Have you ever regretted how you spent your day?
You know, 7pm rolls around and all of a sudden you think to yourself… I’ve accomplished nothing today.
And that single thought triggers an onslaught of self criticism and “shoulda-woulda-coulda-didn’t”s, catapulting you into a bottle of wine, a Netflix binge session, while making a brutal list of all the ways you’ve wasted your life?
It might sound something like this…
I’ve wasted today.
I’ve wasted the best years of my life.
I’ve wasted so much time … watching tv / playing video games / spending time with the “wrong people” in the “wrong relationship” / in the “wrong” career.
I should be so much further ahead by now.
I should have written a book / recorded an album / gotten that promotion / earned my first million by now.
If only I didn’t procrastinate.
These thoughts ooze regret.
And when you think these thoughts, how do you suppose it helps you? I can hear it now...
If I’m hard enough on myself, I’ll be motivated to stop wasting time!
Regret will trigger me to do differently tomorrow!
I can’t help feeling regret. Regret is a necessary consequence to wasting time!
These thoughts are your managerial parts going to bat for Regret. And these parts — being very astute managers, have the best of intentions for you to do and to BE better when it comes to managing your time.
Unfortunately, the strategy of regret has the opposite effect than it’s intention.
You see — every moment of every day you make choices.
You choose how to spend your time.
You choose the thoughts you think about how you spend your time.
And those thoughts make you feel a certain way, which ultimately motivates your behavior.
When you choose regretful thoughts, you end up feeling crappy and unmotivated, which isn’t the ideal emotional space to capitalize on your time.
Replacing “I work best under pressure” with “I work best in JOY”.
Our manager parts think that we will be motivated into action if we make sure to regret how we spent our time in the past. But the reality is that if we focus on time wasted, we reinforce regret, which keeps us in the frequency of wasting time.
Regret creates more inaction. It spirals us further into the reality that we no longer want.
Regret creates pressure. When pressured we either take action that produces less than ideal results (creating from a place of frustration and negativity is restricting) or we fail to take any action at all.
What we want is to act from a place of joy, not pressure.
Joy opens us up to limitless possibility, freedom and opportunity.
Pressure closes us down and at best our results are messy, limited, rushed. At worst — the pressure drops us into a state of freeze — inaction.
You manager parts going to bat for regret think you work best under pressure. But the reality is, you’ve likely never given yourself the opportunity to experience working in any other way.
Most of us believe we work best under pressure because we’re never given ourselves an alternative strategy!
But imagine for a moment, what if instead of under pressure, you worked best in JOY?
Stop Deploying The Regret Strategy
So how do we convince our managerial parts to stop deploying the Regret Strategy?
The answer, as always, is to Think on Purpose.
The purpose of your thoughts is to reflect the results you desire. Think for the results you desire.
Don’t think for the circumstances that exist. (You also don’t need to figure it all out.)
The role of your thoughts is to create the reality you want to experience.
For example, you can think you have wasted your time, OR you can think that you have all the time in front of you to do anything you want to do.
You don’t think thoughts because it’s true — you think thoughts to make it true.
Stop defaulting to the Regret Strategy. Instead, choose the thoughts that will give you what you want. Your new strategy: Think On Purpose.
The What If Reframe.
Here’s how to Think On Purpose.
As soon as you notice those regretful thoughts seeping in, give those manager parts a pause and ask yourself with compassionate curiosity:
What if none of this was a waste?
What if what I chose to do was exactly as it needed to be?
What if how I spent my time actually served a purpose? Benefited me?
What if how I spent my time didn’t even matter?
Because — guess what? There is always enough time when you think about time from a place of joy, purpose, and curiosity.
You have the NOW and you have CHOICE.
You get to choose how to think about time.
And you get to choose what you will do with the time you have.
This is about your relationship with time. Befriend and focus on the time you have left. Stop choosing to fret over the time that’s past.
Whether it’s the remainder of today, the project you’re working on, or the rest of your life, the strategy is the same:
Choose Joy over Regret (pressure)
Think on Purpose.
Deploy the What If’s.
The truth is — you’ll NEVER know where you might be now had you not “wasted your time”. Fretting over wasted time is futile. And it’s a choice.
You do not have to choose the thought that you have wasted your time.
You get to choose to make the most of your time moving forward.
Use the time that you have left in joy, purpose, and curiosity.
Ready for an overhaul on your thought patterns, to change your relationship with time, and start making the most of the time you do have left? Book a Consultation Call Here.
Comments