When you feel tense and uptight, you are away from joy. You have put a sense of urgency above a sense of joy. You have forgotten what matters. Getting something done is not what matters. Having joy in the doing is what matters.
Perhaps tenseness comes from a sense of not being worth enough and trying to make up for it, to prove to someone somewhere and yourself that you can do it, whatever it is, and that you are, after all, despite everything, quite good enough.
The truth is you have nothing to prove but joy, and joy is not to be proved. It is to be enjoyed. Enjoy joy. Allow it. You are not in a race to rack up the most points.
Seriousness is not better than joyful. Adultlike is not better than childlike.
What is joy but being in the moment?
What is sense of urgency but not being in the moment?
When you feel urgent, you make yourself a chugging train going up hill.
When you feel joy, you are a light canoe riding a gentle stream.
Joy comes in like ripples of water. Tenseness is frozen in ice and makes you stiff.
Stop taking life so seriously. Take others seriously but not yourself. That is perhaps the ultimate courtesy. Hold the door of life open for others while you wait to go through. Your life is not the most important thing in the world. Would you really want it to be? You do not need to be first in line. You don't have to get through quite so fast. When you know the truth of your importance to the universe, you can have patience. Be a little more patient with yourself, and everything will fall into place.
Since time does not really exist, since it is only a made-up phenomenon of the world (which the world holds holy), there is no hurry. So what do you hurry for? What do you think you get?
Even when you believe, as you do, that time is real, what is the hurry? If time exists, there is always more of it. Sometimes there is too much of it. Whether plethora or lack, you tense when you use time as your model.
Your life really does not need to consist of getting things done. When getting things done and rushing to get things done is your priority, you have put yourself in a maelstrom from which you can never get out, for there will always be more waiting for you to do, and there is no relief.
Today, remember that time does not exist, or, if it does, you have all you need. You have all the time in the world. In that case, you do not need to hurry. Stop hurrying, and you won't be tense. Tell yourself to take as long with your tasks as you like. Do not impose deadlines on yourself. Do not set delivery dates that make you rush. Give yourself more time. Give yourself all the time in the world so that you can give and receive joy.
Give a gift of time to others.
Give them all the time in the world as well.
You rush because you rush. You rush for no reason at all.
In the world, time is a time-honored concept. It is revered. It is worshipped. Do you not think of time more often than you think of Me? Why not flick your wrist every few minutes and think of Me?
Point your sundials to God above and not the shadows on earth. Sun shines from above. Shadows are an earth phenomenon.
The more often you think of Me, the less enmeshed in time will you be. You will find yourself on another track. You have been running in place. Now ride the escalator.