Are you hustling or are you flowing?
Are you a time creator or is time creating you?
“There comes a time when the world gets quiet and the only thing left is your own heart. So you’d better learn the sound of it. Otherwise, you’ll never understand what it’s saying.”
― Sarah Dessen, Just Listen
Life is all about the hustle right?
Here’s what we say, announcing it like it’s some sort of badge of honor:
“I’m rising and grinding every day, getting up early and killing it all day long.”
What we are really saying: “I wake up stressed out, and the fear of failure and being poor gets me out of bed and to work. It’s killing me.”
“I work nights, weekends, and I am building my business!”
What we are really saying: “I’m not expanding and implementing my leadership, sales and fundraising skills, so I work every day to make ends meet.”
“I’m sacrificing the things I want to do now to achieve the big accomplishments most people won’t ever achieve.”
What we are really saying: “I’m not creating time for me to nourish myself or focus on things I love to do and have life balance. I wish I had the courage to make time for those things AND still build my business.”
And of course, there is a crowd at the finish line waiting to celebrate you for being the hardest working, most stressed yet successful person to ever live, yes? If so please posts pics for us 🙂
This is how it HAS to be, right? If you want to be successful, this is how you must execute.
How do we know this is so? Because this is what everyone does, right?
Now, if you are having the relationship with time and life balance that YOU WANT, then I love it and please continue to crush it.
However, many people are wanting to shift and improve their relationship with time, so that’s what we are going to do now.
And I must be doing it all wrong because I am a successful, happy and fulfilled Balanced Entrepreneur with more time and money on my hands than ever before.
How have I done it? Training myself to believe I could.
However, I wasn’t always this way. I used to hustle and grind and stress and beat myself up, CONSTANTLY. In prior posts, I wrote about how I built and sold two companies and failed one company. Although I saw success, I was creating from a place of scarcity of time, of fear of failing, feeling guilty when I wasn’t working, wanting to prove my self-worth by the size of my company.
My happiness was measured by my balance sheet.
I would wake up dreading the day, anxious about completing all I had to do, resentful that I wasn’t doing exactly what I wanted, frustrated with myself for not being grateful, and go to bed anxious and unable to fall asleep, thinking about all the things I didn’t accomplish that day.
And it’s not just about being an entrepreneur. It’s all aspects of life, how we perceive time, and how we, as humans, let it affect us.
Are we present with the people we love?
When we are driving or traveling are we enjoying it or are we stressed?
Do you ever feel like life is going in slow motion, or do you feel like it’s passing by too fast?
And where did time come from? It’s simply a word.
Who is this Time person and who invited them into our lives?
What is our relationship with them?
It’s like a boyfriend or girlfriend that we met on a whirlwind night of binge drinking, thought they were one thing, but the next thing we know, it’s a long-term relationship we’re unhappy in, yet afraid to get out of for fear they will turn psycho on us.
As you can see, this relationship with time was given to us:
- By our ancestors
- By the government
- By society
- By our parents
- By schools
- By magazines and the media
Here’s what you need to know about the history of time:
Most of our time units are arbitrary, except for the year, the lunar month and the day, which all have their discovery rooted in observable phenomenon, AKA science.
For example, in the beginning of time creation, we considered a “day” to be when the sun came up to when the sun went down. A month was tracked by the moon, which has clearly observable cycles, and a year was able to be measured as 365 days once humans started tracking the sun instead of the moon alone. The sun has specific days marking the passing of time, known as solstices and equinoxes, and those days became known early on as days of magic or holy days. Civilization revolved around this way of marking time.
Once we had the 365-day year, many cultures began dividing that into 12 30-day periods, coming from the Babylonians, and just had 5 days left over. The tradition of starting a year with January came from the Romans, who named January after the god Janus, who was a two-faced deity facing both the past and the future. A 7-day week was also a human invention. Different cultures tracked their weeks in different increments, 5, 8, 10, etc.
The 7-day week eventually became common because there were seven heavenly bodies visible to the naked eye, and the sky was incredibly important to early civilizations, tracking things, time, weather, and more. Each day represented one of these seven heavenly objects:
- Monday (the Moon)
- Tuesday (Mars, in latin countries: marte)
- Wednesday (Mercury: miércoles)
- Thursday (Jupiter: jueves)
- Friday (Venus: viernes)
- Saturday (Saturn: sábado)
- Sunday (the Sun, domingo, which is a name derived from Dominus, the Lord’s day).
Did you know that animals perceive time differently than humans? Flies perceive the world as moving about 7 times slower than humans, and leatherback sea turtles perceive time about 2.5 times faster than a human does.
