Patty is sharing one of the things that people find difficult. They tell her it’s more challenging than (almost) anything else. Doing nothing. She’s not talking about taking a vacation, though going to another space or leaving familiar routines can be part of the process.
Often, our soul or higher self knows when we have reached maximum capacity. Unfortunately, we don’t always listen. Being behind often means working harder and not allowing any breaks.
For some, procrastination shows up. There’s so much to do, yet we can’t find the energy and capacity to act.
Can you create time to do nothing?
Patty breaks down the 4 most likely responses. She also explains how to recognize the excuses when they pop up. Hear how you can carve out the time without guilt.
What happens when you are left with just you?
There’s often discomfort at first. Patty shares how this may show up for you. How do we navigate the alone time?
Like most things that help us achieve clarity, you may need to address the doubt and fear that may show up when you commit to time away.
Sometimes it takes a lot to find our truth.
When you need to clear your energy, give yourself space to set up boundaries and honor what your soul needs. Patty shares how her recent break brought her a big revelation that she hadn’t been able to see.
One of the top questions in Receiving School is “how can I know if the answers are right for me”? Space to hear is a great place to start.
Stepping away from the need to be busy, and having every day filled with responsibilities and tasks is a good first step to listening.
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TRANSCRIPT
0:00:04.3: Welcome to the space for magic podcast, where people who are led by their hearts come to learn the secrets to receiving all the gifts the Universe has for us. I’m your host, Patty Lennon. I’m an ex-Type A corporate banker turned intuitive coach. Using a blend of common sense brain science and just a dash of magic. I’m here to help you create abundance in every area of your life and business. Welcome. Welcome.
0:00:36.9: To this episode of the space for magic podcast. Hey, I am your host, Patty Lennon. And today I’m gonna talk about probably the most challenging homework I give anyone whether they’re private client or in the receiving school or mastermind, this is hands down the thing people resist the most, and that is taking time off. Now, that can be confusing. What I’m talking about, if you’re thinking, I’m saying take a week off and go to the beach, or take a week off and get all the stuff done around the house that you haven’t gotten done. But that’s not what I’m referring to. I’m talking about taking a week off or even two where you have no agenda, it’s fine if you decide to go to the beach, but if you’re there in the hopes of filling that time with beach activity, then that sort of defeats the purpose…
0:01:39.5: Because the purpose really is to not have an agenda, to be in a space and time where all your responsibilities including even getting to massage are off your shoulders, and I do encourage people during this time, if you wanna get a massage, that’s great. But if it requires that you schedule it way in advance, you need to either be willing to forgo the investment in the massage if you don’t feel like doing it, or just only book last minute, and what I mean is if you book a massage for, let’s say 10 am and you’ll feel like getting out of bed, you don’t go, which usually means that you’ll get charged for the massage, and there’s a reason for my madness, the method of my madness, which is that we are so hyper-scheduled and so hyper-productive, whether you believe this or not, and I get it because a lot of people that encounter this assignment, I think that they’re not doing nearly enough with their time, they’re not nearly productive enough.
0:02:41.6: They’re procrastinating, there’s a laundry list of things they haven’t gotten done, but generally, what brings us to this homework assignment is the awareness that the reason you’re procrastinating, the reason you’re not getting things done is because your inner world, like your inner intelligent being, understands that you’ve hit maximum capacity and it’s slowing you down by putting up roadblocks to actually being productive because it’s the only way it knows how to keep you from continuing, this rapid pace of productivity, now, that’s one reason why I might assign this to someone if someone just keeps telling me I just can’t seem to find the motivation to do anything.
