Intentional Living: A New Approach to Time

How would your life change if you truly honoured every moment? Join me, Steph, your Mojo Maven, as we embark on an exceptional journey to transform our relationship with time. Our mantra of the week, "I honour my time by being present," sets the stage for a powerful exploration into the preciousness of the now. I'll share heartfelt personal stories, including the profound loss of my vibrant mother in 2021, which completely reshaped my understanding of time and led me to reclaim it for my own healing. We'll reflect on how being mindful and fully engaged in each moment can enrich our lives and help us serve others more effectively.

Ever felt like you're running on empty, constantly working but never truly living? In this episode, we confront the harsh realities of burnout and the critical need to reclaim our personal time. Hear about my own relentless work habits and the eye-opening moment when my workaholic mentor's personal tragedy underscored the importance of making time for oneself. By reassessing our routines and aligning them with our core values, we can create a life filled with meaningful activities and connections. Tune in to discover how to act with intention and make every moment count, ensuring your time is spent honoring who you truly are.

Chapters

• 0:10 Unlocking Your Mojo
• 2:28 Today's Mantra
• 8:20 Mojo On The Go!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:10

Welcome to Pocketful of Mojo, where you're, you and I'm, steph, and we tune in here to tap into some mojo. Well, what do you mean? What's mojo? You know, mojo is that feeling of unshakable confidence, that booming self-worth. Like you're an unstoppable force of nature. You know that feeling you get that makes you want to strut like a 90s supermodel. That's the one, and I'm here to show you how you can have that feeling every single day. You see, I think I've cracked the code to being happy. I'm happy all the freaking time, like every day, possibly to an annoying degree, but I wasn't always this way. And not to flex, but I've had breakdowns on multiple continents and in two languages. But by paying attention and by living with more intention, I've created this self-love first aid kit, and it's full of amazing tools that help me level up and navigate life with that main character energy everyone's talking about. And I'm not here to gatekeep. In fact, I'm on a mission to help you tap into your best stuff and remember that you have everything you need to live your life on your own terms. So settle in. We're here for some positive change. So let's dig in to where your mojo meets the road.

Speaker 1: 1:32

In today's episode, I'm going to review the mantra for the week and then we're going to dig into today's main topic, and that topic is time. But, plot twist, we are taking it on the road once again and shaking things up. So you stick around and I'm going to make sure that you're glad that you did. Let's get started with today's mantra and get tuned in, tapped in and turned on. Hello, hello, hello. You're looking good today. And welcome to the 35th episode of Pocketful of Mojo. Once again, I'm Steph, I'm your Mojo Maven, I'm your soul sister, I'm your emotional Sherpa, and I'm so glad you're here. I'm here to reflect your awesomeness and your potential back to you. I'm here to reflect your awesomeness and your potential back to you. So let's settle in.

Speaker 1: 2:26

Let's start by digging into today's mantra, and today's mantra is I honor my time by being present. Wow, okay, this has the power of like five mantras Amazing. Okay, let's get into it. I honor my time by being present. Let's get into it. I honor my time by being present. When we honor our time, we acknowledge our relationship to it, we establish it as a favorable one, where we work together in harmony and with respect, because time is freaking expensive. Like when they said time is money. I think they underestimated how true that really is, and not necessarily for the reasons that you think Time is one of the few things on earth that we can't buy. We can't add time, we can't speed it up and we can't slow it down, and the headline here is we don't know how much time we have. So time is to be honored. We need to act accordingly. I honor my time by being present.

Speaker 1: 3:29

When we're present, this means fully being in the moment that you're in and nowhere else. That's where we're truly living, because we are here on earth for two reasons, in my opinion One is to experience and the other is to serve. And when we drop into the now, into this moment, we are fulfilling this mission to experience this life. And when we fall into the trap of living in the past or worrying about the future, we are stealing from ourselves. We are robbing ourselves of this amazing, never seen before. We are robbing ourselves of this amazing, never seen before, one time only, special edition moment that we will never see again. When we drop this mantra, we shift out of the past and out of the future and settle in the now. This is where all the riches are found and we are safe and we are whole. No anxiety, no regret.

