How To Find More Time THIS Week!

Melanie Mishler: 00:01

Welcome to the Magnetic Creator podcast. I'm your host, Melanie Mishler, and each week we have intimate conversations about the things that matter most in life. My superpower is helping you remember who you truly are. A powerful, magical creator. I give you proven tools to help you get unstuck and manifest a life that sets your heart on fucking fire. Are you ready? Let's go. Hello friend and welcome back.

Today's going to be a short but good episode. But before we start, I just want to apologize for my scratchy throat. I have a good reason though. Yesterday, I was down in our basement and I came across a box, like an old box of all my 80s and 90s CDs. And so today I had to drive to the city. And for those of you who don't know, we live in a little tiny town. And so to go to the city, it's like a two hour round trip. So I grabbed all my CDs and

For two straight hours today, I was singing at the top of my lungs, like all my favorite 80s and 90s songs. It was super fun, but I didn't plan that too well. I probably should have recorded the episode first and then went to the city. But anyway, on to today's episode. Like I said, it's going to be really short, but powerful. I'm going to give you a tool that will help you find more time. And I don't mean like a little time.

I mean hours and hours of time each week. So if you've ever said, I wish I had more time, or maybe you have some dreams that have been on the back burner because you're just so busy, then this one will change everything for you. I promise. You might've heard me say in previous episodes that I'm equal part woo woo neuroscience and strategy. And that's because I truly believe that we need to have all three of these in order to create

lasting and meaningful transformation in our life. And here's what I mean. You can do all this manifesting work, right? All the vision boards and positive affirmations, meditation, all those things. But if you have negative self -talk or negative beliefs that are playing like broken records in the background of your life, then nothing is going to change. And at the same time, you can be really, really busy doing all this action.

Melanie Mishler: 02:22

But if you don't have a clear vision or a roadmap for the kind of life you want to create or how you want to experience life, then what happens is we almost end up like a hamster on a wheel, just going nowhere really fast. And by keeping ourselves really busy, it can be easy to end up feeling kind of like we're living in that movie Groundhog Day. We're just kind of going through the motions of life without any deep level of satisfaction.

I see this a lot in my 12 -week transformation program. Many of the women I work with by outward appearance, like if you looked at them, they are very successful. They are educated. They have a career, a family, house, car. They go on vacations, all of that stuff. But they come to me saying, I just feel like there's something missing or I've always dreamt of doing blank. You can fill in that blank with anything, right? Writing a book,

traveling, starting a passion project, learning a new language, really anything. Or they'll say something like, you know, I've been in this career for 25 years and I'm just over it. Like I'm not happy anymore. I want to do something different, but I'm 45 or 50 and it feels a little too late for me to start something new. Or they'll say, I have this great life. Why am I not happy inside? So friend, if this resonates with you,

Just know that you're not alone. It's so common for women to put off their secret dreams till like maybe the kids go to college or until they retire. And friend, I don't want you waiting for that stuff. We're not guaranteed any time on this planet. So I don't want you putting off your dreams until your kids go to college or you retire or you have more time because that time never comes. So today I'm gonna show you a little tool on how to find more time in your life, like next week.

And this is time for the things that matter to you. It could be starting a side hustle, learning a new language, manifesting a lover, anything that sets your heart on fire. That's what this time is for. And I'm gonna help you find it. And it's so easy. And real quickly, I just wanna tell you a story about this because when my daughter was young and I was single parenting, my life was so busy. I was running a wedding magazine, a photography business.

Melanie Mishler: 04:41

I had my somatic therapy practice and that was in a completely different city. So I would travel once a month to go see my clients. I was volunteering nonstop at my daughter's school. I was so busy. And I would think to myself, I really want to find a partner. I want to get married one day, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? But I didn't open up any space in my life for the possibility of a relationship. And I remember distinctly one day a friend came to me and she said, I know this great guy. He's single. I want to set you up.

