The Dangerous Anxiety That Comes From Wanting To Control Time

Knowing the idea we have of time and how we organize our life with respect to it can ward off anxiety and therefore improve our quality of life. People with anxiety make a fundamental mistake: They think that the more they worry, the closer they will be to solving the problem.

People who suffer from generalized anxiety think that the mere fact of thinking about a topic is to be addressing it, when in reality it is the opposite: a general hypervigilance is established towards the environment, an environmental scrutiny that makes us be in everything and nothing at the same time. A small daily torture to which the lack of government over our minds subjects us, without knowing how to stop it.

Do not try to manage time, it will end up swallowing you

I imagine that there are many times that you have been told that to organize your life you have to organize your time. The truth is that we have to try to organize activities and be productive the time we are dedicated to them : either at work or in any recreational activity. The truth is that our energy and concentration will depend on whether it is something beneficial or not.

The problem lies in trying to find the ideal time for everything we do : planning down to the smallest detail and setting a specific time for it can be a sign of organization, but it also entails a state of mental prison that takes us away from the feeling of being living and accentuates the feeling of simply consuming time.

Free ourselves from the concept of future tense to free our mind here and now

One of the best known and wisest expressions pronounced is “Carpe Diem”. These two words embody a whole revolution against procrastination, desire postponed and freedom crammed into a prison of obligations, with bars as iron as they are invisible. They assume the demand of the present moment, in the face of a perception that it has been kidnapped, either by us, by our mental programming or by others.

For some, the present moment is what requires their maximum attention and the expression of their vital fullness. For others, this construct alludes to a dead time within a continuum in which past and future time seem to engulf them. Faced with this, each person has their history and their biology, and not all of us are capable of applying beneficial concepts for our well-being, perhaps because they previously pushed us to try to maintain a different state.

Hence the importance of exploring ourselves, of being dynamic and of finding our balance in which we feel that life has little loss and a lot of substance.

Stop trying to manage time to flow with it

Many of the Eastern conceptions on certain philosophical issues are completely different from the vision that we have in the West of how to approach problems and “solve” them. By this we do not mean that what we have is worse than what they have that which is far away, but that the difference and their understanding always leaves learning as a result.

Thinkers like Jiddu Krishnamurti have been widely questioned for some of their positions on the human psyche, a point of view that in many of its vertices is totally opposed to our ideas. While in Western culture our vision of time focuses on the future and planning, for other perspectives, time should not be governed by this dimension.

Beyond the procedures with proven efficacy for the treatment of anxiety, it would be good to propose a revolution on such important concepts as time and how our thinking relates to our individual perception.

We have to try to use our thinking to organize ourselves better, but open to possible changes and unexpected twists. Pay attention to our body and sensations, our mental well-being and our concentration in the present. Keep in mind that what you invest in self-knowledge will always be a profitable investment.

Images courtesy of Patricia Ariel