue they would be having with them would be completely polarized and probably would uncover a lot of the issues that we have around managing our time and the anxiety that it causes us in our life. Fascinating, because we know that everything we think about comes about. We know our thoughts create our reality, they turn into things, and so how are we talking to time and managing our time? Are we talking to it in a way that is beneficial, is it respectful, is it compassionate, is it considerate, or is it just I just don't have enough time today? Or when you sit down at your desk and you're looking at the list of things to do in your schedule, you're just causing yourself anxiety and you're getting stressed by even looking at it.

Speaker 2: 5:40

It's fascinating because I've been really asking myself this question lately how do I think about it? And I've been practicing positive thinking around it incurable positive thinking about it, andrew, because I literally is like God, time causes me anxiety. I wish I had more time. I don't have enough time to get that done. And then I'm planning out my schedule and I get like I'm getting stressed when I'm looking at it because I'm feeling like the pressure of a deadline that I may not deliver on. And so, yeah, it's fascinating when you start thinking about this and this is a question I think everybody listening to this should really start to ask themselves if time was sitting in front of them, how would they talk to it? And I think the flywheel is a good activity to kind of start this like what's not working in your life when it's considered to time. And then what do you start to believe about it? I've really started to journal this out in the last week and it's incredible what I'm uncovering. So, yeah, it's interesting.

Speaker 1: 6:49

It is. And you know I realized that I've always said time is the only non-renewable resource. I've been saying that for years. You know you can lose money, you can make more money, right you can. You know if your business closes you can start another business. You can always make more friends. You know most of the things in life, you can garner more of it, but time seems to me to be the only non-renewable resource. So once you lose a moment it's gone forever. You can't get it back. And but I realize now, as we're having this conversation, that that is a bit of a negative attitude toward time, to see time as something that's slipping away or that's being depleted or drained. Those are all negative connotations, and a more positive attitude about time might produce better results than always saying I don't have enough of it Because that comes from a place of lack, doesn't it? It does, yeah.

Speaker 2: 7:53

It's like saying it's like applying the same principles to money I don't have enough money, I don't have enough money and guess what? You'll never have enough money. So it's weird that we do a lot of affirmations. I think there's a lot of positive affirmations. I think there's a lot of manifestation techniques around manifesting money. You know saying I love money, money loves me, I'm a money magnet. But have you ever heard an affirmation around I'm a time expander. I can expand time. Time works for me, time works in my favor. You never want snow.

Speaker 1: 8:29

Never, I've never heard one. And here's the other thing that occurs to me is that there were cultures in, you know, times past that always refer to time as like a muse. You know where time needed to be needed to be wooed and stroked and complimented and praised. And you know, just like we do in the music field both of your kids are in the music field as well, yeah, and they're always, you know, trying to, you know, urge and coax the creative muses to come to them right and give them new songs, give them new interpretations, whatever. I wonder about you know seeing time as that same kind of muse, where you love time, where you appreciate time, where you, you know you, revere time more highly than always complaining that time is a negative and is working against you.

Speaker 2: 9:30

Do you love time or does time stress you out? Do you talk to time in a respectful way, in an abundant way, or do you talk to time in a negative way? And so this idea of time and this relationship we have with time causes us anxiety, or it can cause us peace. I mean, we know we love when we get time on vacation. That's the time we love when we've got deadlines and we've got things to do and maybe we've got a schedule, a work schedule. That might be the time we don't love, and I think we need to change our relationship with it, because it is a factor that we're dealing with every single day, like people, like money, and so I want to start to shift this paradigm around this relationship with time, because it's one of again, it's one of those things that I deal with when I'm coaching people, when I'm teaching leaders, my own self, and so I think that I think this is a good discussion, because I think we have to just start to shift it. So what are the things we can do to shift our relationship with time? One of the easy things to do, which we would just have to start practicing every day, is just to take that Angie, pause that power pause and literally start to say to ourselves I have more than enough time. I appreciate the time that I have in my day. Time works in my favor. Time is good to me. Time allows me to get the things done that are important for the outcomes that I want in my life. Time is a positive thing, Like just start having a different dialogue with time.

Speaker 2: 11:08

I literally started doing it this morning when I was sitting down at my desk and I was thinking about the calendar and all the things that I have to get done. I just got back from a couple of days away and I was kind of planning out things and instead of going oh, that's going to take me two hours, how am I going to get that down? And having a huffy, puffy kind of negative attitude towards it, I literally caught myself. I did the power pause. I was like hold on April, let's start to shift this relationship and start to think positively. And I was like I get to have two amazing hours with time to get this, you know, rewrite, unincurable positivity done. I get to appreciate the time that is given to me today, to, you know, have one-on-one, Whatever that is. I think that this is so powerful, Angie, to start changing our internal dialogue around it.

Speaker 1: 12:08

Yeah, well, you know, anytime you say I get to, instead of I have to, you shift the energy around whatever it is you're doing or talking about, or thinking about, that is an immediate boost to your mindset attitude. You know all of that. But to say that around time is so fascinating and really exciting to think that you can change your conversation about time, see it more as an ally than an enemy and then utilize it in a way that's you know, that's power packed and really does change. You know the course of your day and I know for me, not only was my conversation about time negative and my attitude about time was negative, but also I was doing things that were how do you, how do I describe this? Making my relationship even more strained with time.