0:03:26.3: I’m tired all the time, you know, I want to do this thing, I want to write this book, I want to clean this house, I want to start this business, I want to get back out dating whatever it is, but I just can’t even motivate to do it, when I hear that, and I know that what they’re saying they truly do wanna do, what I’m hearing is that they’re exhausted at the cellular level, and I think most people are in a normal year, but take us on the back of a pandemic year. And I think everyone is there and everyone needs a break, and I was one of those… Everyone people, No, I’m not. Probably at the stage of fatigue-ing exhaustion maybe that others are, because this is a habit I’ve cultivated, and I’ve been doing it for quite some time, taking this space and time away of doing nothing… In fact, I had just gone to the Cape by myself in my, say, September, for this purpose, for this agendaless time, where you don’t have a purpose to it other than to meet yourself where you are, to actually get back into relationship with yourself.
0:04:40.0: And there’s another valuable piece of this assignment, which is that there are a lot of resources around us, both metaphysical guides, angels, god force and nature that can help clear the toxic energy out of our body, whether it’s toxicity that’s come from being around toxic people, toxic situations, or the natural fear and stress that happens as a result of being in difficult, challenging situations and without doing more than anything else if you simply be… That will start to unwind itself, the natural forces in the world will start to unwind it yourself. Now, you’re probably saying they’re in thinking I would love nothing more and to just take away a week off and just be… And I will tell you that that may sound good in concept, but if I put it to you right now, Okay, do this, I’m telling you, this is the number one thing you can do to clear your energy to attracting more abundant, to accomplish the most that you can accomplish this year. Whatever it is, whatever is on your desire bucket list, I promise you, taking a week of agendaless time is going to propel any of that forward, if I was to tell you that, and I could just tell you for sure this will work.
0:06:06.4: When would you schedule it? Where would you find the time on your calendar, and if you’re like most people, the first thing you’ll do with me is tell me You can’t not for weeks and weeks and weeks, maybe… Maybe in August, you’d be able to do it. And as I’m recording this, it is May, and I don’t know why people always tell me it’s like three or four months off, I think that’s just far enough off that you don’t have to really commit to it, because that’s usually where everyone falls out, it’s like, Oh, I think I can do this in about three or four months, and I’m telling you, No, you have to do it in the next three weeks, you have to clear your calendar for a week in the next three weeks, and most likely you tell me that’s just not possible and if you do eventually get on board with this concept, you will likely negotiate down the amount of time to maybe three days that you can get three days of this… Now, I will put a caveat, if you have primary responsibility for children who cannot live on their own young children, or maybe you’re caring for someone with a need where you just do not have someone else that can help you…
0:07:17.8: Of course, that this is not 100% doable. And if that’s the case, then what I recommend is you do it to the best of your ability, which means you really eliminate any responsibility that isn’t absolutely necessary, including if your kids are old enough to pour themselves a bowl cereal, letting them make their own food, and I will say, pushing back on you just be sure that that’s actually true, that you can’t get help, someone, to help care for these people, or is it that you would feel bad… Inconveniencing someone, because that is not the same thing, if it’s simply that you’d feel bad inconveniencing someone, you really do need to look at that and ask them… And give them the option to say no. Alright, so presuming, you’re on board and you’re considering this at least here is what will likely happen, it’ll sound really good at first, but the closer you get to actually making it happen, you’re going to have reasons why this is in a good time. Reasons why this may not be a good decision. And if you’re working with me, you’re probably messaging me more than once to check in and see if this still feels like This is what you’re supposed to do, and the answer is, and you don’t need me in your back pocket for this because the answer is always Yes, yes, it is the right thing to do.
0:08:39.2: So as you get closer and closer, there’s gonna be some trepidation, there may be some pitfalls that show up that you’ve attracted into your life to try and create some stumbling blocks… Yes, this is all normal. But let’s say you get to the promise land and you get these days off either in your home or away, again, the point isn’t to go away, the point you can, but the point is to have no agenda, nothing required of your time and to be able to do whatever you feel like doing. And I just took one of these trips, so I just got back, I was only away for a few days, and like most people, there were reasoned in my life, I couldn’t take a whole week and right now it’s ’cause we’re in the middle of the receiving school so I am present for people all the time, there’s just just what’s impossible to have a week yet, there will be two weeks at the end of receiving school, but for now, I just need a few days to clear any of the energy that had gotten stuck in my body unwind, etcetera, and I was really surprised to see that I had the experience that I see a lot of people have when they do this process for the first or the second time, and I’ve done this many, many times.
