Leaping into Extra Space and Time!

"Abundance is not something we acquire. It is something we tune into."
—Wayne Dyer

Well here we are, February 29 - it's Leap Day and I've posted 6 months in a row! Two amazing things on a single day. 😉 This day has me thinking about "extra space" and "extra time." What does it mean to have more than enough? When it comes to my calendar and my to-do lists, right now it seems like I really truly can't tell you what extra space and time looks or feels like. I'm always squeezing one more thing in, trying to find one extra hour in the day. And now we have a bonus 24 hours, time that won't be available again until 2028. I love bonus time! Every fall when we set the clocks back and we get an extra hour my husband jokes it's my favorite day of the year. And it is in so many ways. It makes me wonder what it would be like to live as if there were enough or even extra time all of the time. To live in abundance. What is it like to leap into an extra time mindset? ​

As I consider this question, and really try to picture a leap into abundance, I notice the huge disconnect, the yawning expanse between my current time mindset and the perspective that there is ample or even enough time. This feels like quite a shift for me, kind of like the idea of ease from my January blog post. I'm so used to not having enough time or ease for that matter. I'm used to the continual quest for more time, maybe if I get up earlier, or stay up later, or skip breakfast, or cut short my lunch, or build atomic habits, or work harder, or ... my mission is to find the time to do not only what I have on my plate but hopefully even more. If only I could be more efficient!

A few weeks ago I started reading 4,000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman and realized that the issue is not with my efficiency. The issue is with my mission; my mission is not to find more time, instead it's to make choices about what I want to do with my time. Ooh, there it is again, the reality of choice, the thing I don't want to do. And as time passes, both daily and yearly, it becomes more clear that choose I must. To quote Bonnie Raitt's song Nick of Time, "life gets mighty precious when there's less of it to waste." Having an "extra time" mindset is completely dependent on choosing not only how I'm going to spend my limited time but also on my perspective about the spending of that time. It's a both/and, making the initial choice of what I'm doing and then accepting or better yet celebrating the choices I make. 

Although I make choices daily, hourly, even minute-by-minute I have a tendency not to see them as choices; they disguise themselves as "should, have to, ought to's." Time is so precious and yet I often live as if it’s not. I let my judge get the best of me for minutes, and hours, and sometimes days at a time. It feels so easy to go back to the same old thought patterns – those neurons in my brain are wired together and they are firing together. So much so that I have a superhighway paved with self-criticism, doubts, and worries. It’s easy to do because I’m human, we’re human, it’s the soup we are swimming in.
 
And all it takes is a moment, one precious and present moment – it feels uncomfortable to stop and let the peace of just being here sink in. To fully choose to be here, right where I am. It’s uncomfortable like a fish out of water. It’s these precious moments when we are out of the comfort zone, someplace new and yet familiar. It’s a place of aliveness. Here it is again, presence, it's simple and not easy, and it is the key to unlocking abundance. It happens in a moment when we let it, when we fully choose it and live it. Let yourself sink into one moment this week. Just be, feel the rush and strangeness of jumping out of the water, out of your familiar world. It’s okay if you’re back in the soup in the next moment, there’s yet another to come. At least right now, there’s another to come. We can choose to leap and live into abundance, it's just one choice away. Want to hear more about how to leap, let's connect!