Speaker 1: 4:30

I honor my time by being present. Now you can be in the room and, at the same time, be nowhere to be seen. Have you ever been with someone who's there but not actually there? They're ruminating on that thing that happened this morning or blankly staring at you, but you know full well that they're just waiting for their turn to talk and simply waiting for their cue. That is the dark side of time, when it pulls us into the past and projecting from the imagination of all that could happen in the future, all while distracting our experience from the power of now. Now, to combat this, your secret weapon is the one that you're born with, and that's awareness. With the power of mindfulness and awareness, we can actively drop into the present moment anytime we want, simply by tuning into our awareness and pulling ourselves and our thoughts and our experience back into the now, this moment. It's truly and really the only thing that exists.

Speaker 1: 5:28

I honor my time by being present. So often we make plans for ourselves and we like to think that we do so intentionally. Then, when the moment comes to do the thing we planned, we take ourselves out of the moment and focus on what was or what will be. But when we honor our time, we are acting with intention. When we honor our time, we are fully committed, present, engaged, tuned in, tapped in, turned on, and we're squeezing all the juice we can out of the experiences that we create for ourselves. That's why we're here.

Speaker 1: 6:05

Going through the motions won't score you any points and it won't fill your cup. I honor my time by being present. Okay, now, that was a mantra. I hope you feel grounded and empowered to renegotiate your relationship with time in a way that makes you feel like you're at the helm. You are flying the plane, you are the conductor that is driving this experience in all the ways that fill your cup and keep you tuned in to the magnificent creature that you are, instead of just going through the motions.

Speaker 1: 6:47

Time is here to remind us that not only this, too, shall pass, but that we only get one kick at the can, unless you believe in reincarnation. But we'll save that rabbit hole for another episode, shall we? Our time on earth is shorter than we think and we are not guaranteed our tomorrow, so let this episode be a reminder to not take a single second for granted because, my lovelies, everything can change in an instant, maybe for the better, maybe for the worse, and maybe it'll just be change, but that's all part of this amazing ride. So much is out of our control, and while that can be freaky and super scary, I'm here to help you rebrand it as being a concept that is liberating, freeing and empowering. You are here to do what you are here to do. No one else can tell you what that is, but the more you know yourself, the more you will know what to do with your time. It's when we look around to see what other people are doing with their time that we end up getting ourselves in trouble. Okay, okay, okay. Let's not let another moment pass before we take this convo on the road and check in with our correspondent on the clock. That's right on the road. And check in with our correspondent on the clock. That's right.

Speaker 1: 8:05

We are going deep on the topic of time in a way that allows me to get off script and Talk to you from the heart, with a lapel mic and a tank of gas. So here we go. This is Mojo on the Road. Okie, dokie, here we go. Let the rattling begin. Oh my gosh, this car is so old. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen and everyone in between. Oh, this man, the female man. Oh my gosh, why is everything rattling? We're doing it. We're gonna talk about time. We're going on the road.

Speaker 1: 9:03

I'm actually on my way to see my bestie at must have pockets. You may remember leanne from a couple episodes ago. Oh man, she's great, and I haven't seen her since Saturday. It feels like forever. And I'm going to take you with me and we're going to talk about time. Do I want to go to the university? Let's go through the university. Does anybody else feel like they just woke up and boom, it's fall, like there's leaves on the ground and I don't really know. I feel like it like this year is just blowing by and today we're talking about time and time is whack. That is my mission statement for today and I got a lot to unpack here about time, because I my relationship with time really changed and I've gleaned so much from changing my relationship with time that I really want to dig into it with you today. So that's what we're going to do and we're going to do it on the road.

Speaker 1: 10:11

So when we're talking about time, so my relationship with time changed when my mom died. So there she was, 77 years old, healthy as a horse, living her life. It's 2021. And she's like a healthy lady. She was on, I think, one medication for blood pressure, but other than that, just doing well. And that day she got up, she did the crossword, she met with her best friend for coffee um, which is really interesting because her best friend is my best friend's mom and in speaking with Jen she wasn't going to go. She was like, oh, I just came from the gym, I don't feel super great, like I'll put it off or I'll reschedule, but she pulled it together and she went for the coffee with my mom and, of course, my mom got like all dressed up and she put on her jewelry. And she went for the coffee with my mom and, of course, my mom got like all dressed up and she put on her jewelry and she just like looked fabulous. And then, you know, she came home and did her thing and made meatloaf for dinner and then she was feeling kind of tired, so she laid down to take a nap and she didn't wake up.

