Ep 160: The Stories We Tell About Time

How often do you catch yourself saying, “I don’t have time”? Maybe you’re “too busy” for rest, exercise, or figuring out what you actually want—even though when there’s a work deadline or a family emergency, you somehow always manage to fit it in.

I know how easy it is to say those words without questioning them. But after years of coaching brilliant, capable women who tell me they simply “don’t have time” to take better care of themselves, I’ve learned that the problem is almost never actually about time.

In this episode, I talk about the real stories we're telling ourselves when we say we don't have time, and I share practical tools you can use to decode your own time stories. So much becomes possible when you start telling yourself the truth about time, because becoming your favorite you doesn’t require more time, just honest time spent on what truly matters to you.

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Transcript

Hey, this is Melissa Parsons, and you are listening to the Your Favorite You Podcast. I'm a certified life coach with an advanced certification in deep dive coaching. The purpose of this podcast is to help brilliant women like you with beautiful brains create the life you've been dreaming of with intentions. My goal is to help you find your favorite version of you by teaching you how to treat yourself as your own best friend.

If this sounds incredible to you and you want practical tips on changing up how you treat yourself, then you're in the right place. Just so you know, I'm a huge fan of using all of the words available to me in the English language, so please proceed with caution if young ears are around.

Hey there, welcome back to Your Favorite You.

I am Melissa Parsons, and I'm so glad you're here with me today, as always. So I want you to think about how many times this week that you've said, I don't have time. It might be, I don't have time to exercise. I don't have time to call my friend. I don't have time to figure out what I actually want. I don't have time to rest. We say it so automatically that we don't even question it. Here's what I've learned after coaching so many brilliant women. I don't have time is almost never actually about time. Today I want to talk about the real stories we're telling ourselves when we say we don't have time and what becomes possible when we start telling ourselves the truth.

Back when I was a practicing pediatrician with young kiddos and activities, I genuinely felt like I had no time. I was constantly running from the office to soccer practice to parent-teacher conferences to being on call.

I would tell anyone who asked that I simply didn't have time for things like rest or hobbies or taking care of myself. And on the surface, that looked true. My calendar was packed. There were real demands on my time.

But when I really dug in with my own coaching, I realized something uncomfortable. I was tying my worth to people pleasing, perfectionism, and control enthusiasm. I had to be the perfect doctor, the perfect mom, the perfect colleague, the perfect friend.

The busyness wasn't just happening to me. I was creating it. Because as long as I was busy, I didn't have to question whether I was living the life I actually wanted. As long as I had no time, quote unquote, I had a perfect excuse for not taking care of myself.

After coaching, I realized something that was both freeing and humbling. I was completely replaceable at my job. Yes, of course, people still miss me. Patients tell me that when I run into them all the time.

But they're being cared for in amazing ways by my former partners and the physician who joined after I left, whom I love. I wasn't as essential as I thought I was. And that realization freed me to start taking care of myself in ways I had previously told myself was impossible.

I started prioritizing rest and sleep most of all after several decades of being in a huge sleep deficit. Now, I want to acknowledge that this shift also coincided with my children being older and needing constant attention a bit less.

The demands on my time did actually change. But here's what I want you to know. Even when the external demands were real, the story I was telling myself about time was still serving a purpose beyond just describing my schedule.

When clients first come to me, they tell me they don't have time. They don't have time to care for themselves. They don't have time to get creative about what they actually want. So they can't even start thinking about new dreams for themselves. They certainly don't have time to rest, and many of them equate resting with laziness anyway. They don't take time to create joy in their lives or even notice the joy that's already present because they're burning themselves up in order to keep everyone else that they love around them warm.

These are brilliant, capable women. If I asked them to find time for a work deadline or a child's emergency or something their boss needed, they would figure it out. But when it comes to their own needs, their own desires, their own well-being, suddenly, poof, there's no time.

