As an entrepreneur and performer, I used to fill my life with creative projects that entailed multiple responsibilities.

I would run around like a chicken with my (very well-meaning) head cut off.

What I didn’t realize is that on the other side of “busy” lies a rich, beautiful, still productive world of peace and calm, wherever, and whenever I want it.

It took my getting a strong (six month) adult case of mononucleosis, and having to stop everything—including an amazing paying gig, clients that counted on me and even enjoying nature—for me to realize that I had to create a better way to live.

As I ease into this new way of life, I see my friends acting like headless chickens, and think, “why!?”

I hope that you realize you can be more efficient and easy about your time management as soon as now—before you experience health problems like I did.

Here are three things that can help to manage our minds around time:

1. At any moment, we can stop.

We can put everything aside and rest, breathe, take a walk, and take care of the most important person:  ourselves. Nothing is more important than our own well-being. Nothing. Everything else can wait, even other people, even animals, even work, even play.

If the airplane’s oxygen stops flowing, remember the instructions to put on our own masks before assisting our children?

2. Shorten the to-do list.

They are almost always way too long, albeit most list items hold little importance. We’ll never accomplish everything in just one day, and that’s not only fine, it’s a good thing. We weren’t born to do, we were born to be…with some joyful doing here and there. Let’s give ourselves a new goal of accomplishing two or three things per day. We’ll be focused while doing them, rather than exhausted. And crossing them off will gives us a sense of true accomplishment.

With a little extra time, we can then choose to accomplish more tasks or throw in an extra dose of nourishment and self-care.

3. Let us look at our to-do lists as an intention setting practice.

It’s easy to feel like a slave to the list, but who said it needed to own us? Instead, we can set the strong intention to accomplish what’s on the list at our availability. Not only does this enable us to reclaim our lives, but some things manifest as done without our effort. When we set a strong intention without desperate energy around the outcome, the Universal Law of Attraction enables our intention’s details to align and manifest with ease.

So, here’s an opportunity to stop getting in our own way.

I realize that I cannot enforce this beyond my own life, but I just don’t want to see others exhausted, crazed, and ultimately, sick. I am also addressing this to my future self, in case I get overly excited about my newfound health, and decide to run myself ragged. Silly humans!

But I don’t think that will happen.

I’ve never felt more centered and whole than I do now, and I love being me this way; I feel at ease quite often, and I also get things done.

I want that for every one of us.

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Editor: Renée Picard

Photo: courtesy Ariella Forstein