What if you’re not behind on the life you want to say YES! to? What if time isn’t slipping away, but simply setting things up perfectly for you?

For years, I felt like I was racing against the clock to check off my life must-do list. I constantly felt behind on life. I was always rushing to catch up on being where I told myself I should be. Always running out of hours with this nagging fear that I was already too late to create the life I wanted.

But the more I chased time, the more I chased trying to be someplace by someplace in time, the more stressed, anxious, and overwhelmed I became, and the more time I felt like I was losing.

Until I changed the way I saw it.

And today, I want to share with you five powerful truths that rewrote my relationship with time and helped me stop rushing, start trusting, and finally breathe to enjoy the moment.

If you’ve ever felt the pressure of being behind on life, this episode is for you.

Welcome to The Self-Creation School podcast, for women who are ready to ditch mediocrity, step up and get more of what they want, and finally say YES! to a life that sets their soul on fire. I’m your host Leanne Letica, Self-Creation Coach, founder of The Self-Creation School AND Queen of YES!. If you’re ready to play life by your own personal rule book, and give yourself permission to say YES! to yourself and your wildest dreams, this podcast is the place for you.

Hello, and a very warm welcome to today’s episode where we are going to be talking about your relationship with time.

But before we do, I want to firstly acknowledge you for taking the time to prioritize yourself in this moment, to say YES! to you and your potential by listening in to this podcast. I am very appreciative of your time, and I personally am very committed to providing as much value as I can each and every week to make listening in worth your while.

The things I share are things that have allowed me over the years to completely reinvent myself and my life and they have helped me say YES! to a life today that I wildly love. So I know first-hand the profound difference what I share here with you can make in your life.

With that said, let’s talk about time.

I spent years feeling like time went by in a complete blur. I would wake up already feeling exhausted and overwhelmed by the day ahead, but I’d pushed through pretty much in an autopilot daze, just going through the motions to chase the next thing on my life must-do list.

My corresponding to do list just kept growing, I never made it to the end of my list, ever. Honestly, I set myself up for an impossible task every single day because no one had enough hours to do all the things I expected myself to do each day.

And I pushed myself beyond my exhaustion quite hard because here’s the thing, I had already made a lot of mistakes, and I told myself every day that I was behind on life and there was no time to waste in making up for the time I had already wasted. In fact, I had to times my effort by two or three to make up for it.

I spent all of my time trying to get somewhere, wherever somewhere was, to have something valuable to show for my time on this earth. And actually, not just something valuable to show, but what society told me I should have to show for myself by this point of time in my life. But no matter how much I achieved with my time, it never felt like it was enough.

And for me, time became something I didn’t enjoy it. It was something I raced against constantly trying to prove myself and my value to the world. I felt this constant pressure that I was supposed to be more, do more, have more by now, and that I was running out of time to figure it all out.

Honestly, by the time I hit 40, I was convinced my best years were already behind me and my life was what it was.

Maybe you felt this too, the weight of an invisible deadline. The fear that you’re behind. The anxiety that maybe you’ve missed your moment. I know it’s something that comes up a lot for the women that I coach.

So today, I want to share with you five powerful truths that changed the way I see time and helped me stop rushing, start trusting and embracing my unique process of becoming, and finally allow myself to breathe and enjoy the moment.

Let’s dive straight in.

And the first truth I want to share is this—there is no hurry. There is no hurry because this isn’t a race. And I know, it can sometimes feel like it is. We live in a world that glorifies speed. Faster success. Faster results. Faster everything.

I’ve lost count of the number of ads I see every single day in my social media feeds telling me that making $100,000 in 30 days is what makes a coach successful. That having my Instagram reels go vile overnight is the only way I can build my audience. That women are dropping their midlife middle in 15 days or less sometimes, like it’s some kind of race and there’s only one race we can be in.

Now, I’ve been around in business for a very long time. I was doing business online before most people even knew what an email was. Over the years I’ve seen a lot of people race to the top and just as quickly race to the bottom because they didn’t take the time to build the foundations required for lasting success.

If you’ve ever built a house or seen a high rise being built, you’ll know the foundations take the longest to build, but without them you are building on very shaky ground. If you ignore the foundations in the hurry to produce a result, you compromise the long-term success of the overall project.

