Healing Perspectives: April 2007

Welcome!
A common complaint I hear in my workshops is, “THERE'S NEVER ENOUGH TIME.” There's no time to do what's important, because we're always doing what's urgent. There's never enough time for self-care, because we're always caring for other people. There's never enough leisure time, because the task list is unending. There's never enough time to cultivate and enjoy our relationships, because we're too tired from not having enough time.

While this complaint sounds like an overused cliché, it is true. How we use our time and the demands placed on it have changed dramatically in the last twenty-five years. For starters, Americans are working twenty five percent longer and harder to attain the same standard of living they did a quarter of century ago. What this means is that we now work as many hours or even more hours than anyone in the world, including the Japanese, who are known for working incredibly long hours.

Another contributing factor is that our perception of how we use time has changed. Instead, of admiring people who have leisure time to enjoy life, we admire people who show grace under time pressure and who are willing to do whatever is needed to provide for those they love even if it means giving up the most valuable commodity we have – time.

Yet, there is still another factor that most people aren't even aware of that significantly impacts how time is valued, how it's used, and how it's managed. That factor is personality. Not the part of personality created by conditioning, but the part of personality that's inherent – the part of personality that's in our genes. After all, it's this part of personality that determines how we perceive time and drives how we chose to spend it. When it comes to time, there are basically four different perceptions of it and each perception aligns itself with a particular personality color.

• The Red Personality – This personality is time obsessive, and believes that time should be controlled, because without controlling time, it will be wasted, which is a major irritant to the Red. They are literal about time – one minute is sixty seconds – no less, no more. They are deadline oriented and expect others follow through on their time commitments.

• The Orange Personality – This personality is time compulsive, and believes that time should be managed, because without managing time their schedules will become overloaded. Time for the Orange is usually driven by other people's needs. Consequently, they have very little time for their own needs or to do what they want to do. The greatest struggle for the Orange regarding time is to say “NO” when asked to do something. Rather than letting someone down, they'll just add it to an already full schedule.

• The Yellow Personality – This personality is time imperative, and believes there's never enough of it. The reason for this perception is they're constantly dealing with a never-ending task list that runs in a continuous loop. They think if they do what's urgent first then there'll be time for what's important. The problem is they never get to the important stuff because the list of what's urgent keeps expanding to fill all available time.

• The Green Personality – This personality is time impulsive, and believes time shouldn't be scheduled so tightly that they can't be spontaneous and take advantage of whatever comes along. They believe that time should be without limitations and see rigid time management as being a major deterrent to the quality of their lives. Time for the Green is vague, meaning one minute could be anything from three minutes to thirty minutes, depending on what they're doing or if they're running late. So when they say they'll be with you in a minute, don't take them literally.

• Everyone procrastinates when it comes to doing things that force them to function outside of their personality color.

• People do things for their reasons and in their own time frame – not ours as much as we would like them to.

• Understanding each personality color's perception of time will help accommodate their needs. This reduces stress for everyone involved.

• Time management should include some unscheduled time.

• If dealing with time is creating undue stress, take a deep breath and ask yourself, "Will any of this really matter later on down the road?" If your answer is no, then you might want to reevaluate your priorities.

Healing Hint:
Research shows that people who take just twenty minutes a day focusing on calming thoughts decrease the risk of hypertension, reduce chronic pain, and can even reverse the loss of brain cells that occur from prolonged stress.