Balance & Beyond Podcast

Imagine if you could transform your relationship with time, from a constant struggle, to a harmonious experience ...

In this episode of Balance and Beyond, we promise to teach you how to "bend" and "collapse" time, a revolutionary approach that goes beyond traditional time management. Aimed specifically at ambitious women overwhelmed by busy lives, we dive deep into how our emotional states and attention levels can shift our perception of time. Learn how to make positive moments last longer and stressful moments shorter by maximising the quality and presence in each moment. 

Stress and self-sabotaging behaviours like perfectionism and procrastination are time thieves, but they don't have to be. We explore how our ancient survival mechanisms still impact modern productivity, often making us hyper-focus on time in ways that drain our energy. Understand the physiological and psychological effects of stress, and discover practical strategies to address these issues. By mastering these techniques, you can achieve flow states, increasing your productivity, creativity, and fulfilment. Join us and transform your busy life into one that is both sustainable and deeply enjoyable.

If you’re ready to unlock the best time management strategies to boost productivity, enhance focus and stop procrastination in 2024 register at www.balanceinstitute.com/time

Check us out on YouTube here! https://youtu.be/sUMhd00zmHU?si=WqM0Nr2_WxHD3TbW

Episode Transcript

INTRO: Welcome to Balance and Beyond, the podcast for ambitious women who refuse to accept burnout as the price of success. Here, we’re committed to empowering you with the tools and strategies you need to achieve true balance, where your career, relationships and health all thrive, and where you have the power to define success on your own terms. I honour the space you’ve created for yourself today, so take a breath, and let's dive right in…

Before we jump into today's episode, a quick reminder about our free Mastering Time Masterclass, which is on Friday, the 23rd of August. I'm going to be sharing with you the best time management strategies to boost productivity, enhance focus and stop procrastination in 2024. So if you were trapped in a cycle of busyness, if you're always feeling behind and it's never enough, then come and join us for this amazing free hour where I'm going to be sharing all my strategies. Visit balanceinstitute.com/time to register for free and I'll see you there. Let's get back to the episode. 

It's time to talk about time. We are all time-poor, busy lives, so much on, juggling all the things. But, today, I want to share a new buzzword that I'm seeing float up everywhere, and it's actually one I love. We're not talking about saving time or making time. We're talking about bending it and collapsing it. 

So, on today's episode, I want to share what these terms really mean. And, most importantly, how do you do it? If you're anything like all my clients, they are incredibly overwhelmed, overworked, stressed to their eyeballs, and it's this constant battle to make time, find time, save time, avoid wasting time. 

There is so much focus on the clock, and I get it. I've been in that world of back-to-back meetings from 8am until 6pm, with barely enough time to pee or eat in between. And just this feeling of one after the other, and the other, and you can do this pile of work, adding up and adding up and going, “Oh my God, I've got no time to do it”, and “I've got to get home, and I've got the kids.” 

And if that in any way sounds familiar, I want you to take a really, really deep breath, because I promise you, we all get the same 168 hours a week. So, it's not possible for you to get more time. It is not yet possible to clone yourself, although give Elon Musk some time, and I'm sure he'll try to work it out. 

But, this is where I really encourage you to understand some new things. I call them “buzzwords.” But, I believe that they are a new way for us to look at time that is actually far healthier, and far more productive, and going to unlock a lot more joy in the things we want in life. 

When we're focused on the clock, what happens is you're never actually present, because you're always thinking about the time that you've lost, or wasted, or sucked, and the time that you need in the future. So, the art of bending time is really about getting more out of time than you technically should. 

So, this is where you make time count. The reason this term works is because time is actually incredibly subjective. And you say to me, “Yeah, Jo but, you know, there's 60 seconds in a minute, and 60 minutes in an hour.” But how else could you explain a child spending an hour at a birthday party, and how fast that goes? Versus a woman with a newborn, who won't stop crying, and how painstakingly slow that time goes? 

