Illusion of Time... How does it affect you?

At my day job, I'm a legal assistant. I work in a nice firm, with cool people, and A LOT of work! :)

In a law office, you "always" have work. If you say you don't have something to do, you're not looking around yourself enough. There's always something to do and if you want to be ahead, you'd better keep your eyes open.

There are deadlines, court hearings, arbitrations, trials, etc. You can have so much work, you don't know where to start and where to stop!

Such is my desk :) ... An interesting thought process came up for me over the past couple of months that I want to share with all of you.

It's the illusion of time... It's relevant, you'll see.

I've been going in on the weekends from say 5:00 - 6:00 a.m., so I could be ahead of time frames and ahead of all the work on my desk. Usually, lots of firms do certain documents the day before an arbitration. My goal is to have that puppy done and out at minimum a week or, if I'm really focused... two weeks "prior" to the hearing.

That requires ME to do some significant shifting in how I run my desk and the work that comes across it. Including but not limited to the interuptions, phone calls, emergencies, etc.,

I also... don't like being all wigged out that I'll be down to the wire, that stresses me out. I dont' like being stressed out... it feels "bad".

So to alleviate that AND to be ahead... I go in on the weekend for like 4/5 hours, I'm done by 9:30 - 10:00 a.m. and there are NO distractions... just me, my mp3 player and pure uninterupted work time. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHH... no interuptions, no phones, no nuttin! YES!

How time is relevant is... the first few times I did it, I'd go in on a monday with this false sense of security that the rest of the week would be a breeze. I was wrong...

With all the things I mentioned which is and are a distraction, I lost time anyway...

Why? :) Because I made an assumption, not based on FACT ... that in doing the extra on the weekend and having my desk be massively organized according to due dates and scheduling etc., that I had more time.

So what did I do? I stopped working at a frenzied pace.

Meaning, not that I didn't still do everything that I was supposed to do, but I made the assumption that I now had all this TIME ... w/o considering that if I kept at the pace I was going "prior" to going in on the weekends I could be ... as much as MONTH ahead and have no stress whatsoever.

Wouldn't that be a massively wonderful goal. Especially considering that my goal is a week to two weeks.

So, I'd go in... I"d have this illusion of control wherein I'd feel like I'd have ALL THIS TIME to get to things...

Yet ... it wasn't true. Time kept slipping through my fingers... the days still zipped by and I still had all the normal distractions during the week and the work still pours in and... POOF... all that time disappeared.

I decided, after seeing this little pattern of mine where I had an illusion of time and deadlines being met in advance due to my going in on the weekend that... I had to make time my friend.

Use it to my advantage. Right? Can you do that?

Sure you can... this weekend I went in not with the idea of cleaning up certain items which have dates on them but to clean up the busy work like putting files away, diarying them, follow ups, filing etc., that takes time away.

Then, I did an arbitration package which is due on April 2, 2009 ... if I want to have time be my friend and be ahead of it... instead of doing the "right now" stuff... which is okay to set aside a little bit... I did the stuff that I'm not able to "get" to because there's so much to do. So the goal was to go in and do the first arbitration package that was due and have it prepped and ready.

If I wait, until I do the other stuff, times going to catch up to me... and it's going to be done the day before. I'm not having that kind of stress... nope.

My goal, is to destress myself so much that time is no longer an issue because I've used it wisely.

Not this other thought process of "the illusion of control" over time where I dont manage it properly.

It may seem so silly to write about this but I think the illusion of control over time is something very important to talk about, becuase it affects many other things.

Life... how many of you were 20 years old a minute ago? I know I was... I'm only 22 :) LOL ...

We can't control time but we can control what we do with it and make it manageable... we can use it to our advantage and focus on how to use it wisely. Like I'm doing at work...

Focus is the primary goal here. Whatever it is that you're doing, you can restructure it to make things easier, less adrenaline filled and more smooth... I like the hustle and bussle HOWEVER ... doing things and getting ahead... where you can produce things and do things in a way where you're not always rushing... and thank goodness I have a boss who gave me the key :) ... and the ability to go in and use the early morning silence to my advantage... whenever I want to... makes other things mroe streamlined too.

