Mastering Time Strategies to Prevent Energy Drain with Dr. Christine Li

Dr. Christine Li [00:00:00]:
Welcome back to the Make Time For Success podcast. This is episode number 170. Well, we've made it. We've made it to the last episode in the series of 4 episodes in the Believe, Achieve, Succeed series. I hope you've enjoyed the episode so far. Today's episode will bring you a lot of different techniques for mastering time so that you can prevent the draining of your own energy. I think this is a very important topic, and I felt really up after recording this episode because I feel that this content is the content that is most meaningful to me. I love helping people to make better use of their time, feel more in control of their time, and to boost their energy and performance all around.

Dr. Christine Li [00:00:51]:
There's so many different life techniques, mindset techniques in this episode. I hope you enjoy them all. Let's go listen to the episode together now.

Dr. Christine Li [00:01:05]:
Hi. I'm doctor Christine Lee, and I'm a psychologist and a procrastination coach. I've helped thousands of people move past procrastination and overwhelm so they could begin working to their potential. In this podcast, you're going to learn powerful strategies for getting your mind, body, and energy to work together so that you can focus on what's really important and accomplish the goals you want to achieve. When you start living within your full power, you're going to see how being productive can be easy and how you can create success on demand. Welcome to the make time for success podcast.

Dr. Christine Li [00:01:48]:
Hello there. It's Christine again. Today, I'm very excited to have 2 very calm and well behaved dogs and a topic that I think is gonna be relevant to everyone listening to the show today. The topic today is mastering time, strategies to prevent energy drain. I have found that anytime I talk about conserving time, rescuing time, fixing time, habits, inevitably, I get to a point where I start talking about energy and conserving energy and using energy well. So let's get going with this conversation. So what do you do when you feel that time is running away from you at a faster and faster pace? I have found in working with private clients over the years through different phases of their lives that there's a general pattern that the older you get, in some ways, the more complicated your time management demands are because there's family, there's career, there's aging, there are habits, there are errands, all the things seem to mount over the years. And what do you do to kind of make sure that your relationship with time stays really vibrant and healthy? I hope to answer that question in several different ways in today's podcast episode.

Dr. Christine Li [00:03:16]:
I have found that when clients first come to me, they feel overwhelmed almost to the point where their energy has flat out stalled. They have no desire, no initiation type of energy, and clutter seems to be mounting and projects seem to be unfinished and mounting also. The whole sense of the problem landscape seems to expand. And, of course, when that happens, what happens? We feel more stressed. We feel less good about ourselves. And ironically, we also begin to lose our time because we're in this worry, procrastination, clutter, unfinished stuff cycle, and I wanna help you make sure that you protect yourself from that cycle and or to help you extract yourself from that cycle if that happens to be your current situation. So what do you do when you feel like you need to turn your ship around and start a brand new way of managing your time? I have a few ideas for you. But before I share these ideas, I want you to just take a minute and make sure that your mind is open to the idea that your relationship with time can be changed.

Dr. Christine Li [00:04:37]:
All the things that you've been doing up to this point, if you're feeling time crunched or time stressed or time deprived, all of those things are habits. And if you've been listening to me for any length of time, you know that I fully believe and know that habits are all changeable. If you label something a habit, that by definition means that it can be shifted. It can even be eliminated, and it certainly can be changed. So make sure before you start listening to the rest of this episode that you are in a space where you can concentrate and listen to what I'm saying, but you can also feed yourself this information as kind of like a new diet, a new food for your body and energy source inside of you to be nurtured from. It's when our beliefs are fixed about time that we end up feeling like we have no time, that it's always running out, that time is always getting the better of us, and I wanna help you to feel and act much more flexibly. Okay. So the first tip that I have for you is to have a winning mindset.

