Pennsylvania's Premier Center for Catholic Counseling and Spiritual Direction

Category: Women

Managing Everything But Time

By Michael Kastelnik, Psy.D. – “Time management” is a funny phrase. To see what I mean, take the concept of management as largely understood in a business context. Companies all over the world spend a lot of time and effort to make sure their laborers can get the job done. Sometimes the mere presence of managers helps to keep people honest and ensure they are actually working and not slacking off or engaging in some other activity that is bad for business. This all makes sense with managing people that you can influence, but it makes less sense with such an invaluable yet intangible resource such as time. Nevertheless, there are other aspects of our lives over which we have more obvious control, albeit some of us more than others. I’m talking about things such as energy, stress and attention.

Like with many aspects of life, managing energy levels is relevant to the conversation. As such, any advice on improving time management will include the usual components of self-care such as proper diet, exercise or comparable activity, adequate sleep, maintaining wholesome relationships and stress management. In fact, stress management is a complex skill in itself and it may be fundamental to time management inasmuch as you need to have just the right amount of arousal to complete a task, according to the Yerkes-Dodson model of productivity. Too little concern for a task will literally get you nowhere, while too much concern can lead to progressively worse outcomes. Mistakes can occur. Burnout is an outcome when people are putting in more effort with no more output in the product. And, of course, health problems occur in the short term and over time when people get too stressed. Physiology is simple enough to regulate with activities such as slow, deep breathing or jumping jacks, while mental stress relief may involve something like journaling about concerns.

Attention is another resource that may require more discipline to regulate. We all tend to focus on things we find interesting and space out on boring tasks. Becoming your own behavioral therapist and limiting the interesting things to serve as a reward for the more mundane tasks could not only help you get your work done but could also build a resistance to forming unbalanced habits with things that exploit our attention, such as electronic devices.

In addition to short-term tactics to stay on task, it is also necessary to step back and make sure we are balancing efficiency, the ability to do tasks using less time, money or energy, with effectiveness, which is a positive contribution to our goals.

For example, let’s say you have a goal to build a stone wall on the front of your property. If you know you have a lot of large stones in your backyard, you may decide to start by gathering those stones and bringing them to the other side in the most efficient way possible. You could figure out how to reduce the likelihood of injury by lifting the rocks with a certain technique. You might utilize a simple machine, such a wheelbarrow, to do it quickly with simple machines like a wheelbarrow. You may be tempted to feel so proud of your method that you move the rocks to the backyard again because you can. Maybe that last activity sounds far fetched, but the point is that if the emphasis falls too much on efficiency, you may lose sight of other important things such as implementing the rest of the steps needed to complete the wall, maintaining it, and having a rationale why you are building it that you can instill in your children, who could in turn maintain or improve the wall when their time comes. The point of this example is to show how we need the ability to pause from our work periodically or even regularly to make sure we are growing in virtue and working towards worthwhile goals and not simply keeping busy.

So, what can we do if managing our time seems like such a complex task? We can pray that the Holy Ghost enable us to use His gifts such as wisdom. We can ask for counsel from respected elders and mentors on how to grow in prudence regarding particular problems we would like to solve. We can start where we are and acknowledge what we have some control over, such as self-care and attention, as well as those that we don’t control and could therefore benefit from avoiding worrying about, such as the passage of time. This is the Serenity Prayer in action. While we may not control time, there is a lot we all can do to make the most of it.

When You Don’t Look Forward to Mother’s Day

By Deborah Rojas, MS, Integrity Counseling Services — My kids loved to make Mother’s Day special by bringing hot coffee and something hopefully edible to me while I was still waking up. The moments of my pretending to be surprised, the impossibility of actually eating in bed, and the joy of the moment are priceless memories. I still have some of the handmade, illustrated cards. Mother’s Day with small children was a precious season of life for which I am eternally grateful.

If you find yourself with mixed emotions after celebrating Mother’s Day, perhaps you will find this to be helpful. Here are a few ways that Mother’s Day may carry heavy emotional weight: a difficult relationship with your mother, the pain of infertility, or the loss of a child or your mother.  Even so, there are ways to embrace suffering, surrender it to the Lord, and lean into the loving comfort of Mary, our spiritual mother, and those who love us.

Saint Teresa of Calcutta reminds us of the immense value of love in the ordinary things of life. While the presence of sacrificial love is easily taken for granted, the absence is unmistakable. When a child’s need for comfort is mocked, ignored, or suppressed, dysfunctional relational patterns develop. Trust becomes a foreign practice. If your relationship with your mother was a tangled mess, then you know the heartache and insecurity from that insecure attachment.

These wounds can experience healing, as we seek to forgive our mothers for actions that were both intentional and accidental. Forgiveness is perhaps the most rewarding and difficult work that we can do to experience freedom from the burden and pain inflicted by others. Have you experienced the grace of God and His forgiveness? Ask the Holy Spirit to help you desire to forgive and surrender the process to Him!

I first became aware of the pain some women experience on Mother’s Day in church as a child.  At the end of the service, my father, a Protestant pastor, asked all mothers to stand to receive a carnation. Then he asked all daughters to stand. In doing so, many women suffering from infertility and miscarriage received love and recognition on an otherwise painful day.

If you or someone you know is suffering the loss of a child or infertility, please talk about your suffering. Reach out to those you love to let them know this is a hard day for you and how to meaningfully support you. Consider how you can celebrate the lives of your little saints and encourage those who long to be mothers. This is an opportunity for compassionate presence and generous, bold love.

Mary knows the pain of losing her Son. A few years ago, one of my dearest friends called with the news that her oldest son had died in a tragic accident. I will never forget the agony of her cry. Love is no stranger to suffering, and Mary generously gave that gift in her presence at the foot of the cross. Holidays can particularly remind us of the absence of those with whom we wish to celebrate. Estrangement of adult children is another often unmentioned tragedy experienced by families across the globe. Love continues, even when those we love are no longer present in our lives, but this is a painful tension.

If this is not your story, and you look forward to Mother’s Day with joyful anticipation, you are truly blessed. Please pray for those who smile in the midst of heartbreak. Motherhood is a tremendous blessing for the giver and the recipient. How can we practice gratitude for these gifts? After my kids brought me breakfast in bed, I usually went to the kitchen to clean up before church.

As St. Teresa of Calcutta reminds us, love is experienced in the ordinary everyday nature of life: “Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired.” May your all of your Mother’s Days be blessed and tireless!

Sidebar