0:09:58.1: And their experience that you’re gonna have, even though it sounds glorious to have no responsibilities, is you’re going to wake up in that first day and wonder what is it that you’re supposed to be doing with this day, you’ll be faced with the level of addiction you have to your time being directed by activities by someone else, by someone’s needs… By social media, because the other rule when you do this is to come off of all technology, which is what I did, and I think the reason it was so challenging for me this particular time is that I’ve never taken one of these breaks in the midst of receiving School, where I am so significantly connected to the community, where I’m on our community page multiple times a day, talking to people as well as having my Mastermind still running and talking to my Mastermind, or is staying with my finger on the pulse of all of these people in addition to my family. And on top of it, my kids are in travel sports, and I usually don’t schedule this during a travel Sport Time, just because they’re just so much going on, so I’ve been more busy in the last five weeks then I probably have been in a year, and I think that’s part of the reason why when I woke up the first day, I didn’t know what to do with myself, and yesterday, a friend of mine finally did this for herself, she has had dogs that through the pandemic, they did not feel comfortable.
0:11:34.7: Her and her partner didn’t feel comfortable having the dogs cared for by someone else, and so although she’s had days to herself, she’s always had the responsibility of caring for a dog, she makes their food from scratch and they have multiple walks and her partner took the dog away to their other home, and she had a day to herself and she texted, now, what the hell am I supposed to do? And I was sending her funny memes of people looking scared and crouched in the field position in the corner there. Pause, that’s literally what it feels like, that’s what you end up experiencing, and I joke and call it the excruciating pain of doing nothing because you think it’s what you want, and then yet when you’re left with just you and you… Oh my goodness. It can be pretty scary, and it’s not scary because there’s something scared to be about, but what happens is all of the thoughts, all of the things you were able to push away with your busyness start to bubble up to the surface. And the reality is that first day, it’s actually pretty uncomfortable, even the second day can be uncomfortable, and I’ll be totally honest with you, I was only gone for three days and I never quite settled down and I realized, Oh right, this is why…
0:13:01.0: I highly recommend a week because it does take two to two and a half days to sort of settle into this new experience in those first couple of days, there’s just this feeling like you didn’t do something, you left something behind, something’s gonna go wrong in your absence and these are all normal things to happen, they’re not normal for our bodies understand, understand that for your body not to exist in a state of agenda list, opportunity should not create so much anxiety and yet it does. It does for me, who’s been doing this for quite some time than it does for pretty much everyone I give the assignment to. Now, on the other side of that is though, many blessings, and those blessings are blessings of awareness, their blessings of coming back a little more whole, a little fuller of your own energy system, and you know we get in this work, our team, when we put something out often gets questions about, Okay, I’m doing the work, but how do I deal with all the people around me who are not doing the work? And I get this, there’s something we do in the receiving school called the complaining detox, which for a week, your goal is to not complain, now, you can talk about the things that make you uncomfortable, but the goal is, to tell the truth about them and not complain about them.
