“Maybe it’s too late for my life to change” said my client. She was living in survival mode, doing a job she barely tolerated, feeling isolated from family and friends. We agreed, her life had lost its magic and something needed to change. What my client didn’t know was how rapidly her circumstances could reshape themselves by shifting her focus away from life’s timeline into the present.
Getting rid of the clock
About 20 years ago one of my teachers suggested giving up wearing a watch as a way of loosening the habitual focus on clock time. Intrigued, I decided to give the practice a go. What started out as an experiment, turned into a way of life.
Not only did I discover that when I needed to know what time it was, even when traveling to catch trains or buses, I never had to look very far to find a clock, or person with a watch (this was before the era of mobile phones). I also discovered that I became more attuned to my intuition which would nudge me to make sure I was where I needed to be at the right time.
How time contracts
When you’re under the idea that healing your body, creating that dream, finding the perfect partner, or landing that new job needs to be done and dusted in a certain time-frame, there’s a tendency for your energy to contract. You might feel this contraction as anxiety, pressure or overwhelm.
This is because your focus for measuring how close you are to your goal turns to what you can’t control… the ticking clock. Energetically, this puts you in the position of feeling out of control, rather than sitting comfortably in the driving seat of your life.
The outcome of having contracted energy in your body and energy field is that freely flowing creative energy has less room to move. This means you become less inspired and less energized. The more your self imposed deadline approaches, the more anxious you feel, and the more contracted you become. And so the circle goes.
All of this makes it more likely that you’ll either give up on your project, or your dream, or you’ll go into push, where you’ll work overtime to meet your goal, but wear yourself out in the process.
How time opens up
However, when you shift your focus away from clock time and allow your attention to rest into the present moment, consciousness expands into the limitless space of no time.
Instead of staring down a narrowing train track, your vision opens onto a meadow. Your inner senses become engaged and you learn to see, feel, sense the flow of higher information flowing through you which knows; what needs to be done, what doesn’t need to be done, in what order, when, how, and with whom, to fulfill your highest desires.
Now = the time machine
When my client acknowledged that keeping on doing what she had done for years was only wearing her down, I knew she was ready to make the changes she longed for.
With encouragement she agreed to take her deeper impulses more seriously. Next, she learned how to focus into the present, rather than on regrets about her past or fears for the future.
Within a few months she began to feel more optimistic and energized. She pieced together a common sense pathway from where she was to where she wanted to be. Not a hard and fast plan, more a series of stepping stones which were possible to pick up and move, all the while focusing on what was immediately in front of her, whether it seemed to lead her in her desired direction or not.
From time to time she would take a look at where she was and to her surprise she noticed that, slowly but surely, she was creating more of a life she liked and less of a life she didn’t. Within a couple of years she had left the job she disliked, established her own business and, to her delight, was taking her first of several trips abroad to forge musical and cultural connections in France.
How to be here now
-Practice paying conscious attention to your breath. Every hour take 3 conscious breaths. Your breath helps anchor consciousness in the present moment.
-Notice if your energy feels contracted around time. Breathe into the feeling of contraction and allow your body to soften.
-Treat each moment as a fresh moment, without a past or a future. Feel what it feels like to meet the present moment with your curious and full attention.
And, maybe try a day without looking at a watch or a clock! Let me know how you get on, come and chat on the comments below