Think about it... I know lots of you have massive workloads or things that can run you ragged... I don't think it has to be that way... If there's a way to manage your time more efficiently, find it... I've tried several different processes and the most recent is to start the package and do nothing else... but the package when I go in... a file review, based on how large it is can take a good ... 4/5 hours... that's a long time. When it's uninterupted it can still take that long but it's still faster and it's not being interupted.

Then you're ahead... We don't want you to fall into the "illusion of control" when it comes to time... and assume that becuase you're ahead in one area, that other area's aren't going to come and distract you from making more time by doing the extra.

You want to focus on the long term of managing it in a way that's going to help you overall.

Thoughts? I tell ya :) I'm a happy clam right now... LOL :)

Oh... was it worth getting up that early? Sure it was... because in wanting this goal to be accomplished, I had to shift some things and chores in my daily routine too... I had to make that more efficient and make some changes.

Nothing is engraved in stone... NOTHING... don't fall prey to the illusion of control over time or life... it's going to come and go... what you do or don't do, is all relevant.

Dont' you think?

Awful Plastic Surgery and Aging... Where are you?

Most of the pictures in the site http://www.awfulplasticsurgery.com/category/cher/ are of celebrities. One woman's face, due to her perception of how she looked... was so altered that she wasn't attractive at all anymore. Joan Rivers is a good example, Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett and a slew of other actors and actresses all had nose jobs or work done on their faces and their bodies too.

The even have implants for guys arms to make their biceps and triceps look bigger. Talk about obsession. Wow.

I sat looking at these photographs in the site for about 40 minutes last night... I liked most of the before pictures, specially when you see what could happen if you go over board under the knife.

Saturday I went to my dentist. This is relevant :) bear with me. I went to the dentist and he did a big scaling and cleaning ... and he shaved my lower teeth down a little bit, and a top tooth a little bit too.

He handed me a mirror and before I looked I said, "If I don't seem to like it immediately, keep in mind that I've seen myself the same way for a number of years and it may take me a while psychologically to accept the newer view." He says, it looks great, you'll see.

I looked and it was "okay"... it took me until I got home and looked again to think... hmmm... yah, that's pretty good.

When I looked in the mirror, due to all the faces I was making and aging myself, all the fine lines in my forehead and around my eyes were really winking at me. Actually, they were waving madly! I told him, I think you just aged me 10 years... Yah, like they weren't there before? Suuuure they weren't.

Everyone is affected, whether they admit it or not, by what they perceive to be perfection in themselves. Heck, even the prettiest women in hollywood changed things about their faces.

As I age, I notice the fine lines, thankfully they're laugh lines, not frown lines. I have them in my forehead from the many expressions I make, not so much around my eyes, around my mouth ... you know those apostrophe's we can have there from smiling. Course, the skin begins to lose elasticity over time ... my neck started to get what I call chicken skin. Which is simply, if you look at a person in their 40's or up, the skin on their neck loses some of it's elasticity and doesn't bounce back like it used to.

Initially I saw these changes, which are ever so slow, but when you're tired or didn't do the whole face regimine thing they seem pretty pronounced.

Which brings me to face lifts. Wow, the botched facelifts I saw pictures of. The writer on the site called them "the wind tunnel" look. And it was true... how much skin can you pull back, while it's losing it's elasticity and have it look normal?

The face is going to age and the symetry will all be shifted with any work that's done. As that starts happening people start wanting to fix more and more. Have implants in their faces to make their face look... well, I guess younger and more youthful... I guess. But, it comes out looking ... all puffy and distorted.

My thing, is ... why not appreciate what we have? Accept aging as part of growing older. We can't change that, we're going to age. It's inevitable.

Same goes to lyposuction and the botched jobs you can see people have which make them think they're all thin and sexy. If they don't maintain certain lifestyle changes, it's going to come back.

Same goes for a tummy tuck or ... any other procedure you can come up with.

I'm not saying that I don't understand the ... perceptions people have about their body, face or aging. The desire to keep up, for the actor's and actresses in hollywood faced with the younger crowd, but ... I think that perception is a bit skewed... (sp?)

The desire to be more attractive or fix something they don't like about themselves is there. Lots of people go through a lot of negative thoughts and poor self esteem issues because of what they see and what they think others will find attractive.

And therein lies the answer... "What they think others will find attractive".