Speaker 1: 13:09

I noticed that I had some habits around time that were causing me to feel more stressed about time and that if I organized differently, if I planned out my day differently, I would have a better relationship with time. For example, I just do conference calls on Fridays. Now I move them to Fridays because Friday is a great day, it's an exciting day, you're getting ready for the weekend, you're wrapping up all the great stuff you've done that week and being on the phone with clients is difficult. It has been difficult for me switching gears from writing to marketing, to conference calls, and so by moving all of my conference calls to Fridays, I stay in that energy all day long and I'm able to really stay focused and not have to constantly break what I'm doing to stop and do a conference call. So I'm wondering if there are other things that I might do, or that you guys might do, to make your relationship with time less strained because of your own habits, practices throughout the course of your week.

Speaker 2: 14:19

I like that. I think blocking things by day, because there is a mental energy that's exerted when we're shifting from task to task. Whether that be deep work, whether that be touching base and having conversations with people, whether that be creative work, whether that be running around and doing errands there's different mental energy required and so if you can block things together and not exert that mental energy, you won't be so exhausted in between doing what you've got to do. Also, one of the best practices I do is literally writing everything down on a list, and I have one list. I know that there's a thought process.

Speaker 2: 15:04

Right now I've been listening to somebody that's like don't have a to-do list and have your calendar, but I think you have to. I don't think there's a right and a wrong way, Angie. I think you have to find out what works for you and learn from different people that are really good at managing time. And this was one of the things that I learned from a director that I worked with about 12 years ago and she said just have one to-do list, that one to-do list, and not five to-do lists. I don't know anybody here that may have three different to-do lists one for personal, one for work, one for the kids, whatever it is. And so consolidating one to-do list, everything on it, whether that be work, whether that be personal, like run to the bank, that's on that to-do list. Whether it be like finish that project, put that on that to-do list.

Speaker 2: 15:50

And then what you do is you literally time out, estimate how much time each thing on that list is going to take. So this is going to take two hours. This is deep work. This is going to take 20 minutes. This call could take five minutes and you kind of like time block them out. So then you can add up at the bottom of the list and be like oh OK, this week this is how much time I have, and you can literally see if you've just got not enough time in your days and how much things you're piling on yourself. So you can kind of shift them out by week or find somebody else to support you in getting things done. And if you have a team, great. If you don't have a team and you're a solopreneur like myself or Angie, then maybe there's some other people in your network that can support you getting things done.

Speaker 2: 16:33

But I find that's really helpful because it just kind of maps out how much time I'm spending and it literally makes me sit back, Angie, and release some things, push some things around to remove that anxiety from me. So that's one thing that I do at the beginning of the week. I do it every Sunday and as things come up throughout my week, I literally add it onto the same to-do list and I add the time and then, if I have to move things around because I prioritize, that's what I do and then with that now adding on, like having a positive frame mindset towards it and talking to time in a respectful, abundant way as opposed to no, it's causing me anxiety, it's stressful, and starting to actually appreciate the time that I get to do the things and not that I have to. That's another big one. You called it out.

Speaker 2: 17:26

Like when you say to your brain I get to do this Versus I have to, it releases the anxiety from your thinking and actually relaxes you, and when you're relaxed, you're in a more state of using time to your advantage. You are more productive when you're positive, your brain is not in a fight or flight mode and it is in a relaxed state, and so that's really, really helpful for me. I don't know, Is there anything? What's another best tip that you use to kind of manage your time in a positive way?

Speaker 1: 17:56

Yeah, I just want to piggyback first on what you just said, because I think you really hit on something extremely powerful there. One of the seven steps to positivity that we talk about and teach all the time is to be honest, and I think being honest about time is a major step forward. How many times have we said I'm going to do this task and we allot an amount of time? That's not realistic, it's not honest, it constricts us, it doesn't give us any flexibility and it doesn't allow enough time to do the thing that we really need to do. Another tip I absolutely I've had this now in my life for 20 years and I will tell you it's huge and that's worst first.

Speaker 1: 18:47

I believe that when you're thinking about your day and you're thinking about your time, do the worst first if you can.

Speaker 1: 18:55

If you can't do it first, do it as close to the beginning of the day as you can.

Speaker 1: 19:00

It's the time where you have the most energy. You don't want to wait until you're worn down from an entire day of work or whatever. If you've had a really busy day and now you've got this thing sitting out there, because everything you do that day is colored by that big task that's bothering you, that's worrying you, that's concerning you, and I find that doing worst first and getting that out of the way has the opposite effect. It gives you a burst of confidence, of energy and excitement, because you got that really bad call out of the way. You know, or you knew you had to let someone go today. Let's get that done first so that we're not all day burdened with that thought and clouding that positive energy with this thing that's sitting out there that you're dreading and you don't really want to do. So I find that worst first is a God's sin, because everything else that day is going to be easier than that one thing that I've got to get done.