That's not a time management problem. That might be a worthiness problem disguised as a scheduling issue. When we dig deeper, here's what I find. Most of these women do not want to be seen as lazy. They don't believe they deserve to prioritize themselves. Many of them were raised by parents who sacrificed their own happiness in order to give their kids a better life. And now my clients feel guilty for having that better life their parents worked so hard to provide.

There's this underlying belief that if you're not constantly producing, achieving, serving others, etc., you're not valuable. Rest feels selfish, joy feels indulgent. Figuring out what you want feels like a luxury you haven't yet earned.

And yes, many of them are subconsciously afraid of what they'll find out about themselves if they actually slow down. What if the house of cards they've carefully built, the career, the family, the image, starts to wobble when they question it?

What if they discover they're not that happy? What if they realize they want something different? That can be terrifying. So I don't have time is the perfect excuse because no one can argue with it. If you say, I don't want to, or I'm afraid to, or I'm not sure I deserve it, people will generally push back on that.

But I don't have time. Everyone accepts that. We live in a culture that worships busyness. So we use time scarcity as armor. It protects us from having to examine our real reasons, our real fears, our real priorities.

And being busy has become a status symbol. When someone asks how you are and you say, so busy, there's almost a pride in it. It means you're important, needed, valuable. If you're not busy, what does that say about you?

This is especially true for women. We're supposed to be busy with careers, with kids, with maintaining our homes, with supporting everyone around us, with caregiving. If we're not exhausted, are we even trying hard enough?

And here's something else. Busyness gives us a sense of control. If we're constantly doing, managing, fixing, achieving, at least we feel like we're steering the ship. The idea of slowing down, of having space, of not knowing what comes next, that definitely can feel like a loss of control.

And for those of us who are what I lovingly call control enthusiasts, that's deeply uncomfortable. So what happens when someone stops saying, I don't have time, and starts telling themselves the truth?

That's when the real work begins. This is fun work, but it's also the hard work of figuring out what they actually want to spend their one precious life doing. These days, people will call me or text me and start off by saying, sorry to bother you. I know you're busy. And I get to truthfully answer, actually, I'm not all that busy. Sure, I have times that are busier than others, as everyone does, but my calendar intentionally has a lot of white space on it.

And I love that. That is my new badge of honor, not how packed my schedule is, but how much breathing room I've created for myself. The old me, prior me, would have felt like I needed to prove my worth by being busy.

The current me knows that space is where the magic happens. When you stop hiding behind the idea of no time, you may have to face questions like, what do I actually want? What am I afraid might happen if I prioritize myself?

Whose approval am I seeking with all this busyness? What would it mean about me if I rested? What parts of my life am I avoiding examining? If I'm not constantly achieving, then who am I? These questions can be uncomfortable.

It's so much easier to stay busy than to sit with them. But this is where the transformation happens. This is where you can start becoming a favorite version of you instead of the version of you that everyone else needs.

When my clients start telling the truth about time, everything starts to shift. They realize they do have time. They've just been spending it on things that don't align with what they actually value at this point.

They start making different choices, not because they suddenly have more hours in the day, but because they're willing to disappoint people. They're willing to let go of perfectionism. They're willing to risk being seen as less productive, less available, less willing to sacrifice themselves.

Let me give you some practical tools to decode some of your own time stories. So in this first exercise, we're going to call it complete the sentence. So this week, every time you catch yourself saying, I don't have time for insert whatever it is, I want you to complete this sentence instead.

I'm not prioritizing that thing because dot, dot, dot. So I don't have time for exercise becomes, I'm not prioritizing exercise because. Okay, so it's probably, I'm not prioritizing exercise because I feel guilty taking time for myself when there's so much to do.

Instead of, I don't have time to figure out what I want, try, I'm not prioritizing figuring out what I want because I'm a little bit afraid of what I might discover. Just notice what comes up. No judgment.

