In this episode, we're gonna be talking about time. I'm gonna share a couple of tools and techniques so that you can start playing with how you're relating to time, so it stops feeling like you never have enough of it to having really expansive, luxurious amounts of time to always, and I mean, always do the things that matter to you. You ready? Let's do it. 

Hello, you are listening to The Love Your Life as a Performer podcast. I'm Kelli Youngman and I am The Life Coach for Performers. I help actors, singers, and dancers love themselves and their lives way more so keep listening to learn how you can love your life, both on and off the stage.

Hello and welcome back to episode 36 of the Love Your Life as a Performer Podcast Today I just wanna jump right in and I wanna talk about time, and I wanna talk about it in terms of like, Time management and our relationship to time and how we are navigating it or experiencing it on a day-to-day basis.
And then I also wanna zoom out and talk about it from the lens and perspective of how we relate to our career in terms of our life experience, because I also think that from like the zoomed out perspective, there's a lot of stories that we tell ourselves about age and where we should be, or if we're behind, or if we haven't accomplished X, Y, and Z by the time we're blank.

Right? I think there's a lot of pressure sometimes in our career path or perceived pressure to accomplish certain things by a certain age, so we can then dot, dot, dot, get on and have the next chapter of our life. And especially like, I'm just thinking about myself as a woman, but also just in general when we wanna have families or, and maybe you don't, but you know, I think there's like all of these other factors that we sometimes take into account and our wellness and yeah, I just think there's always this perception that like, you can only be like, I don't know how many times you, I've heard people say that you can only be a performer for so long, or you can only be a professional dancer for so long. I'm doing lots of air quotes right now if you could see me, but it's like, yeah, I have to, I have to do this for X amount of time and then, you know, if X, Y, and Z hasn't happened, Like, I just gotta give up and move on because I can't do this forever.

Right. And really all of that comes back to like, how do you create a career that feels sustainable, that allows you to feel like you're not putting your life on hold? Right. And like, honestly, that's why I am so freaking passionate about coaching and supporting performers in this way, because truly it doesn't have to be an option anymore.
Right? It doesn't have to be this or that. And you get to create whatever you want your life to look like right here, right now. Okay. And so I'm already getting a little spicy, but, so yeah, I wanna talk about time today, and we're gonna talk about it, like I said, through a couple different lenses, but I hope that.

This episode serves as a reminder that just like anything else in life, how you experience your time comes from your thoughts. How you experience the timeline of your career comes from your thoughts, literally. Your entire life experience is coming from your thoughts and your perception and your perspective, which is why coaching is like literally the most invaluable thing in the world because it just gives you the space to question and make new choices and start practicing new thoughts.
A little bit of a side tangent is like one of my clients was sharing how like, the impact of just adopting one new thought was so major for them. And I talked about that a little bit I guess last week on like core beliefs and what you are, you know, choosing to believe about yourself on the regular right.

That really affects and impacts and indicates how you're gonna show. How you're gonna treat yourself, how you're gonna relate to others in life in general, right? One freaking thought can change that, and so, Yeah, this episode is gonna help you shift your, your mind and your thoughts around time, so that time gets to feel really luxurious and spacious.

And so the first thing I wanna say, I think, is that, you know, as humans, we created a measurement for time, seconds, minutes, um, hours, right? Like weeks. All these measurements that we created are human. Right. They're human. They're like very linear. I want you to be willing to consider that time is not linear and there's actually a lot of quantum physics that describes and talks about like how time actually exists.
And actually one of my favorite books. That talks about this in depth is called Happy Pocket Full of Money, and I actually have a book list. If you go to kelliyoungmanwellness.com/books, you can get that list there and it's on the list. But in that book, David, oh my gosh, David Cameron Gikandi. The author goes into depth explaining this concept in a very simple, clear way.

I'm gonna do my best to summarize it now, but I highly recommend that you read the book, and honestly, you could do a quick freaking Google search and find a lot of this too, but it's this idea that everything exists. At once, right? Time is non-linear and very much like the movie, everything Everywhere, all at once.