The relative perception of time for a species depends on its “critical flicker fusion frequency,” which is the point at which the flashes seem to merge together so that a light source appears constant.
Scientists found that flies could detect light flickering up to four times faster than humans can. Flies avoid being swatted by watching time pass slowly compared to us trying to hit it.
Basically, the smaller an animal is, and the faster its metabolic rate, the slower time passes for them.
So what do you take from this? I took that time is:
- A tool
- An agreement
- A belief
- A blessing
- Powerful
This shows how time and our perception of time has been crafted to help us have meaning and structure in our lives. And this is a beautiful tool. However, let me ask you: Are you creating time or is your perception of time holding you back?
Everywhere we go there are clocks and calendars to remind us that we only have a certain amount of time – and it’s running out! Now this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s just our relationship to time doesn’t always feel good. This is where the limiting beliefs come into play.
Have you ever thought or said these limiting beliefs?
- I don’t have time for that
- I’m too busy
- It’s not worth my time
- Once I accomplish (fill in the blank), I’ll have more time to (fill in the blank)
- I don’t have enough time to get everything that NEEDS to get done done
- There’s not enough time in the day
- Time is running out
Maybe you are thinking you don’t have time to finish this page right now. Are you stuck in this cycle? An unhealthy relationship where time rules you and everything you do?
Did you sign up for this?
How do you get out of this cycle?
How can you change your perception and relationship with time?
You have this feeling that you want to kill time, throw the clock out the window, and it drives you nuts because you want to get rid of time, but at the same time you wish you had more of it. Sick joke, right?
Hold on a moment. Don’t murder time just yet. Like I always say, “I’m not going back to jail for you!”
I am going to help you see how you can train time to be your friend, and have a healthy relationship with it. It’s like training a stray puppy, teaching them, and they become your best friend. Except, in this case, YOU are the misbehaving puppy.
Guess what? It’s not about time. It’s about our relationship and perception of it.
Let’s talk about how to change our perspectives to have a healthy relationship with time. First of all, when we’re clear about what our relationship with time is, and understand what we don’t want it to be, we are able to start creating what we DO want. One of the keys is around the feelings that we want to have.
The key is that we DO have time to do what we love, and it is actually about prioritizing these things.
The key beliefs come around:
- Do we feeling deserving of doing what we want and enjoying our time
- Do we feel we can make money doing what we love
What do you believe? Take a moment to notice if your beliefs feel good or if you are arguing for not having what you want.
You have to go to work, so you do that. But what you really WANT to do is write a book. Maybe you have wanted to write a book for years, but you just keep creating that famous belief, “I don’t have time for that.”
Is that true? You don’t have ANY time?
What do you do in the evenings after work?
Do you scroll social media or dating apps?
Do you watch TV for 4 hours?
Do you have a drink or a joint? (Great for writing by the way)
Maybe it’s something a bit more challenging like getting your Master’s or helping your kids with their homework.
What do you do on Sunday afternoons?
Are you messing around on Facebook and Instagram?
We can create the time to do the things that are important to us. The moment you say “I am going to start writing a book right now, this is very important.” Then you will start making time. You can block off 30 minutes in the evening on Wednesdays, or an hour on the weekend, and sit down in front of the computer and start writing.
I want to share that it took me 10 months to complete my first chapter of my book, and now it takes me a couple hours a week per chapter.
It’s not about creating time that doesn’t exist, it is about allocating the time we have to the things that are important to us! And believing that by doing this we will still have what we want, delivered on time.
When I became financially successful, while at the same time realizing I was unfulfilled, I started looking to personal development courses and focusing on expanding myself. I did many courses such as Landmark, MITT, Sai Maa, and more, which helped me become more present and focused on what was most important to me.
I realized, to me, true success was an equal balance of these areas of life, as outlined previously:
- Time Creation
- Financial wealth
- Physical health
- Mental health
- Relationships
- Living on purpose
It felt challenging to allow all of these aspects into my life initially, however now I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. This was on a foundation of, “I don’t deserve to live like this” and “I will fail if I allow myself to live like this.”
I asked myself, do I prefer to be going the way I was which was focused in 1-2 areas and not making time for the rest, or was I happier building my business or purpose, making time for relationships with people I love, taking care of my body through nutrition and physical activity? The Balanced Entrepreneurship movement came to fruition and I got clarity on how I allowed false beliefs about time and hustling to restrain my life and happiness.
Just because that is what we’ve been told doesn’t mean that is the way it has to be.
I sensed that there had to be a different way to achieve exactly what we wanted by doing what we wanted to do, not what we felt we had to do. I had this feeling that these beliefs were simply agreements that had solidified in society over time.
