It was 2 am and I was afraid to fall asleep.
The partying had died down, and I could hear only intermittent sounds of snoring.
I was four or five years old.
I was lonely and nervous-excited about visiting my dad’s place for the weekend. I still loved him so much and wanted to know him, yet in being there I could feel that I was mostly alone. I knew he was happy to have me there. I also knew other things were more important to him. I was used to this by this point.
I crept down the stairs to see what was going on. People were passed out in various places throughout my aunt’s large living room.
My dad was on the couch snoring. I say snoring rather than sleeping because it was hard to tell. See, he slept with eyes open as a result of a fist fight he had with his brother in which he’d lost his eye.
Though I was terrified to look at him lying there like that, I still wanted to be near him. I sat down on the floor near the sofa and began playing with the roach clips that were available on the coffee table, using them to style my fine blonde hair.
This is my first notable memory of surviving time.
I have many others I could share in the years of going from mom’s to dad’s to grandma’s to aunt’s and back again.
Surviving time.
Just wanting to get through it so I could move on to the next thing, which I then wanted to get through to move on to the next thing, and so on.
I developed ways to keep busy to avoid being present to how uncomfortable I was actually feeling.
And thus began the dance of ensuring I was staying while simultaneously waiting to get on to the next thing.
In college I’d write lots of notes in class just waiting for class to be over so I could go home and study the notes. (I wasn’t present enough in class to actually learn the material while I was there.)
I took this habit into the working world. I’d go to meetings throughout the day, and socialize in between, and then I’d use my evenings to actually get my work done.
It wasn’t very sustainable to work every evening, so I used all kinds of different strategies to shift this habit from time blocking to say no to certain meetings to getting up and in the office an hour earlier to not checking email during the day, etc. But the core issue remained.
It’s no surprise then that I took this issue into my business, working in ways that had me work harder and fill my time to the maximum. Distract, keep busy, survive time.
Phew, that was a lot of work!
And guess what, it worked! Keeping busy and getting lots of stuff done was still a formula for success. Surviving my days and working evenings to catch up… I knew how to make this work for me, and no one minded at all because I fit right in with the societal norm.
We each have a unique relationship with time, and an old stored experience that helped create it.
One of my Mastery clients recently told me that she had some concern about enjoying her time too much in this stage of building her first freedom business. She said:
- If you’re not busy doing something you won’t be successful.
- If people see you just hanging out, they will judge you.
She even had a friend make a comment that reinforced these beliefs. While we can easily say that our society has created an agreement that staying busy is better than relaxing (we have), the reason you personally have bought into this agreement is unique to you.
To create a new relationship with time, we must give ourselves a new experience of time. Once we get an experience stored in our energy field, it runs the show until we shift it.
My habit of being anxious about time, wanting it to be over, and filling each minute of it to never be present to it, well… I came by it honestly. It SERVED ME in my circumstances as a kid. It MAKES SENSE that I would feel physically more comfortable in that pattern as an adult.
But I had to let it go.
I had to move it out of my system.
I had to give myself a NEW EXPERIENCE.
To learn to simply enjoy time.
Not enjoying all the things that fill my time (though that is great too).
I needed to learn to enjoy time to create a different relationship with it.
Just like if you don’t enjoy a person just for who they are, you are not likely to build a positive relationship with them… and if you don’t enjoy money and all the activity that goes along with money, you aren’t likely to build a positive relationship with it… it’s important to enjoy time.
Imagine a world in which you can reclaim your experience of time. You can relish time and feel nourished by your down time, rather than adding ‘get massage’ to your to-do list and calling that self care.
Imagine your life and business being so much more efficient and elegantly scheduled because you are so PRESENT and TUNED IN that your divine guidance helps you make the best decisions ever.
Imagine being able to be present and non-anxious with a two hour break in your client schedule… knowing you may choose to take a luxurious walk and enjoy some lovely music and rest on your break, OR, spirit may spark a divine download and you create your next piece of powerful teaching content with elegant ease between calls. All without struggle.
Imagine no longer needing some big fabulous thing to look forward to, because you are so thrilled by being present to what actually is… and your full presence makes it even more magical.
Imagine not stressing about all the planning you need to do because you make decisions as needed and fully trust yourself to have plenty of time get everything done right on time.
This is fully possible. I’ve been practicing it for the last two years, and increasing my time spent in this state every single month.
It is a more powerful way to live.
And daring to live it has a tremendous ripple effect on the world.
I invite you to try it.
Set aside time in your schedule.
Stop planning so much.
Get adequate rest.
Move your body.
Make time to commune with spirit.
Do nothing and begin to listen for how you’ll now when it’s time to act.
If it’s not a full body yes, give it a ‘no.’
Love yourself.
Value your time without believing it’s scarce.
It’s a journey!
—–
AN INVITATION
If you are running a successful business, and you’re beginning to notice that some version of time scarcity or time survival has crept into the way you’ve structured it, and you resonate with this article, I have a question for you.
Will you allow yourself to luxuriate in the presence of time, or is it something you know you “should” do, but you also recognize it’s a challenge to break that pattern?
If you’d like support in the form of a powerful live container to play with time, how you work, how you think, and how you may structure your business for a new relationship to time, I invite you to apply for my upcoming Italy Retreat. It’s the “Lazy Bee” edition, and it just may change your world.
I know you’re successful. You know a lot about how to run a business, and you have a deep impact on your clients.
And this is the next level. Until you give yourself permission to create more spaciousness, all you create will feel like groundhog day… another version of the same thing.
I knew FOR YEARS I needed to make this shift, yet I wasn’t able to do it on my own simply by knowing I “should.”
And that’s why I’ve crafted this retreat to hold space for you to EXPERIENCE YOURSELF ANEW.
Over the four days we will focus on the three core tenets of the Lazy Bee Experience:
- Work lightly
- Work effectively
- Work abundantly
And we won’t just talk about it… we’ll get it in our BONES! This is where the transformation happens – permanently.
If you want to learn more and apply, simply CLICK HERE to get started.