This is why I spend a lot of time with my private clients, helping them take the time to set solid foundations before rushing out to do all the things. Because I don’t want them to just create a quick transformation. I want them to create a life they will love waking up to for years to come.

And there are many things in life that simply are not a race and hurrying them can actually have a detrimental effect on the outcome. Weight loss is one of those things. I mentioned being bombarded with the midlife weight loss ads just a moment ago—I’m sure you’ve seen them too.

Now, I have a lot of experience in helping people lose weight. I was a health and wellness coach for many years. I still do a little bit of work in that space. And I know that weight loss is absolutely not a race. Not if you want the weight loss to be lasting in any case. And yet every day, there are people out there trying to sell us on the magic bullet, right? The surefire way to losing your stubborn midlife belly fat overnight.

Here’s what I know from years of my own weight loss struggles and helping countless others with theirs. The faster you lose the weight, the faster you will likely regain it and more. When it comes to weight loss, there is definitely no hurry.

So, we are constantly being sold on this idea that things like weight loss and business success and financial success, amongst others, should happen not just in a set time, but in record time. That life should happen according to certain benchmarks, or you are failing.

And I’m not suggesting that taking timely action isn’t required if you want to achieve results. But taking intentional action in a timely manner is a very different energy than taking panic-based action in a race against time.

Intentional action is moving towards something you want with considered effort in every moment. Panic action is scrambling towards something because you’re afraid of being left behind without any real regard to the moment.

And panic will make you rush past the very things that matter most. Like building that solid foundation for your success. Like the magic in all of the moments along the way. Like seeing the signpost and taking the turns towards a life you do actually want to experience.

For me, after years of rushing, pushing, forcing things to happen on a timeline I thought I had to meet, I eventually realized that I was so focused on getting to a destination that, in reality, I didn’t even know for sure I wanted to go to, that I wasn’t actually building a life I loved waking up to. I wasn’t enjoying my time, I wasn’t living each moment.

And that’s the real cost of the hurry. When we convince ourselves we’re behind, we stop appreciating the life we actually have. We stop giving ourselves the space to explore, to grow, to enjoy the process of becoming who we can be over time and because of time. Instead, we exist in a state of panic, overwhelm and anxiety because we believe we are behind and so we are in this constant race to play catch up.

The question we need to ask is, behind who? And behind what? Because there really is no master schedule that says by 30 you should have this, by 40 you should be there, by 50 you should have it all figured out, and by 60, well, all is said and done. Because there really is no one size fits all way that life should look, am I right? If you’re listening to me in this podcast, I know you’ve either realized this already, or you are in the process of realizing this.

Human life is so much more complex and unique that a single set of standards and benchmarks could possibly allow for. And while there is no set in stone timeline, still we hold ourselves to these invisible deadlines. We convince ourselves that if we don’t hit a milestone by a certain age, we are behind. If we didn’t make the right choice at the right time, we’ve missed our shot. That if we want to change paths after a certain age, we’re too late.

And so we must ask why we are holding ourselves to these invisible deadlines as if they are the law. Why we judge ourselves against them. Why we shut down the possibility of making our dreams happen because we didn’t make the finish line according to someone else’s timeline or some invisible timeline we’ve been conditioned to follow.

The truth my friend is that time belongs uniquely to each of us. Your time is yours and my time is mine. It’s not a competition, it isn’t a race, and there is no hurry. Time is not your enemy. Your belief that you are running behind or running out of time is. But you cannot be behind or out of time if there is no set in stone timeline, am I right?

And in knowing that there is no timeline, how does that change the way you feel about your life today in this moment? What do you do differently without this pressure of time? Do you breathe a little deeper? Think a little more clearly? Do you stop second-guessing who you are and where you’re at? Do you stop rushing and allowing yourself to be present in this moment instead of obsessing over the next? Do you take more intentional action to make your moments matter?

Imagine how different life would look and feel without the need to hurry. My friend, here’s what I know. The more you chase time, the more it feels like time is slipping away. But the moment you let go of the hurry, you stop running against the clock and you start living.

Now, the second truth that changed my relationship with time is understanding that everything blooms at a different pace.