I looked deeper into where these false beliefs came from, and I read a book called Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Harari. Harari discusses the different revolutions humanity has gone through recently: the Agricultural, the Industrial, and the Technological Revolutions.
What I found was stunning. When we were hunter-gatherers, we actually worked 25-30 hours per week, in a community-based way, where we would go hunting and gathering in groups. We would return and spend together in the village, cooking, laughing, playing instruments, painting, dancing and having a good time. Sounds fun, right?
The Agricultural Revolution changed the way we grew and harvested food, the Industrial Revolution changed the way we manufactured and produced goods, and the Technological Revolution has changed the way we look at the world and access information.
What each of these revolutions has done is given us an increase in production, however a decrease in quality of some areas of life. We work more hours for money, to pay for the things we think will make us happier, but have less time to do the things we want.
I’m not saying these revolutions were bad by any means, however, consider that there is a different way. A rebalancing of life priorities and our relationship to time.
- How do you feel about time?
- Can you identify the feelings you don’t want?
- What if you could achieve your goals by doing what you want, when you want, how you want, where you want at the pace you want?
You might say “That’s not possible!” Consider that this is simply another limiting belief.
Our life experience is shaped by how we feel, so if we feel and believe the ways that I’ve outlined, of course, we will have that correlating experience.
What’s awesome about this is that on the flip side, if we become present, and create the feelings of being confident, peaceful, efficient, abundant, trusting, flowing, grateful and believing, we can create new beliefs and change the way we live.
So the beliefs are:
- My first priority is to feel good. When I feel good, great things come.
- I deserve to have it the way that I want.
- I can take my time with my company, I can focus on generating revenue and then scaling the business.
- I’m in the perfect place at the perfect time.
- Having life balance is equally as important as my profits, they go hand in hand.
- When I exercise, my business grows exponentially.
- When I do what I love, my life improves exponentially.
- I get paid to live my passion.
- I’m having fun making the amount of money I want, doing what I want, when I want, where I want.
- I do the exactly aligned action in each moment
You may look at these and say that I’m crazy and that these won’t work.
I ask you two questions:
- What is crazier? Feeling stressed and overworked, being fueled by a fear of failure? Or coming from a place of peace, ease, and enjoyment in achieving what you want? That’s what I thought. 🙂
- When you read these beliefs, do you want them to be true? If the answer is yes, then it’s simply a matter of training yourself to believe them, just like many of us have trained ourselves to believe the ones we don’t want.
It’s really this simple: feeling the way you want, believing what you want, and taking aligned action from these feelings and beliefs for long enough to see the results manifest.
This is what I’ve done with my company Lifestyle Perfected, as opposed to how I operated in the past, from the beliefs of working super hard and long hours, hustling, and needing to scale immediately. I instead created my time in the way I wanted to. I created a product that a few customers fell in love with. Once they did, instead of scaling, I chose to go slow and give those customers the most love and attention I could.
I created my time in the following format:
- What I love to do
- How I want to feel
- How I don’t want to feel
- What my empowering beliefs vs. limiting beliefs
- What my vision is for my time
- Aligned and Bold Actions to take
Essentially I wanted to make a lot of money, listening and supporting my friends. Doing Lifestyling Sessions Tuesdays and Thursday every other week and then having an open week the following week. Essentially working 4-6 days a month and making 6-figures. All while providing incredible value to my clients.
I do this by implementing beautiful structure and calendering.
Here is a screenshot of the Time Creation structure:
Here is a screenshot of my calendar:
I love to free-flow, I have my whole life. What I realized, which can seem counterintuitive, was there is a structure to flow. The best way I know how to explain it is this example: you see a master dancer or musician, they are flowing beautifully and you say “Wow, look how free they are!” Now what is key is they have practiced countless hours on a foundation of a structure, which then allows them to be so comfortable and free.
I’ve done the same with the structure for myself.
Within two months, I had gotten profitable: a 6-figure annual run rate with barely any expenses and overhead.
Instead of sacrificing other areas of my life, I ensured that I gave these specific areas (wealth, physical health, mental health, relationships, and purpose) equal attention. And that inspired my customers, and then the number of customers increased.
Once I was 100% confident in the product and had testimonials, I started to scale and with the increased revenue, I’ve now hired an amazing small team, consistently being mindful that we all maintain the level of life balance we want.
The company continues to grow at a pace that feels good and I continue to live a life that feels good, now, not someday, not one day, but now.
