Consider Your TEA

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We know we should try to stay in the present moment, without our brains wandering to the past or future, but it is so hard to do.

The tricky part of staying present is that we have so many balls in the air, we are afraid they will drop if we stop worrying about them.

Or we are afraid that we will forget something.

Or run out of time.

So we are often distracted with thinking of what we need do next and not focused on the task at hand.

I have noticed myself and my clients being overwhelmed lately with busy summer schedules, college kids starting to head back to campus, and life seeming to go faster and faster.

The acronym TEA can be a helpful reset button for us:

  • What is getting my Time, Energy, and Attention right now?

  • What do I want to be giving my Time, Energy, and Attention to?

  • Who and/or what deserves my Time, Energy, and Attention?

TEA is a helpful acronym to help us stay in alignment with our priorities, values, and goals.

It is also a helpful tool as an energy barometer—if your energy is low, consider what you are giving your time, energy, and attention to...then make some adjustments.

We get to choose and control how we spend our time, when we share our energy, and what we give our attention to.

Decide with whom and on what you will share your precious TEA.

Try These

1. There are 168 hours in a week. Track how you spend your time for one week. Note everything in 15- or 30-minute increments. Then reflect on how you spent your time. Is it what you intended? Does it reflect your most important people and work? Create a fictional ideal week for yourself by blocking the time the way you wish you could spend it. How do they compare? What adjustments are needed?

2. Think about the things and people that drain your energy. Now think about the things and people that fill you up with good energy. Can you seek out the things and people that give you energy and minimize the things and people that drain you? Or, if you can’t avoid the energy drainers, can you protect yourself by imagining a clear bubble around you holding your good energy in and keeping the heavy energy out?

3. Where do you want your attention to go? Are there projects you want to finish? Are there things you want to learn to do? Are there people you want to spend more time with? What do you want to give attention to in this chapter of your life? How can you carve that out for yourself?

 Here’s to using our TEA wisely,