Downtime; Intentionally Having No Intention

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

downtime, people, intuition, tapping, messaging, workshop, ideas, feel, rat race, goal, day, feverishly, deliberate, activating, episode, minutes, long, care, week, meditating

00:00

downtime. It's consciously choosing to do nothing, being non goal focus, and it's going to help you achieve your vision and your goals much faster than if you were constantly pushing yourself. So stay with me for today's episode where we talk about downtime, its impact on the brain and your energy and your results.

00:24

The following was recorded in front of a live studio audience at the studio 21 podcast cafe. This is the United Podcast Network.

00:33

Welcome to rat race reboot. I'm your host, Laura Noel. And as a certified coach and former 27 year military leader, each week, I provide bite sized mindset pivots that will help you reset your mind reawaken your spirit and regain your control. Welcome back for another episode of rat race reboot. I'm excited that you're here listening today I want to talk about something that is really near and dear to my heart. And I was recently teaching a time management class to an organization. And within this organization, they are givers. They care for people at such a high level that they often neglect themselves. And as I was teaching this time management workshop, most of the time management workshop was spent around understanding what is your relationship with time, look at your results and how you're spending it. What would you prefer your relationship with time to be? And how would you rather live your life. And then we started to get into some specific skills and tools that they could use. But as I was conducting this workshop, I was noticing in the chat thread and through messaging that people were just saying, you know, these are the things that I want, I want to talk with friends I haven't talked to because I asked them, if you could reclaim an hour of your time in a day, seven hours in a week, what would you do with that time, because if you can't even imagine it, you're not going to create that space for yourself. So people started putting in the chat, I want to have conversations with friends I haven't talked to in a while. I want to go on a hike. I want to

02:26

just think I literally people, I just want space to think I want to take care of myself and exercise I want to have a meal with my family. Now these weren't things that were, you know, outlandish or crazy. They were just the simple little things in life. And givers who, you know, many of us are givers. The last person we often give to is ourselves. So a lot of people were also typing in the chat. And individually messaging me saying oh my gosh, you're talking about this and I'm crying. I don't know how to take care of myself, I don't give myself any space to do any of these things. So downtime. It's counterintuitive. It's not often a part of our nature, it's certainly not something that we typically value. We value being selfless, we value giving until we have nothing left to give, we value hard work. I can remember being in an organization where, you know, we were working until like two in the morning, it was like all hours all day. And we'd have a little breaks for we're just putting together some events and it was constant work. But even if we didn't have work or we weren't actively doing something, and it was midnight, right? If we looked like we were just sitting, then somebody would get on our case to be doing something. So even if we weren't physically working on something we never had time to recuperate. Because even in the moments of downtime, where we weren't actually doing work to move our goal forward, we were looking like we were busy. That's a horrible state of affairs to be in. And it's gonna have negative consequences on people who operate like that. You're not tapping into your thinking linearly, and you're not tapping into your gifts, your insight, your intuition, your creativity. So I challenge you to start incorporating downtime into your life. And so downtime is being in the moment, being spontaneous. Not having a plan not having a goal chilling on a Sunday morning with no planning and I don't mean being in front of the TV. I mean that can have negative consequences of your all day every day just zoning out in front of a TV that can have long term effects on your brain and your health and it's not good, but I'm talking about allowing your mind to wander unplugging and just being, daydreaming, surrendering to that. So what I asked this group of people to do, and I'm going to ask you to do the same thing is to think about your day, look at your day, how are you spending your time. And that will give you an indication of what your relationship with time is. If time were a friend, how would you describe that friend? Is that friend, never there when you need them? Or is that friend always showing up when you don't need them, you have too much time on your hands and you feel bored. It's time fleeting, is time stressful and frustrated. Look at your calendar, look at how you feel at the end of the day. And that's going to give you an indication on your relationship with time. So now that you know that, don't beat yourself up about it. Now I want you just start to think about how you want your relationship with time to be. It's always there when I need time. It feels effortless. Things are fun. It feels like I have just what I need at just the right time they show up.

