Not Enough Time?
The truth is, “doing more” creates a lot of noise.
Do you feel like a victim of time? Do you compete with the hours in a day? Who will win…your desire to complete certain tasks or the arrival of bedtime?
If this sounds familiar, read on!
(If you can find the time, that is. Haha. Check the couch.)
Here’s what competing with time has looked like for me.
Immediately upon waking, my mind tries to inventory everything I need to do. It’s as though a bucket of marbles is dumped onto a wooden floor. Each marble represents a task.
The task-marbles careen and dart and ding and find their way into all the nooks and crannies of the room.
My brain frantically tries to track each marble. Apparently it believes I have eyes like a fly and can see the room through thousands of lenses. Accordingly, it directs my body to sweep all the marbles, at once, into the middle of the room.
So I reach and whack and scoop and slide a mental broom with frantic, pointless flailing. The task-marbles scatter further into oblivion, powered by the additional energy I have generously provided.
Finally I stop, exhausted. A few marbles have mercifully rolled to a halt in the middle of the room. I record those on paper.
Voila! I now have a to-do list.
Yet I know there are dozens of task-marbles scattered and hidden. It causes anxiety. Will I have time to find them? Will they “fit” into the day? Have I missed some Very Important Ones?
Meanwhile, I think longingly of the marbles I WANT to do. These are the ones that bring me relief, nourishment, joy.
My mind says: the Must Do Marbles come first. If there’s enough time later on, then I can have a Joy Marble.
(See what happened there? More time competition!)
All of this casts a cold darkness upon my psyche. I get easily overwhelmed. I procrastinate. I resent my various inboxes. I feel haunted by the emails and texts and phone calls I haven’t made to people I care about.
I start to feel like a failure. I self-isolate.
Or I swing completely in the other direction. I give myself a Big Break, release all expectations, and putter contentedly with A Day of Joy Marbles. Maybe I’ll climb a mountain!
Other times, I get really organized. I deploy project management tools. I create the world’s most eloquent action plan. Two minutes upon the plan’s completion, I lose focus and momentum. Plus I’m totally spent from planning.
Nothing gets done. I start to feel like a failure. I self-isolate.
This is a bleak cycle!
Happily, this doesn’t happen to me much anymore. My years of inner work have made a huge difference.
Sometimes, though, part of me still conflates task completion with forward progress. (Not to mention with self-worth!) That part of me believes being a successful entrepreneur-coach requires relentless activity.
The truth is, “doing more” creates a lot of noise. It makes it harder to see what really matters. Usually it creates as much wheel spinning as forward movement.
Annddd it puts us into competition with time.
Spoiler alert: we will never win. Time literally runs out on us.
My Troubadour Year is helping me recognize and release some deep patterns related to my relationship to tasks and time.
For example, I can now see that time flows through me. I do not compete with it.
Everything I need to do, want to do, hope to do…it all requires time. There’s no way to be any version of me without doing it within and through time.
So why do I rush to get to the “good marbles?” I might as well enjoy the experience of doing all of it. It’s all the good marbles.
Being alive is one huge, good marble.
Another insight has to do with life’s basic order of operations. I used to believe that:
a) If I had a clear purpose,
b) made a solid plan, and
c) implemented it well, then
d) good things would happen that
e) bring me joy.
Now I focus on experiencing joy first. And you know what? Good things follow, more quickly and with greater regularity than before.
Funny, that.
As a one-time program evaluator, I can’t deny the evidence this is true. Even though I can’t map it out with my logical, strategic mind.
But it makes sense.
When we operate from a mindset of joy, we’re more likely to get into a flow state. We think more creatively. We see more opportunities and are more open to unimagined possibilities. We exude easeful gratitude, which makes it easier to connect with others.
There are a lot of benefits to being joyful. (Profound, right?)
However…a key skill is knowing the difference between intuitive, open-hearted joy and avoidant escapism, which can also bring positive feelings.
How do YOU tell the difference?
An Antidote to Exhaustion
Healing the inner voice to change our relationship to work and effort
“If it was fun, they wouldn’t call it work.”
That was my Dad’s attitude. He was a plasterer, a job that required an artful sense of consistency, texture, and timing. It also meant long hours on his feet (or stilts!) breathing tiny dust particles.
That doesn’t sound like fun to me either. But he sure knew he was working!
Sadly, I think most people in the US share my Dad’s attitude about work. Even people who love their jobs and live with “purpose.” Even people with wealth, who have great discretion over their time.
We all seem to share a hidden assumption:
If we’re not worn out by what we’ve done, we haven’t done anything worthwhile.
Or perhaps more accurately:
If we’re not worn out by what we’ve done, WE are not worthwhile.
So we fill time with projects, volunteering, exercise, meetings, emails, classes. Even vacation planning becomes a chore.
That’s how we know it’ll be worthwhile.
We tell ourselves, “I can’t wait until everything’s done.” In the rare instance that happens, we get restless, ruminate, clean, look at phones, have drinks, and find myriad other ways to numb out.
I’m not saying these things are bad. I want to point out that we seem to avoid—at all costs—the experience of simply being present with the stillness of our own selves.
Why are we so uncomfortable with our own, solitary presence? What (or whom?) are we avoiding?
Here’s a paradox, friends: I believe the self-presence we avoid with distracted action is actually the source of our most sublime action. It’s where our clearest, most creative, most courageous, most loving action comes from.