0:14:26.9: And then inevitably what comes up is, okay, I’m doing this, it’s hard, I’m doing this, but it’s really hard being around other people that are complaining, right. So that’s big questions we get is how do we navigate the people around us who are toxic, how do we create boundaries to our energy with that? And this exercise is the best way to do it, because it creates a natural boundary, if you only do what you feel like doing, it sends a pulse out to the universe that says, I’m ready to be cleared, I’m ready for my energy to be restored, and I do whenever possible, recommend that if you can go by an open body of water during this time, it’s really helpful. Moving water, I was by the Long Island Sound. This time that I usually go to a Cape, which is the Atlantic Ocean, because what that moving body of water does it’s a natural cleanser it’s like washing your system clean of energy toxins that just keep you… Clouded, make it hard for you to stay motivated and you come back refreshed and renewed ideally, depending on how long it’s been since you took a break, it may just do part of the work because I’ve had clients who…
0:15:45.1: When I asked them, When’s the last time you took two weeks off, they actually can’t remember and it’s been more than 10 years, and then we go to, Okay, well, how long did you have a week off? And they’re still at the same time frame, 10 years. Well, in that case, that week is gonna do you a lot of good, but it’s probably gonna need to happen a few more times throughout the year to get the full impact, but no matter what you’re going to find is you’re gonna be better on the other side of it, but like most things that really work, there’s a point in time that you have to stick with it through a period of doubt and fear, it seems crazy, but that first day of doing nothing, it will bring up so much anxiety. So much fear. Am I selling you this? Now, I realize as I’m telling you this, I’m like, These people are just never gonna do this now, but it’s worth it. I promise you, it’s worth it. Because what you find then is awarenesses… And what was so fascinating for my time away recently, is that this to me was not some huge break, I just need it, I needed some space.
0:16:56.5: And my kid being in school through covid and having these travel sports, I just knew I couldn’t take these days off at home, there would just be too many times that people would be asking something of me, not meaning to, they could ask simple questions like When did my game get moved to… And I need to be away from that, and I wanted to be by the water. So I went to this hotel pretty close to as a nice beautiful resort, and fascinatingly every couple of hours something went sideways, and it wasn’t terribly sideways, and these will sound like really obnoxious problems when I tell you what they were, but for instance, we booked through a system where we had points and you could upgrade to have an early check-in and a late check-out, and I knew it wasn’t guaranteed, but I’d ask for an early check-in and they said I could have it, so I scheduled my massage at the time I would normally check-in ’cause I figured I have already be in my room… Well, I wasn’t… At the end of the day, it was no problem, I would have been able to have the message anyway, it was just, I would have had my bags not settled, they moved the massage, they apologized, profusely.
0:18:07.3: They had gotten my reservation mixed up with someone else, so the massage I was meant to get was a deep tissue, and I am like a crazy person with massages, I really need deep, deep tissue. Like a regular massage, just does not do it for me ’cause I have back issues, so I had asked them that ahead of time, I checked in with the massage therapist, I just wanna make sure you know I’m really good with very strong pressure and he’s like, Yes, absolutely, he starts doing massage and it’s like the weakest massage I’ve ever gotten, so I just say, Hey, you know… Could you go a little bit deeper? He’s like, sure goes barely deeper. I mean, this would not… This wouldn’t even qualify as a deep tissue massage, and I’m staying there, I’m like, Huh? And I’m in this now, I have all the tools, I’m like, Oh, I wonder why I’ve invited this kind of unsatisfying massage in whatever… We get to my room. There was something else up with it again, not the end of the world. But when this stuff happens, I know enough to know. Somehow I’m not allowing myself to fully enjoy this, the next morning, they check me out of my hotel room by mistake, and I only happen to catch it because my phone was dead in my room, and I pulled up my email even though I was trying to stay off-tech, I pulled up my email ’cause I had the direct line to the front desk, and I wanted to call them and just say, Can I have towels ’cause we weren’t gonna be using…
0:19:34.0: I wasn’t gonna be using the cleaning service during covid, and I pull up my email and I see… Well, thank you for staying with us. And I’m like, Oh my god, I did, I come running downstairs. I’m like, I think you just checked me out of my room and they’re like, Oh my gosh, we’re so sorry, we don’t know what this is about… They fix it, they buy back in my room, then I go to… I go to have a meal in the restaurant, they can’t find my room, and I didn’t have my credit card with me, so had to go get my credit card again, all these problems are nonsense problems, I get that they’re all problems of privilege, but I’ve done this enough times to know, oh my goodness, there’s something going on here. There’s some reason that this is happening, and I’m not gonna assume it’s my own resistance at this point, but I am gonna watch it and just receive it and just see what it has to teach me, so by the third morning, something else had happened and I won’t even bore you with the insignificant details, but they were consistent enough that the front desk manager was so…
