Working Towards Our Purpose

Welcome to episode 72 of Working towards

our purpose. Thank you for being here. In today's episode,

we are going to talk about the feeling of running out of time

and what to do about it. So,

yeah, before we get into today's episode, we are going to

do our normal check in. So take a moment to

see how you're feeling today. Check in with yourself, your body. I'm going

to do the same.

Yeah, for me, I'm feeling pretty

inspired today. Pretty. Pretty good,

pretty motivated, working on some cool things,

feeling grateful for that.

Also, I hit 100 subscribers on YouTube, which is

exciting as of recording this. So thank you to

those of you out there who subscribed on YouTube to working towards our purpose. I

really appreciate it. Yeah, that's a nice little

milestone. So, like, to take a second to

appreciate that and feel that. Um. Cause, yeah,

YouTube growth seems so slow sometimes and,

and yeah, it's. It's nice to, to get to, you know, a big

number, I guess, a hundred. So, you know, one step closer

to getting monetized at some point. But. But yeah,

appreciating. Appreciating that. A hundred. So. So thank you.

But. But yeah, that kind of kind of goes in with today's episode of talking

about, like, running out of time or feeling like you don't have enough time. Um,

I think it's sort of a feeling that we can all

empathize with. Um, whether it's like,

I don't know, you're. You're at work and, and you feel like you don't have

enough time to finish something or. I

certainly remember it like in school a lot, like having

projects and like homework and I would always save

projects and homeworks to the last minute and I would always think that I didn't

have enough time. And yeah,

it's just, just the idea of time and like, how, how it

seems like it's this impending force on us all the time, but it doesn't,

doesn't have to be. So I want to like, break down a little bit and

talk about it and then talk about how we can have a couple different

strategies to, to not feel like we're running out of time.

Because I think it's really important to not feel like that. And

as I was just talking now, I didn't plan on sharing this, but I remember

a story from. I was in college

and me and my friend had this essay due

and we literally waited until the night before to do it

and I thought that I wasn't going to be able to do

it. It was for this class that, like, was. I

forget what they call them. The one that's, like, not part of your curriculum,

but whatever. Anyways, it was just, like, a class that we didn't really care about.

And we had to do this whole entire essay. And it

was. I don't know, it was probably like 9 o' clock at night, and we

hadn't even started yet. And I remember feeling like we

were never gonna finish it and just feeling, like, out of

control, you know, like there's nothing I can do about it.

And we were in the library kind of talking about it, and this random

person came up to us, and she was like, hey, I heard you guys talking

about essays that, like, you can't finish. I'm an English

major. Like, let me help you write a plan. And we were

like, okay. And so she literally, like, outlined the

essays for us. Like, we told her what we wanted to be about and whatever,

and she outlined them for both of us. And then we

wrote the entire paper and finished it. And I remember. I want to say I

got an A on it, but I might be, like, romanticizing the story, but I

did, like, well on it. And, yeah, it was just

like, that's a perfect example of from one moment, feeling like I'm out of

time and there's no way I can finish this thing. And then the next

moment, I'm like, oh, I can do this. So I think that's what I'm really

trying to get at is, like, it's a mindset. Like, the feeling of running out

of time is your mindset. And I know I'll

probably get a little bit of pushback on that because time is a physical

thing, but let's expand our minds

for a minute and go with me on this episode.

So, yeah, last Friday. This idea for the

podcast came last Friday because I was up really late

and I woke up really late. And I don't know if you've felt this

before, but when I get up late, I trick

myself into thinking I've ruined my day already,

which is silly. But I get up really early,

so I like to get work done and like to read. I have a routine,

but if I get up late, I'm automatically. I feel like I'm behind,

and I start to stress myself out, and I'm like, oh, I gotta skip this.

I can't read today. I can't do this. And it usually sets me

up for a pretty bad day because I skip all of the stuff in the

morning that I do to position myself to have A good day.

So usually, like, when I'm waking up

late, I have this I'm out of time feeling. And

so last Friday I went through this. I played that out in my head. I

thought I was running out of time. And then what ended up happening was I

was completely distracted and, like,

not able to get anything done all day long. And

now I'm thinking about it and I was like, wow, if I took an hour

to do the stuff that I do to get my mind right, I

probably would have gotten something done that day instead of wasting the whole day being

distracted and, like, in my head and, you know, talking

down to myself and being mean to myself. So it's interesting

how this, like, feeling of running out of time can lead to

that. And it's sort of an illusion because,

you know, it's not like I Woke up at 5pm in the afternoon. I probably

woke up at like 9. And

you know that I had so much of the day to get something done

that it's like I trick myself into thinking, like, the

whole day is gone already. So that's one

thing. One feeling of running out of time could be like, in your day,

like, maybe you only have an hour to do something and you think it's not

enough time, and then you spend the whole hour worrying that you're not going to

get it done. And then you end up using that whole hour and it's gone.

But there's another sort of time that you can think about.

I know for me, for a little bit of time, I felt like

I wasn't in bands in high school and I, like, wasn't playing music when I

was super young. So I thought that it was too late for me. I

couldn't play music, I couldn't make music. It was just something that I had to

do for fun and I couldn't play with other people.