Different flowers bloom at different times. They have their own growing and blooming seasons. A rose doesn’t rush to bloom just because the tulips blossomed first. It doesn’t question whether it’s behind, whether it’s missing its moment, or whether it’s too late. It simply follows its own timing, trusting that when the right conditions align, it will bloom.

But as humans, we don’t tend to do that. Instead, we look around and we compare. We measure where we are against where others are, and if someone else has bloomed before us, we question why it is we haven’t done so.

And it’s easy to get caught up in the story that you’re putting in all this time and effort, you may be doing the exact same things as someone else is doing, and their life is flourishing, but yours? Not so much. And you start making it mean that it won’t happen for you.

But the reality is everything blooms at its own pace. Growth isn’t linear. Everything has its own timing, and just because someone else is blooming right now doesn’t mean your season isn’t coming.

And the thing is, forcing growth doesn’t actually make things happen any faster. In fact, sometimes it does the opposite, it stunts your growth. Here’s what I mean, and let’s use flowers again as an example.

There are things a flower needs in order to grow, like sunshine and water. Without them, it won’t thrive. But if you drown it in water, or scorch it with too much sun, you don’t speed up its bloom, you kill it. To grow, it needs the right balance of nurture, and part of that balance is allowing time for growth to happen. You can help the growth but there is a certain component of growth that rests in the hands of time.

And the same is true for you. Yes, you need to take action to grow. Yes, you need to nourish your dreams. But forcing something to happen before it’s ready, that’s like drowning your own potential. There’s a difference between nurturing growth and desperately trying to force it. Honestly, forcing growth simply doesn’t work, and sometimes it actually snaps you back further than where you started.

Think about times when you push yourself too hard, too fast. Maybe it’s been in your career, your relationships, in your business or your health. And suddenly everything collapses under the pressure. That’s what happens when you force growth instead of allowing it to unfold at a pace that you can sustain.

It’s like stretching a rubber band too far, too fast, and eventually it snaps back. And when that happens it just provides more evidence for the stories you likely already have that what you want won’t happen for you.

I talked earlier about trying to grow your business too fast without building a foundation. That is a very good example of how forcing growth can backfire. But how about relationships that move too quickly? You rush into something before you’ve built the emotional foundation, and then when challenges come up, the whole thing falls apart because it really wasn’t strong enough to last.

How about putting yourself out there in a huge way before you’ve done the inner work to support it, and then you find yourself feeling overwhelmed, second-guessing and retreating because it feels like too much, too soon.

What about those extreme diets or fitness pushes? You force your body into rapid transformation, but because the habits weren’t built in a way that you can maintain, you snap back, or worse, you end up feeling worse than when you started.

You see the pattern? When you try to force growth instead of nurturing it and allowing it to happen at its own pace, it doesn’t just stall you, it can actually set you back. And that’s because true growth isn’t about how fast you get there. It’s about becoming strong enough to hold what it is you’re growing into.

So what if, instead of trying to rush your own becoming, you simply allowed yourself to grow? What if you stopped questioning whether you’re blooming fast enough, and trusted that your time to bloom is coming exactly when it’s meant to? That just because you can’t yet see the results of your efforts, it doesn’t mean you won’t eventually bloom.

Now this brings me to the third truth that changed my relationship with time. Everything is unfolding perfectly for you. I know, sometimes life doesn’t look like it’s unfolding perfectly, sometimes nothing is going according to plan, and everything feels like it’s falling apart.

I don’t think any of us reach midlife without some really messy moments. But when you look back on things, on the delays, the disappointments and heartbreaks, and the detours that made no sense in the moment, chances are you can now see how these things happened for you, not against you.

How they made you grow, built your resilience and strength, which now means you can handle the bigger and bolder things you dream of. How they actually saved you from going down a road that would have led you a long way off track.

If you cannot see how things happen for you, I encourage you to ask the question. How did this happen for me? And look for all the ways that it did in fact turn out in some kind of positive way. Maybe not as you wanted or expected, and no less heartbreaking or disappointing, but positive in some sense.

I am a firm believer that all of our setbacks, as we tend to view them in the moment, are actually a setup for our success. I know I have had so many near misses that devastated me at the time, even cost me quite dearly at the time. But when I look back, I think, what a lucky escape that was.