So, yes, time clocks to a rhythm. However, it's our interpretation of that time, the meaning we make of that time and the emotions that we give it that actually is our relationship to it. So what influences this subjectivity really are a couple of things, and these are really important for you to understand if you're going to learn to bend time. 

No surprise, your emotional state has a really big impact on how you're feeling about time. They’ve proved that when you're in, let's say, a positive or an empowered emotional state, time can actually feel shorter. So, by that I mean parties, holidays, nights out with friends. When you're in this good state, time just goes in a good way. It's like, “Oh my gosh, I can't believe it's over.”

In contrast, some of the more disempowering emotions, like stress, sadness, grief, depression, even shame, really lower our vibration, and they can make time seem really, really long. Now, if you're stressed to your eyeballs, you're saying, “Jo, time doesn't feel really long, like blink and it's gone,” but it's more your... It can make time feel heavy.

 I guess that's another way of putting it. Time can feel really light and, “Oh my gosh, click and it's gone,” like a feather. Versus this, “I am just trudging through every day and I'm trying to save every minute and I'm constantly looking at the clock.” It's a different vibration and a different energy that you're bringing to your relationship with time.

Another element that really impacts your relationship to time is the attention that you're giving a task. So, when you are actively engaged with something, when you're really focused, when you're in the zone, when you're in flow, time will fly. In contrast, when you are distracted and going from thing to thing to thing to thing to thing, the day can still fly, but it feels fragmented. It doesn't feel like you've... fragmented, it doesn't feel like you've achieved anything.

And this is one of the most enduring comments we get from women that come into our world is, “I am run off my feet all day long. I am going from thing to thing, from meeting to meeting, shoving in a load of washing, picking up the kids, doing this thing, doing this thing, and then I slide down on the couch or collapse on the couch or collapse into bed at the end of the day and feel like I achieved nothing.”

Because their attention usually wasn't on the task that they were doing. They were in a meeting, but thinking about the next one. They were doing bedtime but thinking about the email. They had to run their laptop. They were, they were doing their laundry, but they were thinking about the next thing that they had to be doing.

So, you're never actually present in the moment, which makes the day feel really distracting, and that can lead to just this horrible feeling when you get to bed at night that the day has just gone and you achieved nothing, did nothing, and that you weren't actually in it. You were just surviving and sort of operating on this robot-like level of the language people can use is “going through the motions.” Just, “I'm living, I'm surviving, I'm getting through,” and that's okay for a phase or a season of life.  

Many of us that have had newborns that maybe have sleep challenges or settling challenges sometimes you just have to get through, you have to live day by day, but that is not a long-term sustainable strategy or a way to live life. Now, there's one piece I want to emphasize here, and this relates to both emotion and attention, and this is that with stress, the impact it has on your relationship with time. 

Typically, the more stressed we are, the more obsessed we become about time. You find that when you go on holidays or you finally relax your nervous system, you get more back into this state of losing track of time, of not knowing what time it is, of not living by the clock. So, the more stressed you are, the more you're living in this fight or flight. So let me give you a little bit of neuroscience that explains why stress equals obsession with time.

When we are in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, which are our four triggered states. When we go into high stress, you've probably heard about what happens when we go into high stress. You've probably heard about what happens when we get into these states. We feel like these are our only choices. We feel like our very survival is threatened.

What happens in our brain is a huge dump of chemicals, one of which you're very familiar with, and that includes cortisol. There's also adrenaline. There's this impressive cocktail that dumps very quickly.

Now, stress is a biological response to a short-term threat, and it's survival. Lion's coming, tribe's coming, fire's broken out in the cave, “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. We've got to fix it.” We are not programmed to live in stress for the amount of time that we live in it right now. Hence autoimmune disease, all these diseases, they are “dis-ease”, that the body is not meant to live this way. Chronic stress is not normal.

When we are in this chemical dump, when our system is flooded with cortisol, what actually happens is we go back to caveman days, and the reason that we got into these stressful states was our life was in danger. And the reason that we got into these stressful states was our life was in danger. There was a fire, we heard a lion over the rock, the nearby tribe was coming. 