I did all of this by maintaining the feelings, beliefs, and actions that were most aligned with me and you can as well. Be mindful of the societal expectations we inherited from the Agricultural, Industrial, and Technological Revolutions of the past. We are now ready to live in the Life Balance revolution.
Are you living life with NO TIME? Or on YOUR TIME?
So, let’s break it down. I’ll give you 3 Steps I take to address changes I want to make.
Step 1: Get clear on how you feel and what you believe about your current situation
Step 2: Decide how you want to feel and what you want to believe
Step 3: Write down the actions you can take to have this
Step 1: Get clear on how your undesired feelings and what your limiting beliefs are about your current situation
I take the time to really assess and identify my feelings, and the limiting beliefs I encountered.
Undesired Feelings:
- Scarcity
- Stress
- Anxiety
- Sleeplessness
- Uncertainty
- Misalignment
- Sacrifice
- Undeserving
- Distrust
Limited Beliefs:
- I need to rise and grind every day, getting up early and killing it all day long.
- When I make time to do what I want I’m lazy, spoiled, and entitled.
- I don’t have time for that.
- If I take time for myself the business will fail.
- I need to work nights and weekends to build my business.
- I’m sacrificing the things I want to do now to achieve the big accomplishments most people won’t ever achieve.
- I’m too busy.
- It’s not worth my time.
- Once I accomplish (fill in the blank), I’ll have more time to (fill in the blank).
- I don’t have enough time to get everything that NEEDS to get done done.
- There’s not enough time in the day.
- Time is running out.
Step 2: Decide how you want to feel, what you want to believe and choose more empowering beliefs
Each day I focused on generating these feelings and really integrating the beliefs I wanted to have
Desired Feelings:
- Abundant
- Prosperous
- Present
- Efficient
- Crushing it
- Aligned
- Happy
- Connected
- Fun
- Flowing
- Successful
- Excited
- Peaceful
- Hopeful
- Loving
- Nourishing
- Committed
- Allowing
- Alive
Empowering Beliefs:
- My first priority is to feel good. When I feel good, great things come.
- I’m enjoying eating from the buffet of life bite by delicious bite.
- Time moves slowly when I’m having fun.
- I deserve to have it the way that I want.
- I can take my time with my company, I can focus on generating revenue and then scaling the business.
- I’m in the perfect place at the perfect time.
- Having life balance is equally as important as my profits, they go hand in hand.
- When I exercise, my business grows exponentially.
- When I do what I love, my life improves exponentially.
- I get paid to live my passion.
- I’m having fun making the amount of money I want, doing what I want, when I want, where I want.
- When I make time in between meetings to process, think and follow up I become much more successful.
- When I make space for myself to align, all the magic happens.
- Using my calendar makes a huge difference in my life.
- I do the exactly aligned action in each moment.
Step 3: Write down the Aligned and Bold actions you can take to have this
Once I was aligned, I saw what actions there were to take
- Continue to focus on life balance and feeling good both at work and outside of it.
- Create my calendar in a way where all aspects of my life that I love to do were scheduled to make sure I allocated time to do them.
- Create agendas and structures for meetings and for each area of life so I could create a free flowing life from this foundation of structure.
- Read and implement these: Less Doing and Scaling up
- Identify places where I am “wasting time” on things that are not beneficial to me or make me happy, and reallocate that time to the things I want and love to do.
- Lead a Lifestyle for Teams mastermind with my team to ensure they felt like they have proper life balance and the way the business is integrated into their lives and their vision. I do this by living as an example, asking them and bringing in Time Creation and Life Balance practices into their day to day work environment, such as the actions outlined in this list.
- Continue to feel into my own alignment. Asking myself, “What feels best for me?” Staying present, focusing on the step by step and what I was doing in the moment vs. what I needed to do later.
- Enjoying the journey and believing that it is all unfolding perfectly.
What I’ve realized is it’s all about taking small steps each day, believing in your vision and focusing on feeling how you want to feel, first thing in the morning. Listening to others and then listening to our own alignment and taking actions from there. I promise you if you take some of these actions and follow your own heart and intuition, you will end up seeing the shifts you want in your life.
Feel free to reply to this and reach out to me with anything at all.
Much love and thank you for reading!
Nadav
Are you wanting to elevate yourself to new heights?
Let’s create your Lifestyle Perfected together. You have 2 options:
- I lead a Lifestyling program called Lifestyle Perfected Mastermind. The program is for high vibration unicorns and curated by application, if you’d like to be considered please apply here.
- Are you a company founder and interested in one on one Lifestyling? I partner with 5 clients at a time. Please read about the program and if it feels right for you, apply here.
Much love and thank you for reading!