Speaker 1: 11:35

And I was living in France at the time and I woke up to a phone call from my brother who had the horrible job of telling me that, out of absolutely nowhere, my mom was gone and it was like being hit by a truck. Nothing made sense. Nothing made sense and time became really weird. And I don't mean like, oh, the day's been flying by, like more than that. It felt like months, took years, days took lifetimes. Yesterday feels like five minutes ago and last week feels like 10 years ago. So it's perception, it's how we engage with it, but time seemed to be standing still and flying at the same time and it just none of it made sense. And I mean, don't get me wrong, I love time. I'm a very organized person. I used to actually teach a workshop on time management and time mastery, so I love organization, I love being on time. My brother's got a great saying he's like if I'm not 15 minutes early, I'm 10 minutes late, and you know I really respect time. So having this relationship with it completely blow up really kind of put me in a place where I could look at time differently. Look at time differently.

Speaker 1: 13:21

So after my mom passed, I'm I'm living in France I'm trying to get heads or tails of what is this fucking life and why is this happening? How is this happening? What do I do? How do I do it? And so I get on a plane and this is very like this is middle of 2021. So it's pandemic, it's. You know, I'm coming into Canada but my vaccines were French. So how do I prove that? And do I need to quarantine? And you know how many people can we have at the funeral? And logistically it was cuckoo bananas.

Speaker 1: 13:57

And then I came back to Canada and I was here for about six weeks and we had the funeral and I just felt like I was walking through life like a zombie and all of the constructs and systems had all just kind of burned to the ground. And I may add that I was also in the process of separating from my husband of 10 years. So my life was kind of a dumpster fire and time wasn't helping because it was. Everything just seemed meaningless. And when I saw, when I was home for those six weeks, I came home and I spent some really amazing time, kind of trauma, bonding with my brothers who I hadn't seen in years and we actually became really close through through our grieving and then, and then I saw them having to go back to work and I was just like what, like I my mother's death hit myself and my two brothers very differently, and I learned that we had very different parents. I'm six and eight years younger than my brothers and we all had very different relationships with our mom and had very different childhoods and very different experiences with growing up.

Speaker 1: 15:31

But watching them having to go back to work and function, and because their bereavement time had dried up and so it's time to go back to work, it's time to continue to forge on with life, and I just didn't have that capacity. I was just incapable of rallying myself to a point where I could function, and so I did something kind of brave, kind of stupid I decided to pay myself with time. I didn't make any money, I didn't show up anywhere every day to make somebody else's dreams come true. I had to go back and invest my time back into myself, and that allowed me to really release my relationship with time, because I wasn't. I took myself off the clock. I took myself off of any kind of notion, expectation that I had to be a certain thing by a certain time, because all bets were off. Nothing made sense anymore. I didn't have any of the ingredients to actually be like productive or contribute in any way because I was completely scrambled. So by interrogating the rules, I was able to change the game.

Speaker 1: 16:57

And I see now that when I changed my relationship with time, I changed my life, and so when I started seeing time as a currency, I was able to really tune into myself and decide how do I want to spend my time. And we use the word spend with time and with money, and time is one of those things that we can't buy. We can't speed it up, we can't slow it down. So I just renegotiated my deal. I renegotiated my deal with time and I made it work for me. Now that doesn't mean that I was super productive. It means that if I felt like crying, I would cry, and sometimes that would last a short amount of time and sometimes it would last all fucking day. But I didn't put any. I took away any kind of barriers or expectations on what it should look like and how quickly that should wrap up, because I was making sure that time was working with me and for me, because I know really well what happens when you're a slave to time, when you do things before you should or when you do things on someone else's time.

Speaker 1: 18:10

I am no stranger to burnout. I was the one when I was working in my job at Starbucks, where I would go in early, I would stay late, I would do emails through my lunch break if I even took one and as a result, I didn't have any of my own goals and instead I had a shit ton of resentment because I had a husband who had time freedom and that time freedom was so the opposite of the life that I was living that it just started building this huge mountain of resentment Because I was making someone else's dreams come true. But don't get me wrong Responsibilities are still super important. This isn't about blowing up your life or cutting ties with all of your responsibilities and roles that you play in your life and in other people's lives. Those things are still key and still important. But how we show up while we're executing these responsibilities is a direct result of how much time you spend with yourself and what kind of time you spend with yourself, because, remember, you're in charge and this is all made up. We're all out here making it up. This moment right here is a never before seen moment that we will never see again, and we are so rich with time and every day that you get to wake up on this side of the pavement is a gift, because if losing my mom taught me anything, it's that everything can change in an instant. We are not promised tomorrow.