Some of my setbacks have happened because I needed to learn things that would later serve me extremely well. And indeed today, I have so much to offer in the space I now work in, only because of the things that I thought were not unfolding perfectly for me at the time. Turns out, they set me up perfectly to do the very thing that lights me up today and helps me change the lives of countless other women.

So things may not seem like they are unfolding perfectly in the moment because sometimes they don’t unfold in the way we want, right? And it’s hard to see anything less or different than what we wanted being a good thing. But looking back, you can often see how things were aligning for you in ways you didn’t expect. How one door closed, but another one you never thought of opening, led you in the most amazing direction.

With hindsight, you can see how the moments that felt like setbacks were actually set ups for something so much better. How the things that didn’t happen were often protection, not rejection. And the waiting for things to turn around wasn’t wasted time, it was preparation for things to come.

And this is where we tend to get it wrong. We think that we have to control the unfolding and the unfolding needs to happen exactly as we plan for it to be a success. But the reality is, you can control some of it, but you cannot control all of it. And you don’t have to micromanage every step to get to where you’re actually meant to be.

I think that is a bigger lesson.

Some of us place a whole lot of time and energy into trying to micromanage things that are simply not within our control. But when you let go of needing things to be a certain way, and the more you trust that each step you take is leading you somewhere you’re meant to go, even if you can’t see where or why just yet, the less pressure you will feel to control every little outcome and the less pressure you’ll feel around time being wasted.

The next truth I have to share with you today follows very much on from this concept. So, the fourth truth is, what is meant for you will not pass you.

You might be starting to notice that what a lot of these truths are really about is having trust. Trusting that you have all the time you need. Trusting the pace of your own timeline. Trusting in things falling into place in the exact way, at the exact moment they are meant to. And trusting that what is meant for you will not pass you.

Now, that doesn’t mean it’s meant for you today. Sometimes we want things that are meant for us at a time when we’re not really quite ready for them and we need to become the version of ourselves who is ready to receive them.

Like for me, moving to Europe. I wanted to do that 10 years before we actually made that happen and because at the time it wasn’t possible, I made that mean it would never be possible. And yet, the timing eventually aligned, I aligned with it, and today I am living out my dream of having moved to Europe.

Then sometimes, things really are just not meant to be. Or at least not meant to be in the way we want them to be. But I really believe that you cannot miss what is truly meant for you. And having trust in this will allow you to embrace all of the detours and leave the door open for where they lead you.

So many of us live in fear that if something doesn’t go to plan, we’ve missed our chance or that we have failed and it’s final. But listen, it’s not always final and failure is just feedback. Failure is redirection. It doesn’t mean that what you want isn’t for you, that it’s not meant for you. Sometimes it’s simply that you need to grow in some way to be a better match for it. And sometimes it means there’s something even better coming.

I’ve seen this play out so many times in both my own life and the lives of others. Like that dream job you didn’t get that led you to a similar job with better working conditions and higher pay. Or that relationship that ended only for you to realize that it was never the right fit and leaving it made space for the person who was the right fit to come into your life.

I know if my first marriage hadn’t ended, I would have drowned in misery instead of experiencing the 25 years I just celebrated with the love of my life. Sure, there were some really heartbreaking things that had to happen in both my husband’s and my life for us to come together. But the bigger heartbreak would have been trying to force relationships that really were not the best fit, that really weren’t meant for us.

In walking away from those relationships, we both had to trust that the love that was meant for us, would not miss us. In fact, we could have easily missed the love that was meant for us if we tried holding onto the love that wasn’t.

And the interesting thing is we had every reason to let our relationship pass us by. It wasn’t what either of us were looking for, not just at the time, but ever.

But the door opened, the opportunity presented itself, and thankfully we both allowed what was meant to be to unfold exactly as it was meant to unfold. We let go of the need to understand it, and simply trusted that if it was meant to be, it would, and if it was meant to pass, it would. Either way, it meant trusting that it came about for a reason, and it would serve us both perfectly in some way, no matter what happened.

Now, I get it. Trusting things to turn out in the best way possible for you and that what’s meant for you will not pass you can be super hard when you’re in the thick of it. When you want something so badly and it’s just not happening.