So, part of this chemical response, and what its job is, is to really heighten your focus on the external environment. 80% of your senses now move to your eyes because we've got to keep an eye on what's about to kill us. We have all kinds of blood and adrenaline flow to our extremities because it's preparing us to run. How much more, I guess, evidence do you need that this is a complete survival strategy than, you know, when our boss emails us and we get into fight or flight, we don't need to run. 

We might want to, or punch them, but we don’t. So, we are still living with this body that is biologically wired to run away from the lion or run away from the bear or run away from that tribe that's about to kill us. The modern-day equivalent, because there is no lion, even though it might feel like it. The modern-day equivalent is we become this externally focused.

Now let me go back for a second. When the lion is coming, what happens? I mentioned we go, we become obsessed with our visuals. We also become obsessed with our external environment because we need to know which way is the wind blowing, where is the twig that we might step on? Where is the nearest tree that we can run up? Where is the river? What do we need?

This becomes this giant memory bank of, “Huh. Okay, last time the lion came from the left, there's a tree over to my right. That's probably going to be a better place.” This is all happening subconsciously. This is all happening through your nervous system, to protect you.This is all happening through your amygdala, or your reptilian brain. 

So, this makes sense, right? The fire is coming. Which way is the wind blowing? Our amygdala has this ability to take in a huge amount of cues and sensory responses to keep us alive. Now, if we place this incredibly stressed individual, and we take them from the cave, where the lion out the front is roaring, into an office with fluorescent lights, a laptop and, you know, sitting in a meeting, we have the same external focus. 

And what that translates to, because there is no wind, and there is no lion, it becomes all about, “What's happening around us?” “What is everybody else doing?” “Where is the clock?” “What is our appearance?” So this hyper focus on the clock, we've replaced the lion with time. Hyper focus on every detail. So, yes, great when the lion is coming, not so good when the boss sends us an email and all of this stuff kicks into gear. 

So, you will notice the more stressed you are, the more you're counting time, worried about wasting time, trying to save time, and trying to get time back. This will be the language that you're continuously using, and I really encourage you to ask the question: “What for?” I had a client recently who realized one of her really big triggers is when someone wastes her time, and this is true for many people. It's also a trigger of mine. “How dare you waste my time?” And you ask yourself, “What else are you going to be doing with it?” Interestingly, the answer is probably “more stuff”, because the list never ends, right?

So, what this combination of stress response, hyper-focus on time, and being particularly triggered by wasting time or not making good use of time or not getting a good return on your time shows is that you now have a deep-seated belief and a correlation that your worth is predicated on how much you can do. Obviously, you can do more if you have more time. 

So this is how this reverse equation works: If somebody wastes our time or we're not using our time productively, that means that we're not going to do as much, we can't achieve as much. And if we can't achieve as much, then we're not good enough or we're not worth as much.

So, therefore, this is why we can have these really oversized responses to being in meetings that we shouldn't be in, or somebody wasting our time, or having emails that we don't need to read, because it's directly connected to our self-worth. 

So, me being in this meeting that is a waste of my time makes me feel crap about myself because I could be doing something else more productive. And yes, logically, our brain goes, yes, that's true, but this is a primal, subconscious correlation that is going on. That is driving so much of your behavior.

So, what's robbing you of this time? To recap where we've got to here, there's this obsession with time based on your stress response. Obviously, this dictates your emotional states, and this all correlates to your subjective relationship with time.

So, if we want to teach you to bend it, we want to teach you to collapse and be able to achieve more at once. What we're actually trying to do here is change your relationship to time. We're trying to change your beliefs about time. Now, lastly, before I share with you how to bend time, it's also really important to identify what is robbing you of time. And, yes, stress—no surprise.

But there's also one of my favorite three things I love to talk about that is actually one of the biggest vampires of your time, and they are your three self-sabotage programs that usually come together. This is your perfectionism—huge, huge, huge time suck. People-pleasing—saying yes to everybody else. And procrastination—enough said. So until you learn how to navigate those three, learn how to tame them. 

