You are the primary creative force in your own life.
Psychologists have also found that if you have an “external” locus of control, in that you feel that you are controlled by people and circumstances outside of yourself, such as your boss, your bills, your family, your health or some other factor, you will feel negative, angry and often depressed. You will feel frustrated and unable to change. You will develop what is called
“learned helplessness” and see yourself more as a “creature of circumstances” rather than a “creator of circumstances.” When you have an external locus of control, you feel that you are a prisoner of external forces.
You often see yourself as a victim.
Take Control of Your Time and Your Life
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One of the keys to developing a stronger internal locus of control is for you to manage your time and your life better. The more skilled you become at managing your time, the happier and more confident you will feel. You will have a stronger sense of personal power. You will feel in charge of your own destiny. You will have a greater sense of well-being. You will be more positive and personable.
4. More Time for Your Family
You will have more time for your family and your personal life as you get your time and your life under control. You will have more time for your friends, for relaxation, for personal and professional development, and for anything else you want to do.
When you become the master of your own time, and gain two extra hours per day, you can use that extra time to run a marathon, complete a college degree, write a book, build a business, and create an outstanding life. With two extra hours per day, you can put your life and career onto the fast track and begin moving ahead at a more rapid rate than you ever thought possible.
Three Mental Barriers to Time Power
If everyone agrees that excellent time management is a desirable skill, why is it that so few people can be described as “well organized, effective and efficient?” Over the years, I have found that many people have ideas about time management that are simply not true. But if you believe something to 12
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be true, it becomes true for you. Your beliefs cause you to see yourself and the world, and your relationship to time management, in a particular way. If you have negative beliefs in any area, these beliefs will affect your thinking and actions, and will eventually become your reality. “You are not what you think you are, but what you think, you are.”
1. You Will Decrease Your Naturalness and Spontaneity The first myth of time management, or negative belief, is that if you are too well organized, you become cold, calculating and unemotional. If you are extremely effective and efficient, some people feel that they will lose their spontaneity and freedom. They will become unable to “go with the flow,” to express themselves openly and honestly. People think that managing your time well makes you too rigid and inflexible.
This turns out not to be true at all. Many people hide behind this false idea and use it as an excuse for not disciplining themselves the way they know they should. The fact is that people who are disorganized are not spontaneous; they are merely confused, and often frantic. Often they suffer a good deal of stress. It turns out that the better organized you are, the more time and opportunity you have to be truly relaxed, truly spontaneous, and truly happy. You have a much greater internal locus of control.
Here is the key: Structure and organize everything that you possibly can.
Think ahead, plan for contingencies, prepare thoroughly, and focus on specific results. Only then can you be completely relaxed and spontaneous when the situation changes. The better organized you are in the factors that 13
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are under your control, the greater freedom and flexibility you have to quickly make changes whenever they are necessary.
2. Negative Mental Programming
The second mental barrier to developing excellent time management skills is negative programming, often from your parents, but also from other influential people, when you are growing up. If your parents or others told you that you were a messy person, or that you were always late, or that you never finished anything you started, when you become an adult, you may still be operating unconsciously to obey these earlier commands.
The most common excuse is “That’s just the way I am,” or “I have always been that way.” The fact is that no one is born either messy and disorganized, or neat and efficient. Time management and personal efficiency skills are disciplines that we learn and develop with practice and repetition. If we have developed bad time management habits, we can unlearn them. We can replace them with good habits over time.
3. Self Limiting Beliefs
The third mental barrier to good time management skills is a negative self-concept or what are called, “self-limiting beliefs.” Many people believe that they don’t have the ability to be good at time management. They often believe that it is an inborn part of their background or heritage. But there is no gene or chromosome for poor time management, or good time management, for that matter. Nobody is born with a genetic deficiency in 14
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personal organization. Your personal behaviors are very much under your own control.
Here is an example to prove that most of what you do is determined by your level of motivation and desire in that area. Imagine that someone were to offer you a million dollars to manage your time superbly for the next 30
days. Imagine that an efficiency expert was going to follow you around with a clipboard and a video camera for one month. After 30 days, if you had used your time efficiently and well, working on your highest priorities all day, every day, you would receive a prize of one million dollars. How efficient would you be over the next 30 days?
The fact is that, with sufficient motivation (one million dollars!), you would be one of the most efficient, effective, best-organized and focused people in the world. The best news is that after one full month of practicing the very best time management skills you know, you would have developed habits of high productivity and top performance that would last you the rest of your life.
You Are Free to Choose
Time management behaviors are very much a matter of choice. You choose to be efficient or you choose to be disorganized. You choose to focus and concentrate on your highest-value tasks, or you choose to spend your time on activities that contribute little value to your life. And you are always free to choose.
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The starting point of overcoming your previous programming, and eliminating the mental blocks to time management, is for you to make a clear, unequivocal decision to become absolutely excellent at the way you use your time minute-by-minute and hour-by-hour. You must decide, right here and now, that you are going to become an expert in time management.
Your aim should be to manage your time so well that people look up to you and use you as a role model for their own work habits.
Program Yourself for Effectiveness and Efficiency
There are several mental techniques that you can use to program yourself for peak performance.
1. Positive Self Talk
The first of these methods for programming your subconscious mind is
“positive self-talk,” or the use of positive affirmations. These are commands that you pass from your conscious mind to your subconscious mind.
Affirmations are statements that you either say out loud or say to yourself with the emotion and enthusiasm that drives the words into your subconscious mind as new operating instructions. Here are some examples of affirmative commands that you can use to improve your time management skills.
Begin by repeating over and over to yourself, “I am excellent at time management! I am excellent at time management!” Any command repeated over and over again in a spirit of faith, acceptance and belief, will eventually 16
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be accepted by your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind will then organize your words, actions and feelings to be consistent with these new commands.
You can continually repeat, “I am always punctual for my appointments! I am always punctual for my appointments!” You can create your own mental commands, such as “I am well organized!” or “I concentrate easily on my highest pay-off tasks!” My favorite time management affirmation is to repeat continually, “I use my time well. I use my time well. I use my time well.” When you repeat these words over and over, with emphasis, they are eventually accepted by your subconscious mind. You will then find that your external behaviors will start to reflect your internal programming.