an abundant relationship towards time
on realizing that my bad mood was caused by a scarcity-mindset towards time, and how to feel abundant
I was in a particularly un-absorptive, un-flowing mood this week. perhaps I could blame it on the full moon, on the pace of running my first small group-based audio course (which has been really wonderful, but also a daily deadline of attentive nurturing and content creation), on having a lot of creative work and half-formed ideas constipated in my inner channels, or, not having enough energy to give to my art — not enough spaciousness for my muse to stretch out in long beds of time and space.
I think it’s that very last reason. I think it’s my relationship with time which made me unhappy this week, because I had so much to do, and I was focused on being “productive” and “efficient,” rather than on pleasure of the process, on the bliss of each moment.
my relationship with time kept me in a scarcity mindset — I felt short on time, and this feeling of lack permeated into the rest of my day.
I was rationing time like cubes of sugar, using it for this or that purpose. but to be totally in the zone, in a state of flow is to know no sense of time — it is for time to stretch out like infinite taffy, to allow my creative being the pleasure of a full body stretch, not worried about hitting a wall.
what would it feel like to have an abundance-mindset towards time?
having long windows of uninterrupted time, and relishing them by…
allowing myself to get lost in an activity, and losing count of time — to enter into deep time, which I wrote about a few weeks ago.
not looking at clocks all the time and calculating how I’ll spend my time
being totally present - in the moment, in the flow - during an activity
forgetting all to-do lists, and only doing what I feel like doing
fulfilling my external obligations by knowing my pace, and giving myself plenty of leeway (of windowed time) to fulfill them (days in advance)
we are trained to look at time in such a capitalist, consumerist way — time is money, time needs to be tracked and measured. I propose that there is a middle way. I track everything work-related that I do, but I don’t plan how long it will take me to do something. I think time is not an object to be rationed. it’s much more magical and elusive than that — it’s more like a magical animal, or a wind-spirit of some sorts. the question is: how do we live with it?