Just be true to yourself. The second exercise, I would love you guys to do a calendar audit. So looking at your calendar for the last week, for each thing on there, ask yourself, did I have to do this or did I choose to do this?

Be honest. Had to means there would have been serious, concrete consequences if you didn't do the thing. Chose to means you did it to avoid discomfort, judgment, guilt, or conflict. And then after you work with me, chose to begins to mean because it's what I wanted to do.

Does that make sense? Okay. You might be surprised at how many had to items are actually choices. And then after you work with me, you start to see those choices as amazing things that you get to do.

The third exercise is the magic wand question. Now, this episode was written after Taylor Swift's new album came out, so I'm loving the magic wand reference. This is different. If you had a magic wand and you could add one hour to every day that was just for you, no guilt, no judgment, no consequences, what would you do with it?

I used to think I wished I had more hours in the day, but then I got honest with myself and realized that if I actually had an extra hour, I'd probably spend it doing laundry or some other necessary but completely unfulfilling task.

And I realized I don't actually want more hours if it just means more time to do chores. What I actually wanted was permission to use the hours I already had differently. So when you ask yourself this magic wand question, pay attention to your answer.

Whatever comes up is telling you something important about what you're not letting yourself have. And I guarantee it's not actually about time. It's about permission. And then exercise four, I want you to call the lazy test.

So think about something you've been telling yourself you don't have time for. Now imagine doing it. What comes up? If the word lazy or selfish or indulgent appears in your thoughts, you found your real obstacle.

It's not time. It's permission. So start small. Pick one thing you've been saying you don't have time for. Tell yourself the truth about why you're not doing it. Then ask, is this reason serving me or is it just protecting me from something I'm afraid of? You don't have to change anything just yet. I would love for you to just start telling the truth to yourself. Here's what I know. You have time for what you prioritize. And if you're not prioritizing yourself, your rest, your joy, your growth, your actual desires, it's not because you don't have time.

It's because somewhere along the way, you learned that you're not worth prioritizing, but you are. I promise you, you're worth the time. You're worth the rest. You're worth figuring out what you actually want.

You're worth disappointing people occasionally. You're worth being seen as less than perfect. So I want to give you permission to stop using time as an excuse and start telling yourself the truth. It won't always be comfortable, but it will be honest.

And honesty is where transformation begins. If you're ready to stop hiding behind busyness and start creating a life you actually want to live, I'd love to work with you. Whether in my group program or one-on-one, we can figure out together what you're really protecting yourself from when you say, I don't have time.

Becoming your favorite you requires time, not more time, just honest time, time spent on what actually matters to you, and you're worth that. Thank you so much for listening. And of course, I will be here again to talk with you next week. 

Hey - It’s still me. Since you are listening to this podcast, you very likely have followed all the rules and ticked off all the boxes but you still feel like something's missing! If you're ready to learn the skills and gain the tools you need to tiptoe into putting yourself first and treating yourself as you would your own best friend, I'm here to support you. As a general life coach for women, I provide a safe space, compassionate guidance, and practical tools to help you navigate life's challenges as you start to get to know and embrace your authentic self.

When we work together, you begin to develop a deeper understanding of your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. You learn effective communication strategies, boundary-setting techniques, and self-care practices that will help you cultivate a more loving and supportive relationship with yourself and others.

While, of course, I can't guarantee specific outcomes, as everyone's journey is brilliantly unique, what I can promise is my unwavering commitment to providing you with the skills, tools, support, and guidance you need to create lasting changes in your life. With humor and a ton of compassion, I'll be available to mentor you as you do the work to become a favorite version of yourself.

You're ready to invest in yourself and embark on this journey, so head over to melissaparsonscoaching.com, go to the work with me page, and book a consultation call. We can chat about all the support I can provide you with as we work together.

I am welcoming one-on-one coaching clients at this time, and, of course, I am also going to be offering the next round of group coaching soon. 

Thanks for tuning in. Go be amazing!