There's different universes happening. There's different timelines. There's different possibilities. All in existence and the choices we make, the way we are thinking and expecting, and you know. Showing up and, and visualizing also has a huge impact on how we experience time. Now, the amount of consciousness.
We have also impacts how we experience time. Think about when like, you are so fucking stressed, right? Like you're overwhelmed, you're stressed. It feels like a million things are happening at once. And like in those moments, our consciousness is not usually in the expansive state of like taking it all in, right? We're like focused on like, I gotta get here, I gotta do this, I gotta do this. Like we got a long to-do list and it feels like there's never enough time. And our consciousness is like closed and like, kind of like constricted. And it's usually when we're like very hyper-focused on solving the thing that's right here. Right? We're not in the like, Connectedness to the universe when we're stressed out and overwhelmed. Right? And that's when it feels like, it's like, holy shit, how did the whole day fly by? I didn't get anything done and I have so much to do because we're in like that vibration, right? On the other hand, when we're, when we are like really connected to self and to source and our vibration is open and we feel spacious. Even when when we have a to-do list or things to accomplish, it feels like we get to move through them in like such a silky, luxurious way. Cause you're like, yeah, I got everything I need. I'm gonna get to that thing and I'm gonna take a nice deep breath. I'm gonna enjoy this coffee. I'm gonna be present for this moment, and the next, and the next. And then it feels like this. Like ooey, gooey, delicious. Again, just like so spacious in the experience of time. Right. And it's like, ah, it's so nice to have, it's so nice to have a day off and downtime to just do nothing. And that day feels like, just like hours longer, right? And so our consciousness. Also shapes how we get to show up and experience our time.

And so when we think about our thoughts and how our thoughts impact and affect how we feel and how we show up and how we experience time, it literally could be the difference between being in the thought, feeling, action cycle of like, oh my God, I have so much to do in so little time. Right? Like we've all had that thought.
We've all been in the head space and you're like, what is happening? Like there's no way I can get this all done. Right? That feeling, I want you to just even bring it up in your body. Now think about when you are running around and you're like, oh my God, I have so much to do. I know for me it is like, That's my brain, like short circuits, and I'm like, oh my God. Like, I don't know what I need to just sit down and stop moving because like, I, I can't, I'm like drowning. I have too much to do. Right. Like it's the overwhelm, right. Think about how you engage with your calendar and your commitments when it feels like you're behind. You have too much to do, you're never gonna get it done right?

Like those thoughts shape how you feel and then how you move through the world. Like I often say to my clients, like, imagine you're picturing yourself on a movie screen being the version of you that has not, like, that doesn't have enough time, okay. Versus the, you. That is like cool as a cucumber and they have lots of things to do, but they're like, I have a full day ahead of me. I have a full day ahead of me. I have a full week. How do I wanna support myself through this? Like even that in itself is such a different thought, right? I always tell my clients too, like a question is always a thought first. So imagine if your thought was like, I have a full schedule and I'm going to support myself through it.

Like that feels, at least for me, vastly different than like, I have so much to fucking do and I can't catch a break. Like just again, bring, like bring your attention to that thought. I have a full schedule and I know exactly how to support myself. I'm going to support myself through it. Notice how that feels in your body. Notice where it feels in your body. Notice what it's bringing up for you. I mean, just thinking that thought. Ha, like in my body feels like so relaxed. It's like my body finally takes a nice big sigh. It's like, oh yeah, I have a full calendar and I know exactly how to support myself and no matter what, I'm gonna keep supporting myself through it all, and I have plenty of time to get everything I need done.

It's so interesting when we think about time and our calendars and our commitments. I think sometimes it's fun to really just go back to the simplicity of like a time audit, right? If you haven't done this before, I highly recommend it because sometimes it's like we're in the thought of like, oh my gosh, I have so much to do.
But then like we spend, and I'm not calling anyone out here, I'm calling myself out of anything, but we spend like three hours watching Netflix and. Another hour or two every day scrolling, and then it's like, oh my gosh, I have so much to do. And listen, there's no shade in doing those activities, especially if you're choosing to do them with intention, but like not from this space of like, oh my God, I don't know where the time is going. Right. It's very different to say like, I'm choosing to freaking scroll on my phone right now, and I love how I'm using my time, versus like being like almost surprised or caught off guard when you're like, How the hell did I do that? Again, I have no time to get this done.

And the interesting thing is honestly, things will take as long as we give ourselves. I mean, even if we think back to like school, right? And some of you might still be in school or in college, right? But it, I don't know about you, but for me, I was always the student that was like in. The study lounge till like 5:00 AM the night before paper was due, because I was always just like, oh yeah, I'll do it later. I'll do it later, I'll do it later. And then I just gave myself like no other option than to like stay up late and do it at the very last second. Even though like I had the assignment for like, I don't know, weeks, months, like I knew ahead of time at the start of the freaking semester that it was gonna happen.
Right. But it's. It's just interesting that if we give ourselves like the whole semester to do it, or the whole week to do it, or the whole three weeks to get the paper done, if we give ourselves three weeks, we'll take every single freaking minute, whether it's a paper, whether it's grocery shopping, whether it's cleaning our apartments, right, like we'll give ourselves as much time as we do. 