And I think a lot of people do that with hobbies or whatever it may

be, you think you're too old to do something or you think that time

has passed. And maybe for some things with

physical capabilities, like sports, maybe that

maybe. Maybe there's an argument there, but

it's never too late to do something. I know that's so cliched

to say, but I do think that that's true. And

a good example of this is I went to an open mic night

last night and there's people of all ages playing and

there was this group of older men

who like, like, liven the place up with their

three songs. And, like, it was so cool to See them, like,

out there playing, like, having fun, like,

talking to the audience. Like, they looked like they were pros, and

not that they weren't, but it was cool to see them, like, go out there

and do that, you know, Because I think a lot of people their age could

talk themselves out of that and be like, I'm too old. Nobody's going to want

to watch me play music. I remember I used to work with a guy who

would say that he loved playing music, and he

would literally tell me, like, oh, I'm too old to play music. Nobody wants to

see me play music. So, yeah, just the differences of

mindsets, of one stopping yourself from doing things that you

want, and the other one just allowing yourself to do it,

and no matter what age, no matter what time. So those are the two different

types of running out of times I think I see. And

yeah, I don't think I need to talk too much about, like, the feeling of

running out of time, because I think we're all, like, super familiar with that. So

I want to get right into, like, three things that I have to

help you not feel like you're running out of time. And the

first one is being mindful. And

again, a pretty overused word right now. I'm

sure everybody's sick of hearing the word mindfulness, but, uh,

it is true. Like, mindfulness does really help with this feeling. And

I wanted to take a second to describe mindfulness. And the book I'm reading right

now has a definition of mindfulness. Um, same book I I

referenced last episode. It's Resilient by Rick Hanson.

I'll leave a link again. But his definition of

mindfulness is this. Mindfulness is the key to

regulating your attention so that you get the most out of beneficial

experiences while limiting the impact of stressful, harmful

ones in it enables you to recognize where your

attention has gone. And I feel like that's a pretty good

definition of what being mindful is. It's

being present in the situation and not, like, thinking too

much about things that have happened or things in the future.

Because when you're feeling like you're running out of time, you're usually

forward thinking. You're thinking, I have to have

this thing done in an hour, and I'm never going to have it done in

an hour. But that sort of gets you caught in this

loop of thinking about that

thing, that impending hour coming towards you instead

of just stopping and being like, okay, I have time right

now to do this thing, to do this project that I can work on.

Let Me, just sit down and do it, even if I can't finish it, you

know, at least I'll get started on it. And for me, so many times I've

done that where I've felt like I was running out

of time. And then I was like, okay, just. Just start and see where you

can go. And usually I'll surprise myself and I'll get

more done than I thought. I'll be more productive than I thought. And

it's. Yeah, it's just. It's interesting to sort of

observe time like that. Like. Like in one mindset, the

hour can go by in a second, and in a different mindset, the hour can

feel like an hour or even feel longer than an hour.

So being mindful, I think, can really

help with this feeling. And, you know, so many

things you could try to do to be mindful. Breathing

you can. I don't know. I think

for me, it's sort of just slowing down and

noticing certain things, like

visual things. I think that happens to me a lot. If I'm, like, walking and

I see something and I recognize the

beauty in something, it makes me kind of pull back into the present

moment. But, yeah, just kind of

thinking about how you can be mindful in

everyday life, and it doesn't have to be this,

like, grand thing. You don't have to, like, go to

school and be a monk to be mindful. Like, you can be

mindful every day, and you can sort of take little

moments, like something that I heard that was helpful

for. I think it might have been in this book to just set, like, an

alarm on your phone, like, randomly throughout the day, and

to just have a notification to say, hey, be mindful right now. And you could

take a second and just, like, slow down, take a deep breath and

sort of just reshift your current mindset and to think

about, like, how you can come back to the present moment

and be like, okay, what. What do I need to do right this second? Future

doesn't matter. Past doesn't matter. Like, what can I do right this second? Um,

so. So, yeah, I don't know if that's. That's helpful. But

being mindful, I think, can be really helpful for avoiding this

feeling of running out of time. Because when you're being present,

you're not thinking about, like, oh, no, in an hour I have to be doing

something else. You're just thinking, okay, right now I'm working on this

project. I'm writing this book, I'm writing this song, you

know, whatever it is that you're doing, you can focus on doing that thing.

And then the second thing that I think can help with this

feeling of running out of time and shaking it is

having some patience. And that's another one

that, you know, probably isn't like

something that you want to hear. It's not like a cheat code or. Or

whatever. It's like practicing. Having patience is hard.

And something that reminded me that I need to have patience

is this. This

guitar player, singer, songwriter on social media that maybe you've seen,

he sort of blew up. Hudson Freeman. It's the if you

know me song. It's like that guitar lick with the huge bend.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, it doesn't matter. But he sort of

blew up. And it sort of seems, from the outside, from my perspective, it

seems like, you know, this guy just had this one thing blow

up, and now he's, like, touring and, like, John Mayer, like,

was trying to cover his song and, like, you know, huge all over the place.