Let’s call it intuitive presence. It’s relaxed and open. It’s curious. It takes things as they come. It’s attuned to senses. It’s calm. It does what needs to be done, and then moves on to what’s next.
You’ve experienced it. It’s there in the flow of conversations, getting lost in a favorite task, or going for a walk. It’s easy to assume we need to be doing something recreational to experience it. But it’s a state of consciousness available anytime.
I’m experiencing it as I write this!
Unfortunately, we learn to distrust this intuitive way of being.
It’s not appropriate when something important is on the line, right? That would be irresponsible! Reckless!
There’s a voice inside that says,
“You need to WORK a PLAN to ACCOMPLISH what you WANT…and if you’re not TIRED, you’re not WORKING, and you’ll FAIL.
You want proof? Just wait until something doesn’t go exactly the way you want…
See? You should’ve worked HARDER.”
Ouch.
There are so many sorrowful consequences to this approach.
Here’s a very practical one: that inner voice makes us less effective.
It drives us to do more than the moment requires. We complicate situations by incessantly picking at them like scratching an itch. The felt need to DO something becomes compulsive and we stop being “in choice.”
Doing becomes more important than discerning.
With this kind of internal headwind, following intuition requires tremendous self-awareness, understanding, and self-trust. Awareness of when the inner voice is taking control. Understanding it has your best interest in mind. Trusting you won’t become lazy, irresponsible, or forgetful if you choose to take a different path.
Intuitive presence knows you are not a failure waiting to happen.
You’re a human being who learns as you go. You can act lightly, without burden. You can feel at ease while doing what needs to be done. You can notice the subtle beauty of whatever you’re doing because your energy is not depleted with anxious worry.
Intuitive presence trusts you. It empowers you to replace the negative, self-berating voice with one that says:
“You’ve got this…enjoy!”
That’s a profound act of self-love.
Try it :).
Intuition, Ritual, and Making Life Sacred
Reveal the sacredness of your experience
I’ve always kept stones from my travels.
I find them comforting, like physical memories. They seem infused with quiet spirits who know me well. I’ve cherished their steady company through my best and worst moments.
After decades of gathering stones, I decided to set them free. I couldn’t carry their weight and energy through the reset of my “Troubadour Year.”
So I took them for a walk…down a favorite path in a favorite city along a favorite creek.
I placed the stones where the land seemed to ask for them. I tried to arrange them in dignified postures, while also revealing their whimsy…lest they take themselves too seriously.
It was so much fun. I giggled as I positioned them, like leaving clues in a game of awareness. Would the couple coming down the path notice?
Perhaps the stones will quietly call out, and find a new home…
——-
It’s easy to hold on too long: to objects, ideas, emotions…complacency in relationships…the habits that we confuse with our identity.
We hold on for security…of course we do! Our hearts are tender. We want to be safe.
But over-emphasizing safety can do harm, choking us like a plant that’s over-pruned.
——-
I call my walk with the stones an “intuitive ritual.” Intuitive rituals have intention, but aren’t planned. They begin with action, then reveal themselves as they happen.
I love intuitive rituals because they can be playful, even irreverent.
They empower us to infuse life with meaning in a way that resonates with our own heart.
——-
You are the steward of your own growth and wellbeing.
It’s up to you to discern the balance between security and growth that you experience.
What about your life is calling for a ritual?
What about YOU deserves to be infused with sacred acknowledgement?
What is getting in the way?
Our Relationship to Our Belongings
What our things -- and the absence of them -- can reveal about who we are and how we love.
My sister Mary passed away about a month ago. Among her many gifts was an ability to create beautiful, cozy spaces. Mary filled her home with place-making flourishes: original paintings, ceramics, photographs, whimsical artifacts, and antiques.
Each item felt both earthy and refined, each room a functional, nourishing reprieve.
Mary’s relationship to “things” was almost alchemical. She chose and arranged objects in a way that soothed the busy mind and evoked the creative heart.
Walking through her house, it seemed you were witnessing the sweet, evocative, penetrating expansiveness of my sister’s inner world.
——-
When I was a visual artist, I was inspired by the forgotten objects I found in the sheds and outbuildings of my childhood home.
I thought these “found compositions” revealed the inner world of my father, with whom I was not close. These are the things he needed and cared for. This is how his mind organized and placed them.
When he died in 1999, the objects gradually collected dust and faded. But they remained exactly where he last touched them, like a personal Pompeii.
——-
I recently sold or donated nearly everything I own. I’m leaving soon to work remotely, beginning my “Troubadour Year.”
Letting go of my things has been a meditation on identity. What happens to me if I don’t own this book, table, or memento? Will I become less?
Do they belong to me, or do I belong to them?
As the process continued, I felt a need for fewer objects. Much of what I surrounded myself with represented people, places, and experiences I cherish. I realized that feeling connected to these cherished parts of my life is more about finding belonging with myself, not within my belongings.
Recognizing this has been a great blessing.
——-
Don’t get me wrong, I love things.
I’ll stay in many beautiful homes adorned with lovely objects this year. I’m bringing photos of my daughters, my guitar, a few stones from my travels, and some books.
I’m also bringing a ceramic figurine my sisters Mary and Julie made in Mary’s final year. It depicts a young me in a short shorts, cowboy boots, and a wide-brimmed hat. It reminds me of what it was like to feel shamelessly lovable before I became self conscious as an adolescent.
As i’ve let go of my things, I see I’ve rediscovered this experience of unconditional love. The difference is that now I consciously offer it to myself.
That’s a good place to start a new journey.
Travel gently, friends ~
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