Right. So going back to what I was talking about, I want you to think about doing a time audit. Okay. And I remember when my coach had me do this, it was, like I said, just very profound and useful to get accurate with how I was using my time, how I was allotting my time, and how long I was actually giving myself to do things right.
If we go to the simplicity of the math, 24 hours in a day, seven days a week, that's 168 hours in a week. Okay? And if you are sleeping, I don't know, eight hours, Hopefully at least eight hours every night. Right? Then that's 16 hours a day, 16 waking hours a day. Wait, am I doing the math right? 16 plus eight. Yep. It's 24. If you're, if you have 16 hours a day times seven days a week, that's 112 hours, right? If you take out the sleep, And then you account for the eating and the bathing and all of the other like necessity human activities that you have to do, like going to the bathroom or making your food, right. But like you just wanna start tracking this and you can do it for a week and just write it down, right? Like literally track your time and see where is my time going. Because most of the time we don't actually have a time shortage problem. We have a. What's the word? Time management problem, right? It's how we're managing our time.
It's how we're spending our time. And so the time audit, like I said, like literally imagine like you're just writing, okay. From this time to this time, I scrolled on my phone from this time to this time. I sat at my computer from this time, like, you just wanna keep track. Okay. That's one exercise you can just do to get a baseline and a starting place for like, oh, let me just show my brain.
I actually have way more time than I think I do. Okay. So that's one exercise. The other thing that I wanna offer is that, like I said, things will take as long as you give them an exercise. That was really useful for me and my time management, which honestly, if I'm being real, I am ready to check back into, because I love this exercise is like, I think they, the, the official name is called the Pomodoro Technique.
Okay. And actually, I can't remember now. I feel like I've talked about this on the podcast, but if I have. Here's another refresher. It's like literally setting a timer for like 30 minutes and being like, I'm gonna give myself 30 minutes to, to do this task. Whether it's cleaning your bathroom or tidying the kitchen and doing some dishes, or doing the laundry, whatever it is, right?
But you give yourself a set amount of time, and then if the timer goes off and you need more time, then you give yourself extra. I know for me, like in my business, this was really helpful. When I was like writing emails or writing a post, I could just freaking write and think and edit for in the beginning like hours, right?
Until I was like, wait a second, I don't need to spend an hour writing a freaking post. I can spend. 20 minutes or 30 minutes and you know, what are the thoughts I need to think in order to do that? I mean, honestly, let's be real. It's the same thing with self tapes, right? When you're like, okay, I'm gonna give myself 30 minutes to do this tape, 20 minutes to do this tape, and I'm gonna give myself an opportunity to do it X amount of times, and then I'm gonna like be done with it.
Right. But in order to do that, you have to have the thoughts and beliefs that give you the access to that goal. Right? So let me talk about emails for a second just because I think it's, I think it's useful sometimes to hear non-performing analogies just so your brain can like grasp onto it sometimes, you know, when we are very committed to what it feels like to be a performer, sometimes we don't wanna let go as much.
And so I know for me, when I'm writing an email, it's like I have to have the core beliefs of like, I know what I'm saying. I know that this will be useful for one person no matter what I say. I'm gonna have more to say tomorrow. So like this is just one post and it, it gets to be as perfect as I let it be.
Right. And maybe it's even allowing that there's no perfection in a post. Like I just get to share what's useful today. Right. And so the way that might translate is like also then, Deciding ahead of time of like, I'm really talented, I know what I'm doing. When I am myself, my best work comes out. Right?
Like when you're thinking that and then you do your self tape, that's when it's like, oh shit, I got it. Right? And then you have the belief to let it go and move on. But so, That is like just a little baby exercise of like, yeah, once you're starting to track your time, you can really look at, okay, Anne, what are my thoughts about my time?
How can I like, give myself pockets to play in and like shorten the amount of time? Because again, it's always gonna take as much time as we think it's gonna take and. Truly, this was so fun when I started showing myself like, oh, I could clean my bathroom in 30 minutes. Like if I'm not whining about cleaning my bathroom and like, then I'm like being so slow about it, like, right, like I feel like back in the day when I hated cleaning my bathroom.
Like it could take hours just cuz I was like, Ugh. And it felt like it took all day to clean my bathroom. But like I said, only because I was complaining about it, thinking about it and not doing it, and not doing it in a way that felt like it was possible for it to be done in 30 minutes. Right. It's so different now.
So. I hope that's making sense. I'm just trying to show the fact and demonstrate the fact that your thoughts shape how you experience your time and when you're choosing thoughts that support your experience of time and you're giving yourself the thoughts to allow things to take less time. Then even better, right?
That's when you start managing your time so well. Because if your thought and belief is like, oh my god, self tapes are the worst, and they take so much time and there's such a hassle. Right? Like that's like a hundred percent more likely to be your experience when those are your thoughts when you're like, it's easy to do self tapes.
I love doing self tapes. That's when you breeze through 'em, right? And the way you're thinking and feeling also then again gives you that micro macro perspective of zooming out and having more consciousness and presence and just like so much more space. Because of the consciousness you're choosing to have in that moment.