0:20:42.3: So sorry, and she was like, I really need you to just talk to the hotel manager because, at this point, I don’t even have the authority to do what I think needs to be done. To make it up to you, I’m holding it together, but now I’m starting to feel like, This feels really hard, and it feels like I miss out on what I needed to have, which was a fully relaxing time, and I’m again, not blaming anyone, taking 100% responsibility for having called this and potentially also seeing that there’s a lesson… And so before I called the hotel manager, I just sat quietly. Now, I have been spending all my other time just sitting by the water, that’s all I did for those days, other than things I just mentioned, I ate and I sat by the water. So it was really beautiful. It was really beautiful and it was a beautiful space. And I’m sitting there thinking like, Why can I let this in? And all of a sudden, just some deep emotions come through me of having to have been the fixer for things, and I’m looking back on these days, I’ve stayed there and I realized that I was in this mode of trying to make the massage therapists feel good about the less than good massage, trying to make waiter feel better about the fact that he couldn’t find my room and keeping a smile on my face and being pleasant, ’cause truly, I understand that the hotel industry has really been through such a difficult time, and I’m imagining all these people probably are just back to work or have feared for their jobs, and I’m holding all this compassion for them through the whole thing, but I realized through all of that unintentionally, I spent most of the time taking care of other people when I was supposed to just be focused on myself.
0:22:33.5: And this is what happens sometimes when we do nothing, we actually do a lot, we – our pattern show ourselves, and I realized that’s what happened this year, is that things change so radically, and that’s why this particular break was so challenging for me because I got to a place where I really allowed my children to run their lives as much as possible, and my husband to be a true partner in this household, but covid-upended things, and there were just places that my children didn’t have the skill to navigate what was coming at them, and I had to get in there. Maybe I didn’t have to, but I think I really did. We were all in it together, and I realized that for a year between holding space for my clients and our family, and having just closed my dad’s estate at the beginning of covid, really just trying to get some grieving in, that I had just been in… Fix-It mode, like I hadn’t left Fix It mode, and that’s really what I was looking for, a break from just these tears started coming that I just needed a couple of days where I didn’t have to fix something, and also mourning the fact that I took that from myself, right? No one asked me to do what I had done or how I behaved, and so when I finally called the hotel manager, I started off saying, You know, I just…
0:23:58.8: Wanna, tell you, the people here in this hotel have been wonderful. The mistakes that were made were systemic mistakes, but the humans are just wonderful, which makes it really hard for me to give you this laundry list of things that went wrong because I think they were just a confluence events. And he’s like, I already know what’s happened. Tell me what can we do, what can we do to make the rest of your stay somewhat good, but I was checking out in a couple of hours and I said, honestly John, there’s nothing you can do. I’m leaving soon. He was, well, what can I do to make it up to you? And I was, you know, I cry all the time. You probably realized that if you listen to this for a while, but there are certain circumstances where when I start crying, I am truly embarrassed, sometimes when I’m talking to my kids, teachers and I start crying unexpectedly. That’s embarrassing to me. And in this case, I did start crying ’cause it really felt silly what I was crying over, and I said, You know, I just needed a couple of days away where I wasn’t fixing things, and I said, I just never had the feeling that I could relax and I said, I take responsibility for that, is just…
0:25:12.3: That’s just the reality as I needed this time and I didn’t get it, and he goes, What can we do? And all of a sudden occurred to me and I said, You know what, John, I just need this to be one problem, I don’t have to fix… You know what’s happened, I don’t know how you fix it, but I just need to be not the one that comes up with that particular solution, and in that moment, there’s a huge woosh of energy went out of my body, it was like this amazing cleansing of this clenching that I had been happening inside my body because sometimes it takes a lot for us to find our truth, to find the truth of what’s bothering us, to find the truth of what we need, and up until that moment, I didn’t realize that the weight of finding answers for people had become so heavy on me, but being able to speak those words did this amazing clearing inside of name and he was lovely. He said I get it. That’s a completely appropriate response… Let me see what I can do. Now, he did go on to do lovely things for me, they waived a night at the hotel, they paid for my massage, and they were just profusely…
0:26:31.7: Sorry, were profusely apologizing, and I was so grateful for those gifts, but what was more beautiful in that interaction was the gift of this entire time was for me to have the truth that the effort of solving people’s problems that clearly weren’t mine to solve must have tipped the balance, and now I get to go back home and look at that and do the work on that, do the work on why I felt the need to accept that responsibility and that awareness is amazing, and that is why doing nothing can be so excruciating because these… Pieces of information come up and they don’t quite build the whole picture, it’s like you’re getting these jigsaw pieces of what you need to look at, and it takes days before the jigsaw puzzle all of a sudden comes together and chose itself to you. And in your case, the week of doing nothing, it might not be for you to discover that you’re solving too many people’s problems or carrying the burden of doing it, although that might be your burden, you might already know that your burden… It could be something completely different. Is that you’re just tired.
