Managing Time Mindfully explores the use of mindfulness meditation a
s a practical tool for improved time management.
Living a Time-Full Existence
People who live a time-full existence are super-productive, super-creative, and also super-lucky. What are the keys to living such a life?
- By using simple mindfulness techniques, our minds can become immune from the distractions and bandits of time that are sent to plague us. When we live a timeful existence, we are able to jump outside linear time, and tasks seem to get done within the time we have allocated to them.
- By taking a fundamentally different and innovative approach to time management, we can change our minds and the nature of our thoughts so that we get more done in less time.
The Left Brain and The Right Brain
It transpires that, in most people, our left brain sits inside time and space, and the right brain sits everywhere and ‘everywhen’ else.
This temporal model for the left and right brain primarily refers to our sense of time in the outer cortex of the brain, where we process and run inner dialogue. It is thought that it is the billions of interconnected neurons in the cortex that give rise to our self-awareness. Underneath this outer cortex sits the limbic brain that we share with most mammals, where it is thought we process emotions. The brain stem, or reptilian brain, sits at the top of the spinal column and connects the outer cortex above with the rest of our neurology.
Making the right decisions
We can use the knowledge that our gut and heart mind possess awareness to save lots of time, especially when it comes to always making the right decisions. The signals from gut and heart minds are routed via the brain stem and processed by the limbic brain before our outer cortex tends to ‘speak’ quite loudly, we can end up ignoring these signals and regretting our actions as a result. To tap into the inner wisdom of our gut and heart mind just requires our conscious mind to instigate the dialogue, and to listen to and trust the response.
The first thing to bear in mind when eliciting such responses is that the gut and heart mind are old minds from an evolutionary perspective and don’t possess language. Our gut will only give us a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or a ‘stop’ or ‘go’ signal. Our heart ‘speaks’ in a level and so will be ‘cold’, ‘lukewarm,’ ‘hot,’ or ‘positively boiling’ about a situation it perceives.
The second aspect of interrogation of our gut and heart mind is a little more temporally bizarre. When you ask a question, the answers come back slightly before we finish asking it. To experience what I mean, the next time you are faced with a decision, ask your gut mind first ‘internally’ for that ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and you will sense the answer coming back slightly faster than straight away. Incidentally, if you get a ‘green light’, go for it. If you are faced with a ‘red light’ from your gut, then you can either walk away or ask what would have to change in order to get a green light, and then asked a modified question.
The same sort of questioning works for the heart mind. If you get a ‘hot’ or ‘boiling’ response, go for it. If your heart is ‘cold’ or ‘lukewarm’, again you can ask what would have to change so your heart could fall in love with the idea.
If your head, heart, and gut are in alignment, you will rarely put a foot wrong. This is, of course, a time saver.
Complement Managing Time Mindfully with The Magic that Leads us to Live a Charmed Life.