Dr. Christine Li [00:05:46]:
And by suggesting that you have an open mind about the fact that you can change your relationship with time. I've already modeled how to have a winning mindset. If you're always thinking about how you're losing out, how you're always late, how you can never finish things on time, that is the history that you're going to be repeating because your whole frame of mind is that you're losing. You're losing time. You're losing on opportunities and you just don't know how to come out of that framework. So the first thing to do actually is not anything physically active. It's actually to look at how your mindset is set. And if it's not a winning mindset, transform your mindset to an optimistic one, to one where you know you're going to succeed, where you know that time is something that we all have and it passes in a very regular cadence, and that you can learn how to get the better of your schedule.

Dr. Christine Li [00:06:46]:
So that's the very first step. Very important, develop a winning mindset. The second item on my list for you is to make sure you have your eyes on your own material. If you remember back in the day when you were in formal schooling or perhaps you're in formal schooling yourself in the current day, During test time, the teachers will always say, keep your eyes on your own page. The same thing goes for adult life and adult living. You don't wanna be spending your precious time and your precious energy thinking about what other people are doing. Seeing where they're going, seeing what they've achieved, seeing how they use their time because it's really like a whole different universe. It's like thinking you're on Earth and they're on Mars.

Dr. Christine Li [00:07:38]:
It's a such a different landscape for them. It's such a different life. So make sure you drop the jealousy. You drop the comparison. You drop the envy. You drop the curiosity even about what other people are doing because it just takes energy away from your big creation of your big life. So eliminate the comparison, focus on yourself, and decide, you know what? This is such a savings of energy when I don't worry about the clothes that other people are wearing or the car they drive or how much they've accomplished in the month of March. It's okay that they're successful because you can be just as successful if not more.

Dr. Christine Li [00:08:20]:
The next item on the list is to use your intuition, to help you move past any hurdles that might be in your way. So by intuition, I mean, your inner knowing. And I mean, that you don't really have to overthink everything. Because when we start overthinking things, we kind of create a hurdle for ourselves that wasn't there before. So, and I think by definition, overthinking means that you already kind of know the answer because otherwise you wouldn't label it overthinking. So allow your intuition to help you so that you're not draining your brain every single day over small things, especially, and allow yourself to glide through situations that you used to think were super complicated and super stressful. Reduce the drama, elevate the intuition, allow yourself to make things easier. It's a huge time savings and it's a huge energy conservation technique.

Dr. Christine Li [00:09:25]:
Next idea is to develop your readiness. By that, I mean, things like practice. If you wanna become an excellent public speaker, just sign up for every podcast, every library event, every public party event that you can attend so that you can practice being centered, projecting your voice, making good eye contact, being prepared, and getting yourself in the habit of practicing the skill that you want to master. This will help to speed up your expertise and also elevate your confidence because you're no longer hiding. It's actually the hiding that causes us to burn all this good energy. All that life energy that we are endowed with gets wasted sometimes when we're worrying about self confidence or competence, and we're hiding in the shadows instead of trying things out, like putting out podcast episodes or putting out a proposal for a new book or whatever you are doing or whatever you're hoping to do, whether it's like starting a new art piece or meeting a new neighbor, whatever it is, practice. Put it out there. Because once it's out there, guess what? The energy of the other person, the energy of the universe feeds you back a response, and that is a replenishment of energy.

Dr. Christine Li [00:10:58]:
And then you feel like, oh, I'm not so drained anymore because I have something exciting now that I've created and something exciting is in the works now, as people will say. So you can then put your attention on other things, other creations, instead of your own anxiety and worries about your self worth. Let's get over ourselves already because it's such a waste of time to be making ourselves feel less than worthy. Alright. The next one may be an item that you disagree with, but it's actually something that really works for me. Do not spend your time anticipating obstacles. I have noticed this in my clients recently When we are doing conversations and coaching calls, I invite them to talk about events in their life that they need help with. And oftentimes, it's some projection about how the future is not gonna be as happy or as ideal or work out as they would hope.