0:27:48.1: Right, you’re just tired. That could be enough but until we give ourselves the wisdom of own counsel, which can only happen once we exit relationship to everyone else for a short period of time and relationship to obligations, we can’t get that full wisdom of our own counsel and our own counsel, our own inner wisdom can tell us exactly what we need to know, and we’re in the part of the receiving school where many people are asking like, How do I trust these answers I’m getting… How do I trust these answers? What I offer is, it’s not just that you trust the answers you’re getting in the moment, but you trust that if you follow the answers, even if they’re not, exactly, they don’t create exactly the result you think they’re gonna create, that you can trust yourself to be strong enough on the other side of them, that comes with being in relationship to your own inner wisdom, that’s how you build trust and is it, is to have full and open conversations with it, but without the space to do that, it’s almost impossible. And oftentimes, if we have been busy, busy, busy, when we first take that space away, there’s a lot of uncomfortable messages our inner wisdom has to share with us, and that’s what makes that beginning time so excruciating.
0:29:10.5: But I promise you, if you are looking to clean and clear the energy in your body, this is the most powerful way to do it, and I hope you will take the opportunity to create that space for yourself if you can only get a few days… That’s a wonderful start. Just understand those first couple of days are generally the hardest, that’s why I really do strongly encourage a full week, and I truly, truly hope you’ll find that time for yourself if anything I’ve said has resonated with you in terms of… You feel depleted, you feel unmotivated, you find yourself procrastinating all the time, and then if you’re not able to get away right now, but you do really feel like you need some tools to help clear your energy to kind of reboot your energy and maybe set up some systems to clean, toxic energy in your space or in your body then… I have some good news for you. I’m gonna be doing a training next week, if you go to pattylennon.com/training at the time that I’m recording this, I haven’t even set the date and time, but I do know I’m gonna be doing it next week from when this drops.
0:30:24.1: So if you just go to pattylennon.com/training, you’ll see the option to join us for that training, it will be recorded, we’ll have it live, but it will also be recorded and you’ll be… As long as you sign up for the training, you’ll get the recording, and it’s all gonna be about the tools that you can use to clean and clear energy tools like white sage and sound some breathing exercises, and so setting up energetic boundaries around yourself, so that other people’s toxic energy can’t get to you. So that sounds good, go to pattylennon.com/training, and by the time you’re listening to this, the day and time will be established, I believe it’s going to be on Tuesday, and I don’t even have the calendar… Let me look at my phone. Quick my Goodness.
0:31:16.7: Yes, it should be Tuesday, the 18th. But again, check the training page. You’ll have the exact date and time. Alright, have a great day. Hey, thanks for listening. If you know someone who needs to hear this message, please share this episode with them, and if you’re feeling really generous, I’d love for you to leave us a review at your favorite podcast app, it helps us reach many more people and it fills my heart with so much joy. When I hear what you have to say about what I’ve shared, I’m cheering for your success, have an amazing day, and don’t forget. Always create space from magic.
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