What is the currency you are most poor in?
For more than 90 % of the leaders I work with, the answer is TIME!
Being time poor can make you feel like a casualty of forces beyond your influence; like the busy is happening to you, without you having anything to do with being busy.
Busy is an addictive habit of overstimulation that gets wired into our neurochemistry and keeps us in a state of continual partial attention.
There are many moments in the day when we can be pressing pause but we don’t because we have jumped on the runaway train called busy and we don’t trust ourselves to pull the break.
I am passionate about these micro-resets, 3-5 minute mindful disruptions during which we deliberately focus the attention in the here and now.
Above is an example of a before and after check-in following a 3-minute micro-reset practice:
The results can be nothing short of a quantum leap, a great and sudden change in our state of being: from frantic to relaxed, stressed to calm, annoyed to peaceful, anxious to present.
S.T.O.P. is an example of a simple, yet very effective micro-reset tool that can be used anytime you notice you have lost hold of yourself, be it through becoming distracted, running on auto-pilot or being overwhelmed by a strong emotion.
Here is how it works:
S is for Stop, which is in itself a magic word. If something is not working for you, you don’t have to keep doing it! Stop is a choice.
T is for – Take a breath. Breathe in and breathe out. Something amazing happens when we bring our full attention to the breath, even for a few moments. We get out of our heads and, literally, come back to our senses. We become occupied with something tangible, real. Behind all the noise of the world and our minds, the breath quietly keeps us alive. All we need to do is just notice it and our experience and even our physiology can transform. This is nothing short of a quantum leap.
O is for Observe. Observing, noticing and being mindful are all synonymous. They all point towards the objective reality that we can see, hear, smell taste and observe directly through the agency of being mindful. Observation is a non-evaluative awareness - the capacity to see things as they are, without the distortion of our views and opinions, beliefs, fears, distractions and expectations that so often cloud our vision.
P is for Proceed. It need not take all day. Onwards. “I’m too busy” is a poor excuse for not paying attention and not living our best lives.
"You think you lack time, when in fact you lack focus." Mark Manson