Speaker 2: 20:02

I think so. I was just like listening to what you were saying and I just want to go back to that. The worst is first. Eat the Frog is a book. I don't know if anybody's ever heard of it. I was trained on this about 20 years ago. Have you ever heard of Eat the Frog, angie?

Speaker 1: 20:21

Yeah, yeah, I sure have yeah yeah.

Speaker 2: 20:25

So the concept is right, like if you have a whole load of frogs in front of you and you had to eat them and there was a big one and a small one, you would just eat the big ugly one first to get it out of the way, because the rest of it is not that bad. And that's literally what you're saying with do the worst first because, at the end of the day, your mind is so powerful, and the reason why that is so powerful to do that is to get that out of the way so that you're not worrying and overthinking things. We have a tend to really overthink and worry about things. We tend to have programming going on in our mind. We have 6 to 8,000 thoughts a day. 80% of them are negative. So anything that we can do to start to shift our thinking to positive actually helps us be more productive, and that's why this conversation this morning and asking yourself if time was sitting in front of you and it was a person at your dinner table, how would you actually talk to it and what's the relationship you have with it, is such a great question to ponder. Would you talk to time in the way that you talk to your family, your friends? Would you talk to time as if it's somebody that you respect, or would you talk to time in a way that's just negative? I think this is a powerful thought for us to think about and I would encourage you, as you leave this room this morning and start your day, to catch yourself through the day when you're having a relationship with time that may not be so positive and to actually reshape and reframe that and talk to time in a different way. Time is on my side. Time allows me space to get the things done that I enjoy. Time is always working out in my favor. Time is whatever you can do. List out some positive thoughts around time and start to see how that's going to shift the way that you use time in your day and shift it away from anxiety and negative thinking to positivity.

Speaker 2: 22:33

We were really challenged on this. I was in a manifesting summer a week ago in Miami that was run by Miami Valley, which is the number one transformational platform globally now, I believe, and she was really challenging us on this relationship with time, and I've just been thinking about this a lot and practicing it a lot in the last week and I've really started to see how much time causes me anxiety just because I'm paying more attention to it. Angie, literally, awareness will allow us to open up our mind and see where our negative thinking could be derailing us and causing us angst. And we want to, in our life, always shift our self as much as possible to a place of ease, a place of receptivity, a place of positivity, because when we do that, our lives transform, literally. The way that we do things, the way that we think about things, the way that we show up literally transforms.

Speaker 2: 23:34

And so that's the challenge I think for this week, coming out of this is literally to do some journaling and catch yourself, watch your relationship with time. I'm even thinking about Angie just putting an alarm on my phone throughout the day, because I use reminders and alarms on my phone throughout the day just to remind myself to thank time. One thing is guaranteed that we're not going to be here forever. Right, when we leave the planet, we might look at time in a very different way. I just got notification yesterday from somebody that I'd worked with daily in retail that had just left the planet, and I just thought god time, time is such a precious thing and we need to start treating it and talking to it like that, in a more positive way, on a daily basis.

Speaker 1: 24:25

I agree a thousand percent. As you were speaking, I was literally just thinking lifetime. I mean, your lifetime is really the biggest measure of time and it's your opportunity to make your splash in the world right, and to do what you know, what you were placed on this planet to do. And I was just talking to my brother about this the other day. It was such a profound conversation because we were talking about how excuse me, how we structure our lives and that you are the architect, like you get to structure your life in such a way that it has power and meaning and purpose and impact and joy and bliss and, you know, fun, right and relaxation and all the elements that make life really an amazing, an amazing lifetime.

Speaker 1: 25:21

And so you know, I would love to know that people are not feeling helpless around time, but that they are actually taking control of that. And you mentioned the flywheel earlier April. I think that would be a really great way for folks to regain their mastery of time, improve their relationship with time, be more grateful about time and think about their time over the span of their entire life. And if something's not working for you, if it's wasting your time, if it's devaluing your time, if it's robbing you of the joy of the time you're spending on the earth. That flywheel is a great way to identify that and to craft the right solutions that are going to move you from that place of feeling negative about time to feeling positive about time. And if you don't know what we mean when we say the flywheel, jump on to and cureworldpositivitycom. You can, you know, connect with us and you can learn a lot more about some of these practices that we're referring to.

Speaker 2: 26:27

Yeah, that's my challenge for all of us is like what's your relationship with time? Ask yourself, be honest what thoughts do you have around time On a daily basis? Are you catching those thoughts? Is time causing you anxiety or is it positive? We get to have the relationship with time that we design, and time is one of the you said it earlier, angie only the only non-renewable resource. Once it's gone, it's gone, right.

Speaker 1: 27:00

Once it's gone, it's gone.

Speaker 2: 27:00

And it's one of our best manifesting tools, really. So yeah, that's the challenge today Consider your relationship with time. If you love this episode, be sure to hit that subscribe button, leave us a review and head over to incurablepositivitycom, where you can get access to lots more resources. The community and myself and Angie where we go live with book club and talk about everything positivity. We love you, we appreciate all of you and until next time, stay positive.