Speaker 1: 19:51

And it makes me think of when I was, like at the peak of my hustledom in the Starbucks world and I was really gunning for the next promotion and I, like I changed cities and I sacrificed a lot of my wellness in order to achieve these business results, in order to get the job, and, like my mentor and the person who is in charge of potentially hiring me for this job was a total workaholic, I'm talking. I would wake up at five o'clock in the morning and I would already have two emails from her asking me what my results were for the next day and what I was gonna do differently today to impact those results. Like she was hardcore. And then there was this real aha moment when I got an email on Friday morning and she just said hey guys, I'm going to be off the grid. I just found out that my best childhood friend died and I just can't deal today. I just can't deal today. And it was that moment where humanity met business and she made time. She made time for herself, because you can always make time.

Speaker 1: 21:08

We all have the same 24 hours, and that saying used to really piss me off, because we don't all have the same resources, the same education, the same privilege, the same anything. We're all unique, but we do all have the same resources, the same education, the same privilege, the same anything. We're all unique, but we do all have the same 24 hours. So when you think about how we spend it back to that money analogy you know, if you had all the money in the world, how would you spend it If you had a finite, and how would that be different than if you had a finite amount of money? So when you think about time, I want you to think about what would you do if you had more time?

Speaker 1: 21:44

And just start there, because what that does is that opens up the door for you to start interrogating and figuring out where do I like to spend my time, what is in tune with where my time should be spent? Look, we've all bought that thing that we didn't really need, but wanted to buy it anyway, and we've all spent our time doing something that may not be in alignment with our best goals, and maybe more, I don't know, playing candy crush or something like that, but it does beg repeating that you can do anything but you can't do everything. So that's where we're able to really dial in tune into what we really want and align our schedules to reflect more of who we are. Back to us. So as we go ahead and we interrogate our habits and our routines, we can say, look, is this something that I'm doing for the sake of doing it? Go ahead and we interrogate our habits and our routines, we can say, look, is this something that I'm doing for the sake of doing it? Is this something that I'm doing because it's what I've always done and what are the things I wish I could do with my time? And then what the brain does is it starts solving that problem. It starts creating little cracks and crevices where we can start to pull that thread and then, all of a sudden, our lives will start to transform.

Speaker 1: 23:06

So as you move ahead and you start looking at time and if you feel like you're chasing after it, you have an amazing opportunity to flip the script. Put yourself back in that pilot seat and start designing the life and the schedule that is really a reflection of you and your goals and your values and your dreams, and it's filled with people that you love and it's filled with conversations that light you up and it brings you to rooms that help you reach for that next level in your life, because it's not about blowing up your life and, heaven forbid, something happens to you that gives you the whiplash like I got. That prompted me to think about things in this way. Good news is, you've got this podcast and this is your cue and your invitation to just take a beat and think about what are some things that I can let go of, to make space for things that truly align with me, that make space for things that make me feel good, because those things ripple into every other thing that you do. Oh man, I feel like I could talk about this for absolutely ever, so I'm going to wrap this up. For now I'm going to shoot it back to the studio where we're going to wrap up this week's episode, but absolutely thrilled that you tuned in here today.

Speaker 1: 24:23

Anyway, without further ado, thank you for tuning in. You're gorgeous, keep up. Keep it up, cutie. Stay fabulous, love you. And that was Pocketful of Mojo Road Trip Edition. Tune in next week to see if we do it again. But seriously, thanks for tuning in and I hope that this has helped you tap into some of that mojo of yours, because you're worth a baby. Next week, we're going to dig into the business of mojo and how to take that fabulous feeling and infuse it into everything you do, including your work. You, with me, tune in next week as we figure out all the nuts and bolts of it all and in the meantime, if you feel like your mojo could use a tune-up, I've come up with lots of ways that we can do this again sometime.

Speaker 1: 25:31

Make sure you take a couple minutes to subscribe to this podcast and extra good, juju, if you leave a review, you can follow me on Instagram at moststefinitely for daily mantras, affirmations, and be sure to show your love with all the likes and comments. I am a recovering people pleaser, so you know it means the world when you do. Now. You found me at the very beginning of All Things Mojo, and there's so much more on the way. All the cool links are easily found in the show notes, so go have a look, because you're here anyway, and, while you're at it, share this episode with a friend. It's not only good karma, but it will give you two something to talk about when you go for your next little mental health walk together. So I'm just getting warmed up here and I've got so much great stuff to share with you guys. So be sure to tune in next week and until then, stay classy, stay kind and put love in everything you do. Ciao for now.