They, to be honest, are typically losing you more time than you could probably gain by being more productive. So I find it ironic that people are using planners and apps and research tools and doing all these things, saying, right, I've got to be more productive, and yet they're not actually spending any time on the things that are costing them more time. 

So I'll say that again: there's a very good chance that the gains in time or efficiency you could get from dealing with your perfectionism, stopping the procrastination, and stopping people-pleasing, will get you far, far, far, far more time back to spend how you wish than any time management strategy that, in theory, makes you more productive because they're ignoring these giant holes in your bucket.

So let's talk about how to bend time, and, interestingly, it's actually not that hard once you understand those self-sabotage programs and once you understand how to build a new relationship with time.

So I encourage you to think back, just take a moment and think back to when time has flown for you. What's an example? Where maybe it was, you know, you had this super productive work on a report? Were you out with friends? Were you having family time? Were you in nature? Were you at the beach? Were you somewhere on holiday? Where you just clicked your fingers, and time disappeared?

That is how we start to bend time, and the common characteristics of all of those examples I shared are that typically, in those moments, you are 100% present. You are living in the moment; you're not thinking about yesterday, you're not worried about tomorrow, you don't care what comes next. You are fully in the moment—mind, body, and spirit are all there, and this is the key to how to bend time. You could call this a flow state, you could call this Kairos time, which was the name that the ancient Greeks gave it. 

But, when you are in the present moment, this is the best way to bend time, and to get more done in, say, 30 minutes, than you possibly could in three hours. It's counterintuitive because our brain says, so much to do, we can't choose one thing. “Hello, perfectionist!” “Other people have asked me to do things.” “Hello, people-pleaser!” “I don't know where to begin.” “Hello, procrastinator!” 

So you can see how, right off the bat, these three self-sabotage programs are having a really big impact on you. But when you learn to train your brain to stop squirreling and to focus on, all right, this is where I am right now, and that might be dinner with the family. It might be that next email that you need to write. It's that presentation that you need to do. Whatever that thing is.

This is how we make you infinitely more efficient: to get you where you are, to stop the squirreling, the ping-ponging, the thoughts about what’s next, what did I do wrong, and all the emotions, to get yourself in a really empowered emotional state. And this is when you get your brain and your body; they get in alignment, and what you can get done when you are in that state will blow your mind. 

You could call this collapsing time, you could call it bending time, but either way, I have found that this is the key. When you've got a lot on, when you can master this skill, you feel so much more fulfilled, you get so much more done, and you will go to bed at the end of the day being far less exhausted because it's actually conserving energy just to focus on one thing, especially when you stop the "I should be doing this" and "I should be doing that." You're probably spending all day heaping guilt upon yourself, which is exhausting. 

When you give yourself permission to be, "this next 30 minutes, this is what I'm doing. I'm sitting down and I'm doing this thing. "Whatever that is—maybe it's a puzzle, it doesn't matter—I'm doing this thing, you become rejuvenated, you get greater focus, you get greater access to creativity, you get better access to brainwave states that are actually going to help you get the thing done to a higher quality.

All of this, not to mention joy, fulfillment, fun, presence, memories, and this means that a busy life can actually become sustainable, and it can become fulfilling rather than being a crazy drain. So, the next time you have a lot on your plate, the next time you're worried about how you're going to get it all done, I really encourage you to check in and see, “Am I incredibly stressed?”
“What do I need to do to reduce the cortisol in my system, to better regulate my nervous system, and give me the opportunity to now step into flow, to start to bend time, and to make life and time that much more enjoyable?”

OUTRO: Thank you for joining us today on the Balance and Beyond Podcast. We're so glad you carved out this time for yourself. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend who might need to hear this today. And if you're feeling extra generous, leaving us a review on your podcast platform of choice would mean the world. If you’re keen to dive deeper into our world, visit us at www.balanceinstitute.com to discover more about the toolkit that has helped thousands of women avoid burnout and create a life of balance, and beyond. Thanks again for tuning in, and we'll see you next time on the Balance & Beyond Podcast.