Okay, so those are two different exercises. You can start with a time audit and then using the Pomodoro technique and setting sort of like shorter containers to do things. Things take as long as we give ourselves, and when you're managing your time well and you start proving to yourself that you use your time well and that you can trust yourself with time and that your time's never being wasted.
Then it can feel really freaking good to be relating to your time. Then you start moving out of having a time shortage to plenty of time, enough time, time, abundance to do all of the things you want. You know, as I'm talking, I'm realizing like I'm gonna make a separate podcast and it'll still be a two-parter, and next week I'm gonna talk.
Thoughts about time and being behind in age, because I think this could end up being a much longer podcast. Um, and I think it's useful when they're bite sized and you get to like implement things in, in, in real time. So yeah, I'm making that executive decision right now that there's gonna be a part two and we're gonna talk about age and behind this and all of that in another one.
But I want you to think. Time through the lens of time management, time through having enough time, time through the lens of. My time is being used well, and if it's not, like what are your theories on what needs to change, right? Like what needs to change in your day and how you're showing up to life. When you're thinking and feeling like you never have enough time, right?
Like we wanna move you into time sufficiency, knowing that you can trust yourself to get things done, knowing that you can take 20 minutes to do a self tape and it doesn't have to take your whole entire day, right? Like I think that's like one of the best things some of my clients have created is that now they get to do their tapes in a way that feels really fucking good because.
They're not like taking all of their life away to do them, right? They're allowing it to be fun and just like a part of their day, not the whole entire day. So again, you're gonna track your time. You're gonna start paying attention to like, where is my time going? And I want you to, then you're gonna track it.
And you're gonna look at your thoughts that are creating the scenarios that you're in, right? Like are you telling yourself certain things are gonna take forever? Are you telling yourself things are going to be fast, and then you're like underestimating how much time things take? I know for me, that's a big one.
For some reason, I'm always like, I imagine that I live 30 minutes from everywhere. I live in New York City, and that's not always true, but for some reason when I do the math in my head, I'm always like, oh yeah, it'll take me like 30 minutes to get there. And sometimes I'm late because I'm underestimating the amount of time that something actually takes.
Right? And so then I create the story of like, oh my gosh, I'm always behind, or I'm rushing, or I have to rush to get there. Right? Or I'm late, right? And so I want you to just start becoming aware of what are all of your thoughts about time? What are all of your thoughts about your schedule and your calendar?
What are all of your thoughts when it comes to doing things that feel heavy? Right? And then start playing. Right. Notice how it feels and notice what happens when you start changing your thoughts, right? That's just like the simplicity of what we said earlier of like, I have a full schedule and I'm gonna support myself through it.
All right? No overwhelm necessary. No, like frantic, frazzled, stressed, energy necessary, like that's totally optional. And the last, last, last thought I'll give you is like, and I guess maybe it's more of a question, but it's like when you're about to do something, just give yourself the opportunity to ask yourself, how could I let this be easy?
What if this could take way less time? What would need to happen? What would I need to think and believe for this to take way less time? Then they think it's going too. I think honestly just giving yourself the opportunity to ask and answer that will present you with so many new possibilities that you may not have considered, and it's what's gonna create, again, that time abundance, where you have time to do everything you want just from expanding your consci.
And seeing the ways where you don't have to let your energy leak and you don't have to let your brain spin in drama about something, and instead you could just do it. Right, like no shade, but just like so much love of like we get to make time for the things that we love and the things that are important to us.
And that can happen in your day-to-day. And when you do, that's when you're gonna have like luxurious time in your calendar. Not because you don't have commitments or things that you wanna do, we always are gonna fill our time. Everything we got right? But it's gonna feel so much better knowing that it's there intentionally.
And that again, it's a choice. And your time isn't just slipping away from you, and the luxuriousness is gonna come from. The way you are experiencing your commitments, the way you're experiencing your life, because of the dialed up consciousness and presence and enjoyment of what is getting put on your calendar, because your calendar is not happening to you.
You truly do get to decide how you're utilizing your time and where you're letting it go. Okay. Cheers to taking back creative control and freedom of your calendar, your time, and like really understanding with so much love and neutrality, like where your time is going so that you can make any evaluations or adjustments for next week.
Okay. And then like I promise next week, I will go into part two of this series where we talk a little bit more. You know, thoughts about being behind in your career and age and everything like that. Okay. Enjoy. I can't wait to hear what you discover, and I will meet you back here for another episode. 

Hey, if you enjoyed today's episode, I wanna invite you to get started. Because if this is blowing your mind, imagine the impact of when we actually work together. There are two ways to work with me: privately, one-on-one, or inside of The Paradigm with high quality Community. Either way, you're gonna go to kelliyoungmanwellness.com/launch to book your free Launch Call. We're gonna spend 60 minutes together with you and your unique dream and vision to co-create a plan to get you there. Let's freaking go.