This isn't a new topic. It's been going on for years. All over... now they have shows about it like Nip Tuck and Extreme Makeover... Although in the show Extreme Makeovers they also promote an entire lifestyle change. HOwever, they're still promoting going under the knife to ... look better, to enhance their self esteem.

My own nose is crooked, I have a deviated septum, a doctor told me that once and I said... yup, that's why I part my hair this way. :) It offsets my nose. My deviated septum can stay right where it is, crooked and all. So there...

What I'd rather see... is people appreciate who they are, without buying into what other people say pretty is supposed to be.

Sure we have who we're attracted to, psychologically speaking people are usually drawn to people like themselves or who they think mirrors their own perceptions of themselves... However at what point do people give up the right to like themselves just as they are by getting major, costly surgery?

I'm not talking about people who had an accident either. You know where they have reconstructive surgery or things like that.

I mean, we're all going to age... We're all going to get wrinkles and chicken skin :) and things are going to go south...

What about enhancing what we have by say... hair color or make up or ... dressing to flatter what we already have?

That's still a bit superficial I guess but ... there are other things a person can do to boost their appearance and feel good about themselves. All that "feel good about yourself" starts from within anyway... right? Yes...

Then it shows outwardly ... Lets take, Ernest Borgnine for example. He's a ruddy looking fella, been in a number of movies and shows... I saw him in an interview one day a few weeks back and he's still him. Ruddy looking, with the space between his teeth ... still "him". I think that's pretty admirable. He is who he is...

Unfortunately, we're not taught to embrace who we are... everything swirls around what other people think and do.

It starts really young too. High school if not sooner. Whose the prettiest, whose the most likely to succeed... thank god no one said things about ... what's his name? That computer genius guy whose a kajillionare? Bill... oh ratts! I can't... GATES! Bill Gates! Not massively handsome... did his thing, is a massive success.

Can you imagine if he bought into all these things? Shame.

We can get so enticed... or lured into comparing ourselves to others as to what "we're not" that we forget to appreciate who we are in the first place.

This is where comparing is BAD... They do it in the tabloids all the time, who looks better in this dress and pit one actress against another in a photograph. All goes to perception right? Sure it does... because I"m sure both those women left the house liking how they looked in that outfit.

You never see... men compared like that. Now that I think about it. This sentence is subject to change if I find proof that there are comparisons like that going on.

Oh ... wait, high school year books. They do that... sorry, my mistake. They do it to guys too.

So how do we change these things?

I think, we can acknowledge that everyone is not created equal.

I think we can learn to focus on what good qualities we already have.

I think we can learn that we're okay as we are... and not compare ourselves to others.

I think we shouldn't be so romanced by TV and commercials and all those things that start us off comparing ourselves to others.

I think we can look at the younger generation and not think... "I'm aging, what's going to be left for me?" In any capacity.

I think we can learn to appreciate all that we are as an individual ...

We're going to change. We're going to age. We're going to be inadvertently compared to or see things that may entice us to buy into that mindset that we "have" to do certain things to keep up appearances or buy into what other people think ...

I think... accepting who we are ... right here and working up from there is the most important aspect of defining who we are and what we buy into.

But, this is nothing new... I'm not saying anything new at all. Yet, it's something that's been around forever.

In the end, when everything goes south :) and we have those laugh lines and furrows in our brow... the thing, that I think people are going to really focus on is...

Who you are... as a person. No?

Food for thought this morning.

Like who you are ... don't buy into all the commercial stuff you see, or the comparisons that are out there.

Be You... after all, you can't really be anyone else can you?

Venting or cronic complainer?

My interpretation of venting is when a situation triggers an emotional response (reaction) from us. It could be anger, fear, stress related, disrespect related, emergency related ... I'm adding a bunch of descriptions so you know it's a variety of things that can trigger venting.

It could also be a compilation of things as well. One stressor after the other during the day and the last thing that happens to a person triggers the flood gates to open and POOF irrational gibber jabbering.

A person who is venting talks incessantly, asks questions which they don't really want an answer to other than to be validated for their feelings or understood. If they seem to get more frustrated because you're trying to "help" then you know that they are venting.

