LJ008: There's Plenty of Time [Foundations]

This week, we're focusing on one of Anna's favorite mantras, "There's plenty of time." It's so common in our culture to live our lives with a sense of urgency, always feeling like we're in a rush—it's almost a badge of honor. Yet that energy can so often damage our relationships as we put pressure on each other to move quickly and follow a certain agenda.

When we realize that we actually do have the time to consider our options, to communicate about everyone's needs, and to take the bigger picture context into account, we can give more space to both ourselves and our loved ones to figure out solutions that feel good to everyone.

We hope today's episode sparks some fun insights for you and we invite you to dive deeper with our Episode Questions. Join us on Instagram or YouTube to continue the conversation and share your reflections.

Let’s dig deep, challenge paradigms, choose connection, and live joyfully!

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EPISODE QUESTIONS

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1. When you imagine the idea that there’s plenty of time in the context of a disagreement with a friend, partner, or child, how does it feel? Expansive? Overwhelming? Just plain wrong? Why?
2. Do you recall a time when an issue bubbled up again and again because you didn’t take the time up front to more fully understand it? 
3. Where in your life do you feel time pressure? What if you could release that? How would that feel?
4. Can you think of a time when feeling time pressure interfered with coming up with a creative solution to a challenge?

TRANSCRIPT

PAM: Hello and welcome to the Living Joyfully Podcast. We are thrilled you're here and interested in exploring relationships with us, who we are in them, out of them, and what that means for how we move through the world.

And in today's episode, we are going to talk about the idea that there is plenty of time. Now, it has been such a helpful tool for me over the years when navigating challenges with the people I love, and I believe I first heard about it from you, Anna!

It's amazing how so many things that come up in our days can feel like emergencies, like they need to be solved as soon as possible. I think taking a moment to consider whether the situation at hand is a true emergency can help us release so much of the time pressure that we're feeling. Reminding ourselves that we have plenty of time gives us more space to explore the root of the issue, rather than throwing Band-aid after Band-aid at it just to quickly solve it. "I gotta get this, I gotta move through it." It's so fascinating just to consider having plenty of time.

ANNA: Yes. Oh my goodness. So, it has been one of my main mantras for a very long time. Our society likes to operate with this extreme sense of urgency about everything and I get caught up in that really easily. I feel like time pressure is just a huge trigger for me that kind of sets me on this path of not thinking and just being really stressed out.

And the thing is, I like to get things done. I like to check boxes. I like moving on to the next thing, and that can have its place. I can be super productive. But what I found was that carrying that sense of urgency around all the time did not help with my relationships at all. It takes time to navigate things in a relationship, and if you stop and take a breath, you can ask, is this really urgent? Is it an emergency? Does this need to be solved right this second? And often, y