And it seems like he just, like, wrote this thing and then it blew

up, and now he's, like, touring and everything. But it wasn't like that.

And I was like, I probably shouldn't have done this, but I was, like,

scrolling through his timeline and you can scroll

back to see where he only had a couple hundred. A thousand

views on his videos. And he was actually posting the same

song with hundreds of views. And I found it really

interesting because it wasn't that he posted this one

thing and it blew up. He tried again and again and again and again and

again. And then eventually he had, like, the right

video. He was in, like, a cornfield somewhere, and, like, the sky looked cool

and, like, for some reason, it blew up. And

also, you know, he's been making music for a while, too. Like, you can go

online and see that he's been making music for a minute. And

it's. It just makes me think of this idea of that, like, we

see stuff on social media and we think everything's instantaneous. We think, like,

people blowing up on YouTube is, like, overnight. And we think

just because somebody's video went viral that they just started making music,

but they've been working at it forever, and it just so happened

to catch on. And you have to have patience in order

for that to happen. Like, you can't. You can't just write one thing, put it

out there, and expect it to, like, blow up and then give up when it

doesn't. Because, like, that's not how things work. Even Though it

seems like that's how things work because we're in a. Faces are on social

media all day long and that's what kind of it looks like. But if

you dive a little deeper, that's not. It doesn't, it doesn't work like that.

And yeah, even if it does, it doesn't

really matter. I think having patience is like the key to anything.

And then it also reminds me of this artist,

Ross, who is a rapper producer.

He is pretty popular right now, if you haven't heard of him.

He's, you know, super popular and he's been

an independent artist. He's like never signed to a major label or anything.

And his story always kind of inspires me. He wrote a book that

I read and he literally produced his own

songs, like made the beats, did the songs, put them out.

And he did it for like 10 years with nothing,

like nobody. No attention, no

popularity. And then he finally started to gain traction and become

better. But he had this like, self belief and he had patience.

He put in his time. He, like, he works. And

there's something to that too. Like, of course there's a balance,

you know, but having patience and

sticking with it anyways, I think is, is really something that I'm learning

kind of the hard way. I think, you know, five,

six months ago when I started doing this podcast again full time

and the YouTube, I thought like, in six months I'm like, cool, in six months

I'll have 500 subscribers and I could monetize and you know, all that.

And it's good to have aspirations, you know, but to have

patience is also necessary. And yeah, I'm,

I'm kind of learning that every day. Patience, patience

is, is super helpful and not feeling like you're in the

wrong place or like you don't have enough time left.

So, so yeah, my mindset now on like YouTube, it's like, I know it's going

to take a long time, that that's how I see the patients. Like, I know

it's going to take a while. If it takes shorter, that's

awesome. That's. That's even better. But I know that I'm going to do

this. I'm going to have to do it for a while and I have to

be patient with it. And yeah, so

I think that's enough on patience, but I think you get what I'm saying. I

look at it as I need to have patience now

and it's going to take a while, and if it doesn't take a while,

then that's just a bonus. So having patience, I think is

helpful for not feeling like you're running out of time, because you're setting

your expectation for it's going to take a long time. So

therefore you're not running out of time. Um, and then,

you know, the last thing, the third thing that I think can be helpful for

this idea of running out of time. And this one's going to be the one

that is the most hardest to believe. But

it's in. I got this idea from the book the Big Leap by Gay

Hendricks. And he has this concept called Einstein time

that he introduces to the reader. And

basically to really simplify

what he's saying about it, he's basically saying that time

is basically like how you feel about it. Like, if you feel you

don't have enough time, you're not going to have enough time. But if you feel

you have enough time, then you will have enough time. And

it's very much molded based off of your mindset

around time. And the book does a better job of explaining it.

But when I first read that, I really resonated with that because, you

know, like how I alluded to earlier, like, you can have one hour of

time take a second, or you can have it take

an hour or feel like more than an hour. So time really does.

It really is affected by how we feel about it. So

with that in mind, we can sort of

adjust our mindset to not feel like we're running out of time.

And it's going to take work. It takes mindfulness, it takes patience,

it takes getting your mind right. But I feel like

it's doable, it's possible. Like, it's possible to wake

up late on a morning and feel

like you're running out of time and take a minute and center yourself and

do whatever you need to do to get back to the present moment and

readjust your mindset, to not feel like you're running out of time and

to then take the day and be super productive and get

everything done that you needed to get done. And yeah,

that's possible, you know, so I think I just wanted to, like,

talk about that concept because it's really

intriguing to me and, you know, I hope to learn more about it

and to have more trials and tests with it because, you

know, I'm sure it's going to happen to me again. I'm sure I'm going to

wake up late and be like, ah, I'm out of time.

But, you know, I think these concepts are

helpful for us to get done what we want to get done.

And lastly, it's never too late to do anything. So

if there's something out there that you want to do and you think you're too

old, I challenge you to

think about it in a different way and to think about how you can do

that thing. Maybe not fully, but in some part

I think you can. So, yeah,

little encouragement for going and doing the thing that you want to do. But

I'll stop rambling now, and hopefully this was helpful.

Thank you as always for listening. I appreciate you, and

I will see you on another episode real soon. Take care.