The key, for me, with venting and people who say they are venting is to pay attention to their actions thereafter. Often times we assume people may simply be complaining all the time, and that may be true... IF they have not remedied the source of what they needed to vent about.

Usually when a person is venting they are clearing out the negative emotions swirling around so that they can come back to rational thinking. Come back to "center".

Complaining, is often confused by people as venting because no one ever told them that venting was to regain their "center" and to reach clarity for themselves so that they can move out of the negative emotions and into an action mode where they can think clearly.

Got me so far?

If an individual is complaining all the time and everything is miserable in their life, we could be talking about victim mentality. Which is another topic in of itself. Victim mentalities don't recognize they have a way out or there are other things they can do. They are not solution oriented and can get, and remain stuck in the negative emotions. Sometimes they do this because they truly do not know any other way. They have not learned how to process their emotions and therefore are stuck in complaining mode.

You can see the difference between the two IF there is no action after the person has vented.

I have vented myself to people. I feel better and then I don't follow up and tell them what I've done to better my situation or how I'm working on it. So I can appear to be complaining, however some situations are not as easily remedied.

So what it comes down to, at least in my experiences, is how a person is handling their stressors, if they are action oriented (doing something about their situation and making an effort to do so, and it's not fast enough so they may feel frustrated and trapped) or if they are simply complaining about things expecting a different outcome without any change on their part or acknowledgment that there are things they can do differently.

An individual has to recognize for themselves that they can do something about their situation. Or they may continue to misinterpret venting as something that they can do ... but really all they are doing, is being a cronic complainer without taking any action.

Ya follow me?

They are alleviating stress, etc., HOWEVER they have not yet recognized that they need to do something different. EVEN IF they have been advised otherwise.

So we have "healthy" venting and irrational venting to get rid of the ick ... and then we have complaining where the person makes no effort to change their siutation or their external stressors.

Or, for that matter are not, or may not be aware that they CAN take charge of themselves, have no control over external circumstances, and can focus on what THEY need to do in any given situation.

So... the cronic complainer who takes no action falls dangerously close to someone who has a victim mentality, which can morph into a martyr mindset.

A victim, a true victim is not aware of something being done to them. Once they realize something has been done to them and they take charge, take action... they are no longer perceived as a victim.

Now, if a victim finds out that they are a victim, does nothing about it, they can develope a martyr mentality. Which is a person who recognizes they are being taken advantage of and choose to remain in the situation taking no action what so ever.

Now with some, there is a payoff for being a martyr. Attention it gives them because they don't know healthier ways of relating so others. They get to be mean to others because they are so taken advantage of ... "poor me" ... look what someone is doing to me.

On the other hand, a victim... may say nothing at all because they don't know what else to do. They don't know any remedies ... if they are actively searching out solutions, they don't necessarily turn into martyrs. Because they are solution oriented.

What ... clarifies, for me, what venting is and cronic complaining is the overall behavior of the individual that I'm talking to.

If they take action.
If, after they are done venting, they are open to talking about alternatives.
If I ask them if they would like me to just listen, and they say yes. Then after they feel better, they may be open to suggestion OR I hear or see them taking action about the particular problem.
If they are willing to identifhy and take responsibilithy for the situationand their part, if they are honest with
themselves as to what set them off so they can handle the situation better later on.

To name a few...

we can also talk about the draining effects that venting can have on us as the listener too.

We have to learn when to block out certain things so that we don't feel buried by "their" stuff when it's done.

Now, a complainer... to clarify the difference between a complainer and a venter... really just complains, is not open to solution and is consistently negative, and takes no action at all. These people would fall under the category of toxic people.

A venter is letting out stressors of the day or whatever emotional trigger hit them. These stressors, by the way, could be a compilation of things that they did not address as well that come out in one felled swoop too. HOWEVER the venter, when finished, is more solution oriented and seeking resolution, remedies and methods to make their situations more managable or liveable.

Have I been clear? What a shame I had to do it again... Which is fine.

OH! I almost forgot, if you are unsure if a person is venting because they want help ... ask them. You can ask them if they would like some suggestions or they simply need to vent.

If you find a person venting about the same thing, you may have to point out to them that you're hearing venting about the same topic and you would like to discuss some possible remedies.

If that doesn't work and the pattern continues ... well you may have to set a boundary with them as to just how much you can listen to.