Dr. Christine Li [00:12:11]:
And so I get the sense right away just from that outlay of the situation and of the fear that they're already thinking that the future is not gonna work out for them. And that is what I mean by don't anticipate negative things or obstacles because the future, by definition, has not happened yet. So if you're spending your present precious moment, thinking about how your future is going to be a disappointment or a failure or a wreck of some kind, you're kind of wrecking the future, a future that hasn't even happened yet. And I would suggest that if you're wanting the future to be really bright, really put your lens and paintbrush, I guess, in the effort or towards the action of creating a really vibrant picture of pure success, of you showing up vibrantly, of the universe really giving you good weather, good friends, a good opportunity, and more positive vibes than you can even imagine now. So I'm thinking about I love weddings. So planning a wedding. Right? There are all sorts of things that can go awry on a wedding day, like the weather, or maybe a guest doesn't show up or something happens that really is disappointing. But I think about the positive energy that happens when people come together to celebrate the union of 2 people.

Dr. Christine Li [00:13:40]:
It's really magical. And why would we plan our own wedding with the idea that something's gonna go wrong? Of course, you wanna avoid things going wrong, but you wanna predict that everything is gonna go just fantastically. It really helps again to save you time and to save you energy. So avoid anticipating obstacles. All the anxiety that you will not go through will just be a blessing to your body, to your heart, to your mind, and your soul. Alright. Connected with the last tip, I want you to practice anticipating your own success. I hope you know that I feel this way in general.

Dr. Christine Li [00:14:21]:
Just by listening to this podcast, you know that I'm an optimist. But I want you to practice envisioning how you're gonna show up. How quickly are you gonna get to the finish line? How happy are you gonna be when you get there? How are you gonna celebrate? What are you gonna look like? What are you gonna say? How will your life be different when you achieve the thing that you've been working so hard to do? All these things are things that will help you to anticipate your own success and really start to accumulate success over success over next success. That's also a time saver, by the way, and that hearkens back to the practice tip that I had for you a couple tips ago. When you practice, you get better. And when you get better, you start seeing success more often. And when you start seeing success more often, everything expands because people start to notice you. People start to wanna work with you.

Dr. Christine Li [00:15:19]:
You start to feel more confident, and then you can go to an even higher level in your practice, whatever area you are in or whatever craft or piece of work you wanna put into the world, you get to be the inspiration for others at a certain point after you've practiced and really put your work out into the world. Next idea that I have, utilize support. So important. It's a tip that I, myself, have had difficulty using over the years because out of fear, anxiety, some self worth issues, I've always felt, well, let me just handle it myself and not bother people. But I am learning even in this day and age, the current day, to rely on coaches, to rely on friends, to ask people what are they doing? Not in the effort to compare myself to them, but to see, can I speed up my own process by asking how are they putting out podcast episodes? How are they trying to grow their podcast? Things like that. So don't be afraid to utilize support. It's there for you. It's there in great quantity, by the way, also.

Dr. Christine Li [00:16:29]:
I think we don't even really know exactly how deep the support for us goes until we reach out for it. And if you're like me, if you're an extroverted type of person, you will find that your energy will naturally elevate. It will rise when you start collaborating with friends and people who know what they're doing because you just get more excited. You get more confident. You get more hopeful about what you can create. And this podcast is one very big example for me in my life of how you can get energy and inspiration from interviewing people, working with people, and serving people. In creating these episodes for you, I really elevate my own game and I get to see what I can share with you, and that really helps me to live my fullest life. The next tip is very much related to what I just said.

Dr. Christine Li [00:17:25]:
Find the joy in what you're doing. Humongous time and energy saver. When you feel in alignment with what you're doing day in and day out, with what you're creating, with how you do your work, with how you enjoy your peaceful rest periods. When you have joy in your day, you will find that you are in control of your time because you're not suffering, because you're not complaining. You're not comparing yourself to other people. You're not predicting negative events in the future. There is always a way to see the benefit of your current situation instead of counting the losses. And you get to choose which argument you're gonna make.