06:13

It feels confident it feels calm. That's, you know, how do you want to feel at the end of the day. And then think about if you could recapture and structure your time in such a way where you could find an extra pocket of time that equated to an hour a day? What would you do with that time. And here's where I want you to start plugging into your calendar time blocking it something every day, even if it's just five minutes, 10 minutes, maybe it's something at the end of the week, you save up those hours, and you you know, do something just for yourself. But I want you to plug that that time into your schedule that downtime, hey, I'm not doing anything, I'm not planning anything, I'm shutting off my, I'm putting my out of office reply thing on my email and on my phone. And I'm just going to do what strikes my fancy, maybe it's taking extra time at lunch. Maybe it's you feel like meditating, maybe you feel it's a beautiful day, you're just going to stop what you're doing and go for a walk. So downtime, doesn't have to be this big chunk of time, it could be in the pockets of time that you do have. So I wrote a couple of examples here. Maybe you're waiting it at the doctor's office or something or you're waiting for an appointment. And instead of going through your emails, I'm guilty. I've done this too. Maybe you just mindlessly thumb through a magazine. And whatever inspires you. You just look at it. Maybe it's meditating, maybe it's listening to music, and not doing anything, just letting your mind wander. Maybe it's when you're flying on an airplane instead of feverishly typing. Maybe you carve that time out for yourself or some of that time, if it's a long flight, to decompress, to meditate to maybe watch a movie and laugh. Maybe it's to connect with the people around you. So when we're what we're doing is when we're consciously choosing downtime, I want you to consciously choose it. We're disconnecting from our usual and linear way of thinking. And research has shown that when we disconnect consciously, from goal directed thinking, we're tapping into our intuition. And when we can tap into our intuition and creativity, that's when we often have those aha moments, insight. And we can creatively solve our problems or the challenges that we're coming up against from a neurological perspective downtime when we think of being in this inactive state through daydreaming or ideating. According to David, Dr. David Rock of the neuro Leadership Institute, this is our default neuronal network and it activates activity in the media. This is for the scientific people who want the nerd science which I love. But you're activating the medial temporal lobe, which is for better memory, you're activating the prefrontal cortex, which deals with your sense of self, your identity, your self image, your confidence, your posterior cingulate, which is related to auto biological reflection that it allows for integration. Have you ever gone to a like a workshop or something, something that you're really interested in? I remember going to workshops about marketing and being a digital entrepreneur, and all of the ways that you could market yourself whether it was through Facebook ads, or YouTube or Google or funnels or email campaigns and messaging, and it was so much stuff. And then I would, I'd have all these notes, I was working feverishly, and then it would come back, and I'm like, I'm gonna apply all of the things. Well, I didn't give myself space to ideate, and integrate. So therefore, how much of that stuff really stuck with me? Nothing, it's in a notebook on a shelf. And so we do that to ourselves quite often, where we have all these ideas floating around and what integration is, and when you when you are in this downtime state, and you're not in this way of linear thinking, and goal creation, deliberate goal creation, you're tapping into to unconscious, your unconscious mind, you're tapping into ideas that have a chance to kind of mold and mesh. And from that, you can be creative, you have other ideas that kind of emerge. And that's why I have us doing the the three minutes of,

