That’s what I’ve been saying to the parts of me that show up and go “Hey! You can’t relax! Are you NUTS?! Do you know what will happen if you do? You need to work hard and harder and even harder. And then–again tomorrow.”

Oy. That was exhausting, living that way. And–life changing news flash!–it made everything harder, not easier.

Because if there’s no space, there’s no space for Life to come in and make things easier.

Some of you who know me may be going “Haven’t you been doing that for ages?” Kind of.

I made it a practice a couple years ago to give myself permission to do super luxuriant, nourishing things–even during the workday. Gasp. So I take time out and go the spa, get a massage, sit on a cafe sidewalk and watch people while sipping drinking chocolate.

But something happened after going back to work after having our daughter. My time for working is less. By choice. I have certain times where I can do it uninterrupted. So that old habit of mine of go go go, fill every minute, you have two minutes of work time left so keep going and get this next thing done, too–that habit came back.

The sneaky thing about this habit is that it seems so valid. It seems like “Of course you need to do it all that way–you don’t have time.”

And there it is: that false, stress-perpetuating lie. That we don’t have time. That time is limited. That it’s linear and racing by us. That we have to try to catch up, to make time, to find time.

I did an experiment a couple years ago: I started changing how I talked about time. Which changed how I thought about time.

I stopped saying “I don’t have time.” I stopped talking about time as a master of me. That caused me to think about time differently.

Apparently, time isn’t linear. It isn’t even logical. It’s like, triple dimensional. Or something. I don’t know the science of it. Someone out there does. Not me.

It definitely is impacted by how we perceive it. If I think I have no time, I will feel that. If I think I have lots of time, I will feel that. And then–and this is the magical part–I’ll actually have more time.

Like I am. Again. When those parts of me that go “You can’t relax!” get loud, I go “Yup, I can. And I will. I have time. It’s okay.”