Dr. Christine Li [00:18:11]:
And I always choose counting the wins rather than counting the losses always. So get in that habit. It may take some practice for you. It may take a 180 degree turnaround for you, but I promise you, it will help you to maintain great time management and great energy levels. We're almost towards the end of my list today, and I wanted to note this one because it's very important because in many ways, the biggest energy drain is not believing in your ability and your worth or value. If you are constantly trying to prove your value by your performance or to shore it up somehow by how you look or how you sound or the people you know, you're gonna get stuck there. It's a pattern of just trying to cover up where you feel you are lacking. Because when you're doubting yourself, that's a very fundamental doubt.

Dr. Christine Li [00:19:13]:
There's basically I don't know. I don't know if there's a doubt that trumps the self doubt one because we are our biggest supporter of ourselves. And if you have a hole in that bucket, if you have a hole in your self esteem somewhere, your attention is always gonna be drawn back to that hole because you're gonna keep trying to fill the bucket of your self esteem, and that effort is gonna go draining out of that hole no matter how small that hole is. So if you are lacking in self belief, if you are doubting yourself time and time again, I really encourage you to heal that spot, to patch that hole in that bucket of self esteem, to hire a coach, therapist, or enlist the help of a very lovely friend to help you to really separate yourself from that particular bucket. Get an entirely new bucket. One where you are always successful, where you have got lots of friends, lots of support, where everything that you create out of your intuition and from your heart is bound for success. And when you start with that wonderful, healthy platform, you're gonna leave your self esteem problems in history. They're gonna be a thing of the past.

Dr. Christine Li [00:20:36]:
And I promise you, you can really heal these things. I've been on a journey multiple journeys of healing over the past 2 or 3 decades, and it's been the most gratifying of jobs. Okay. My final point is another important one. Invest in the people and programs and ideas that will help you to save time and energy. I originally learned that from an I believe an offhanded comment that Oprah made long ago. Maybe she doesn't make offhanded comments, but I saw this maybe 20 years ago where she said, if you can invest in something that helps you to be a little bit more organized, pay that money, spend that time, make that investment. And I always took that away because I thought that really makes a lot of sense.

Dr. Christine Li [00:21:22]:
Why would you deprive yourself of something that could give you time or improve your sense of your use of time. So valuable. So, so valuable. So don't waste your time. Elevate the way that you look at time and see the value of time in your life. That is also kind of bonus tip for conserving your time and saving your energy throughout the day. Alright. I think that's it for today.

Dr. Christine Li [00:21:51]:
That was a lot of mindset strategy for fixing your relationship with time. If you need a new relationship with time, you probably are doing a lot right already. And I hope this list helps you to just tweak it a little bit. So you feel like you're not pushing so much and you're allowing things to flow and happen and emerge from you in a very natural and relaxed way so that you can go to bed feeling calm, feeling accomplished, feeling happy, and feeling well. I wish that for everyone who's listening today and everyone that you know as well. If you're interested in mastering time and implementing more of these skills in your own life, I invite you to consider working with me in the short term or in the long term. And to just start a conversation about doing that, you can go to make time for success podcast.com, our website for the podcast. Go to the navigation bar at the top of the screen and look for the word contact, and you'll see a box that opens.

Dr. Christine Li [00:23:00]:
You'll just type your name, email address, and you can even just say I would love to start a conversation with you, Christine, and I'll get right back to you. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you liked it, please share it with your loved ones and your friends and your colleagues, and I look forward to talking to you next week. I'll see you soon.

Dr. Christine Li [00:23:20]:
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Make Time For Success podcast. If you enjoyed what you've heard, you can subscribe to make sure you get notified of upcoming episodes. You can also visit our website, maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com for past episodes, show notes, and all the resources we mentioned on the show. Feel free to connect with me over on Instagram too. You can find me there under the name procrastination coach. Send me a DM and let me know what your thoughts are about the episodes you've been listening to. And let me know any topics that you might like me to talk about on the show. I'd love to hear all about how you're making time for success.

Dr. Christine Li [00:24:01]:
Talk to you

Dr. Christine Li [00:24:04]:
soon.