11:05

of reflection and meditation at the end of every episode, because that's a way for you to disconnect and create downtime in your life. But I challenge you to make this a part of your daily habit. Three minutes, you have time for that poll, a few episodes of rat race reboot and, and download that little three minute meditation, do that every day. Or do that to your own music or just count your breath. But this is how you integrate this is how you can tap in and harness those insights. And there's a lot of studies around consciousness. And this idea of it in the from a neurological perspective, but you know, even from an energetic level, and if you consider the law of attraction, we're simply aligning our energy to what we want. This, I find that I'm in the space right now. And my clients are also in the space. And this just happened recently. I am a doer, I'm a type A over achiever. I know this about myself, so I have to consciously choose to incorporate downtime in my life, otherwise, it won't happen. And I am at the end of a very long semester. I said it numerous times. But I've, you know, most people take six credits every semester, I'm taking 11 in a doctoral program, plus, I'm working, and I love my work, and I love what I'm studying. But it's a lot. It's a huge cognitive load. And I need a break. So I, at the spur of the moment, I decided to go to a girlfriend's house this past Friday night. And we were just a handful of us. We were having some cocktails and some appetizers, and somebody came in with like their makeup brand. And we were just kind of playing around with that and talking. Before I knew it. It was 130 in the morning, and I was saying, oh, tomorrow I had this really long paper I gotta write I need time on Saturday and Sunday. I'm going to work on it now because it's due the following weekend. And then at 130 in the morning, I was like, I'm not writing this paper. So I went home, got to bed at like two in the morning. And the next day, I just followed my intuition. I wanted to do some I know this doesn't sound exciting, but I wanted to organize my closet, and like move summer and winter clothes around and just kind of purge things that weren't fitting anymore, or whatever. And listen to some music and then cook a wonderful meal, I made an awesome dessert. I did that all weekend long, and I felt refreshed. And the next day, I was able to very quickly tap into my creativity and write down the outline of my presentation. It's it's it felt easy and effortless and it was cohesive and it made sense. And what I found when I had my client webinar a couple of days ago, is one of my clients had taken a month off pretty much to take care of her health and and also help with her family and her family was going through some some I can't talk her family was going through some things. And at the end of the month, what she noticed was opportunities, were starting to come to her. And she is capitalizing on those opportunities. And she wasn't reaching for those opportunities and striving for them and chasing after them. She was allowing. She was taking care of herself and in that energy when you're taking care of yourself. You're attracting everything that's in harmony with that, that self care that high vibrational energy. In my case, I was finding joy in connecting with people and in spending time with my husband and in cooking again and just taking care of things that I wanted to take care of in the home. And it's funny because I get so many messages on LinkedIn, I don't have time to comb through them, I'll look at them and see if anything jumps out at me. And oftentimes, there's not. But in the midst of this, when I had that clarity, there are a couple of messages that hopped out at me. And one was an opportunity to teach a workshop. And, and that's the workshop that I just did. It was somebody messaging me and asking me if I could come on board with their team and teach this in this mindset work. And then another was somebody putting in a, a consulting proposal through LinkedIn, I've never seen that before. But I had the wherewithal to look at it and say, hey, yeah, I can, I'd love to get on a call and help you. And now this person and I are working together, I wasn't chasing, I was living my best life, and opportunities were finding their way to me. And that's how your brain works. It's the science and psychology with that. It's also if you want to look at it from a spiritual perspective, to how the law of attraction works, we want to get in a habit of trusting this process, that it's not in being in the rat race that's going to move us farther, faster. It's in the art of allowing, it's in the art of taking care of ourselves. It's in in the spaces where we create diet downtime, and we're deliberate about it, where we can open ourselves up to creative solutions. And we, we listen to our intuition, open that text, open that email. That's interesting, respond to that where you ordinarily wouldn't. So that's what this is about. So I challenge you today, carve some time out for yourself, downtime, nothing that's goal directed, tap into your inner wisdom, be open to the insights that you have, start trusting that intuition. But be deliberate about it. And I want you to time block something every day for the next couple of weeks. I want to know how it's going for you. It doesn't matter. It could be three minutes, it could be 10 minutes, but put something on your calendar every day where you are deliberate about your downtime, because that is going to move you a lot farther, a lot faster. So I hope this has been helpful for you today. And we're going to end today's episode, the way we always do and I want you to start thinking about and building an image of what would you do with all that extra time you create because you're you're thinking not just linearly but you're tapping into your gifts, your creativity.

17:40

So take an inhale with me. And exhale. Take one more deep inhale and exhale. Take a deep inhale and inhale that white, hot light into any areas where you're experiencing tension and tightness. And then exhale, letting those areas just kind of melt away and ask yourself if I had an hour of time extra, just gifted to me a day

18:28

what would I do with that time? How would I live? How would it feel? Would you go on a hike? Would you connect with people you love?

18:50

Would you just use that time to think and to be and to be okay with just sitting? How would that feel? To just bask in the deliciousness of just being without expectation nowhere to go. Nothing to do. Just whatever your heart desires whatever ever your intuition guides you

19:32

would that give you a feeling of freedom in your life to know you could pack up your work at any time and connect with that person or those people you just truly connect with. Maybe it's building relationships with people you have you have yet to know

20:11

Would you feel more calm and ease and flow? Do you feel rejuvenated? Maybe a little more joyful? And now that you're in harmony with that person you really are.

20:38

Are you getting any nudges of inspiration to do something? So I want you to write those little ideas as sources of inspiration. Write them down and act on them. And try this out for the next couple of weeks. Let me know how it goes for you go on to rat race reboot.com. Subscribe if you want to know when our episodes are coming out. And also wherever you listen to your podcasts, leave us a five star review. Leave us some comments, I read those. And also if there's something specific that you would like help with to help you get out of the rat race, I want you to let us know in the comments there as well. And I will incorporate your ideas your wants and desires into another episode so that you get the most value out of this. But remember, everything is created twice, first in your mind, and then in physical form. We'll see you next week.

21:49

The views and opinions expressed by the hosts guests or callers of this program do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the studio 21 podcast cafe, the United Podcast Network, its partners or affiliates.