Caroline Cavanagh argues that anxiety comes from deficits in three currencies: money, time, and energy. Time is fixed at 24 hours for everyone, while low energy forces you to rely on subconscious decision-making, which she compares to a 4-year-old's thinking. Investing time in meditation can replenish energy and reduce anxiety.
Chapters
If I said to you currency, I'm assuming you'd automatically think about money, and if money was abundant, you're in a good place, whereas if it was low or in deficit, that would be a source of high anxiety. And I'm here to say that there are 2 other currencies that similarly, when they're in abundance, things tend to be good, But if they get low or into deficit, can also be a big source of anxiety. One of those is time. Now I love time because it's the only fixed resource that every single one of us has. No one has more than 24 hours in a day, but how we use it has a big impact on how we feel. Stress is often based on the fact that we have too many things to fit into a limited amount of time. And that leads us on really nicely to currency number 3, energy. Now I could get into quantum physics, but I won't. Energy is something that again, like a battery power, if it's fully charged you can do a lot of things, but if it gets low we don't function as well. And energy is particularly interesting when it comes to mental resilience. The biggest consumer of energy of any element of our body is the conscious mind, the rational, logical part of us. So if there isn't enough energy in our internal batteries to run that logical part of us, you're left running on the subconscious, which has the typical age of a 4-year-old. And 4-year-olds don't today tend to be particularly good at making decisions. So one of the ways that I approach helping people who are struggling with anxiety is to look at these 3 currencies. Yes, money is an important part of it, but if you ignore how people are using their time and making adjustments there, so that they can use it more effectively, and perhaps most importantly, how the energy is fueling the use of time, and starting to see all of these currencies as investment. You can invest time in something that perhaps will give you more energy. So I choose to invest time in meditation, for example, because I know that by spending half an hour plus a day meditating, it gives me more energy. Than if I invested that time in something else. So think about how you can start to balance these 3 currencies— money, time, and energy— so that ultimately the aim is to have a positive in all 3 of them. And there's a really useful download on my website carolinecavanagh.co.uk. Go to the resources and you'll see on the top row there a resource that helps you start to look at time and energy as a guidance to taking you the first step in this process. And otherwise, just give me a call and I'd love to talk to you more about it. Thank you for listening.