Let me set you guys up." And I literally told her, and I cringe now thinking back, but I told her, I just don't have time. I don't have the space in my life for that right now. I'm so busy, right? That was my excuse. And at the time, it seemed to be true. But now looking back, I can see that the real truth was that I was just terrified to be in a relationship. And there were many reasons for that. I was navigating a

very toxic and abusive relationship with my daughter's father. And then I had a love who was killed in an accident. So I had a lot of trauma and a lot of guarding around intimacy for me. And this is a really personal example, but it's a clear example of how this charade of busyness can stop us from really making space or going after the things that we really want. So in my program, we get to the like,

part of that, we get to the why you're actually putting off your dreams, which I promise it's always more than a busyness problem. It's always more than a time problem. But today I just wanted to give you a quick way to find the time that you need. And so what we're going to do is simply a time audit to see where our time is actually going. And friend, let me tell you, when my coach had me do this, I was shocked. I mean, I was so shocked by the results. I could not believe how much time I spent.

spinning my wheels, like scrolling through social media, numbing out with Netflix, or just like pissing time away all while saying, I'm just so freaking busy. I'm so busy, blah, blah. Okay, so how does the time audit work? It's easy. What you're gonna do is for one week, you're gonna take a notebook, set a timer on your watch, and every hour just jot down what you did with that time. So you do this every day for a week. And again, really simple.

Melanie Mishler: 07:07

If you're an overachiever, you can jot down every half hour. If this is too much for you, you can do it every two hours, make it work for you. But the gist of it is we want to get some data and see where our time is going. So for instance, if I was going to do it for this morning, here's what mine will look like. It's my day off, so don't judge. Seven o 'clock, I woke up, seven to eight. I was snuggling Cooper in bed. I talked to Andy on the phone. I did my daily plan and drank coffee.

And then from eight to nine, I took a shower. I snuggled Cooper by the fire and that was about it. And then from 10 to 11, I worked on my book and on and on and on. Right. So basically like all you're doing is just jotting down what you did. Now notice I didn't say judge what you did, evaluate your productivity, beat yourself up for what you didn't get done.

shit talk yourself or wasting time. And I also didn't say completely reorganize your week. So it's like an overly productive week, right? No, none of that. I want you to just go about your normal life, your normal schedule. You can start it right now and in an hour jot down what you did. I want you to think of yourself almost like a scientist collecting data. And if you do this for a full week, I guarantee you, you're going to have so much data.

and so much information about your life. And information is power. Well, actually, I take that back. Information is only power if we utilize it, if we do something with it. But after this time audit, you will have a very, very clear picture of where your time is actually going. And let me tell you, when I did this, I was blown away. Because at the time, like I said, I was working with my coach and I kept coming up with excuses. Like every week I would come to session and I would have excuses for

why I hadn't made progress on my book or why I hadn't moved forward in my dreams. And so she gave me this assignment. And the following week when I met with her, I was like, well, snap. Apparently I'm not as busy as I keep saying I am, right? Because I will share my results with you. And this is a little embarrassing, but when I did this, I discovered that I spent over 40 hours, 40 hours spinning my wheels.

Melanie Mishler: 09:30

I was using my time doing things like answering emails that could have been answered probably in a quarter amount of the time, but I would get distracted and do something else. I would spend my time listening to murder podcasts, which is my favorite thing to do, watching trash TV on Netflix, drinking wine, organizing my drawers that did not need to be organized for the 20th time. These are just a few of the ways that I had spent over 40 of my precious hours that week.

And so by approaching this in kind of a scientific discovery way, I was able to get clarity on what's really important to me. Like, are those things important? Is that really how I want to be spending my time? And then once I had that data, once I had that awareness, I had the option to make a different choice, right? To make an educated and aware choice. So I urge you to take on this challenge and try the time on it this week.

And you're going to be really surprised. Every time I do this with someone, they find a lot of time. I'm not just talking one hour, two hours. It's like 20, 30 plus hours a week that they are finding and they don't know that they have this time. It's just kind of going away. So if you do this and you want to dive more deeply into like, hmm, well, why am I squandering my time this way? That's something that we do in my program or with my coaching. But right now is time to just gather the data.

Like, let's just see, are we really so busy? Do we really not have time? All right. I hope you take this on. If you do, email me. I really want to hear what your results are. I want to hear how it went for you. My email is hello at MelanieMischler .com. It's M-I -S -H -L -E -R. You can also DM me on Instagram. It's Melanie .Mischler. All right, friend. Till next time, stay well.