LEAD. April 2020 | Page 12

FEATURE: DEVELOPING YOUR VOLUNTEERS Reframe Your Thinking By Kate Crocco Do you ever find yourself fixating on not having enough time? Do you find that you’re sulking, frustrated, even angry, stuck on the fact that there aren’t enough hours in the day? You waste minutes, hours, days lost in this frame of thought, feeling sorry for yourself. The hard truth is that feeling sorry for ourselves is not going to get the job done or create more time. We’ve got to establish firm boundaries with ourselves, set the sulking aside, and begin taking small, imperfect steps to begin to address our mentality toward our time. What would happen if we replaced worry with another thought process? This will free up mental energy and potentially create space to focus on the things we want to be doing. I challenge you to try keeping a “Worry Tracker.” 12 Here is how to get started: 1. Open a note on your phone or a page in your journal and label it “Worry Tracker.” Each time you find yourself worrying about not having adequate time to get something done, record how long you spent fixating on not completing the task before taking action. 2. Once the task is finally accomplished, record how long it took to complete. 3. Add up how much time you spent worrying before you accomplished the task. Compare how much time was spent worrying with how long the task actually took to complete. Many of my clients who have participated in this challenge find that the amount of time they believe a task will take to accomplish ended up being close to the amount of time they spent