But energetically, what’s meant for you will never require you to chase, to beg, or to force it into existence. Will it require you to become the woman for whom it is meant for? Yes. Will it require you to show up for it? Yes. I’m not going to tell you there is no effort on your part required. And will it require that you let go of needing things to be a certain way and to happen in a certain time frame, to be open to the unfolding of the process? Yes.

So what if you let go, just a little? What if you stopped trying to force things into place, and instead leaned into the idea that your path is unfolding exactly as it’s meant to?

What if you could trust, just for today, that nothing meant for you will miss you, and nothing that isn’t meant for you will stay? Would you feel lighter? Would you breathe easier? Would you stop clinging so tightly to what should be and start seeing the possibilities of what could be?

My friend, when you stop gripping so hard, you make space. You make space for opportunities to find you. Space for the right things to fall into place. Space to actually enjoy where you are while you step into what’s next. So take a deep breath and trust the timing of your life and that you are right where you need to be.

And with that, let’s move into the final truth that changed my relationship with time—you can be both a masterpiece and a work in progress. Now you might wonder how this relates to time and I’m going to do my very best to give you my take on that.

There is no moment in time where you magically arrive. When you’re suddenly done. Where everything is finally perfect. And that’s actually a really good thing because life isn’t about finishing. Remember, it’s not a race. It’s about living. Living fully as you are right now. And also living into what you can become.

And right now, you are worthy and complete just as you are. You are a masterpiece of human life. You don’t need to achieve certain things by a certain time to be worthy or for your life to be considered a success. The sheer fact you exist means your life is a success. You don’t need to earn your place in life by meeting timeline milestones. You are not unfinished business on some invisible deadline to complete.

So many of us think our worth is tied to our progress, and not just our progress, but our progress based on that invisible timeline that we’ve been talking about here today. That we must become something, achieve something, arrive at something, otherwise, what do we have to show for our time?

But when you understand that you are complete right now as you are, that you do not need more time to perfect your masterpiece, the race against time and the pressure to perform in time, it falls away.

And it frees you up to keep becoming what you can become at your own pace, on your own timeline. Not because you have to in order to be enough or for your life to be complete. Remember you are already a masterpiece. But because you want to and because you can. Because as humans we can both be enough as we are and capable of so much more.

That, for me, is the shift. When you stop believing that your worth is something you have to catch up to, you stop seeing time as something you’re running out of. You stop feeling the pressure to prove yourself on some arbitrary timeline.

And instead of racing against time, you start using it as a space to explore, create and expand. Not out of pressure, not out of fear. But because you choose to. And that’s the difference between feeling like you’re constantly behind and realizing that you are never behind at all.

So let me ask you this.

If you fully believed that you are already enough, that you are a masterpiece and that time is simply the space where you get to grow, expand and create just because you want to and you can, how would that change the way you move through life? Would you stop feeling like you have something to prove? Would you let go of the pressure to be somewhere by now? Would you finally give yourself permission to enjoy where you are right now?

My friend, you are not running out of time. You are right on time. Remember there is no hurry. Everything blooms at its own pace. Life is unfolding for you perfectly, and what is meant for you will not pass you. You don’t need more time to perfect your canvas. You are a masterpiece as you are, and you also get to be a work in progress using time as a space to explore, expand, and create, not because you have to, but because you want to.

That’s all I’ve got for you today. If this episode spoke to you, I’d love to hear your thoughts. So drop me a message over on my socials or an email and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.

And if you’re ready to dive deeper into this work and truly start saying YES! to yourself and the life you love, make sure you are on my list to receive my weekly email CREATED. That link is in the show notes for you.

One last thing. If you found what I shared here today helpful, I’d love it if you would leave me a review. Your reviews help more women find this podcast and start saying YES! to lives they love too. Your few words can have a big impact. So if you could take a moment to leave a review, I’d be so very grateful.

I’ll be here again next Wednesday. I do look forward to your company.

Until then, be the woman who says YES!

Hey, want to know what’s stopping you from saying YES! to you and a life you love?

Head over to https://selfcreationschool.com/yesblock and take my FREE 60 second quiz to find out what’s standing in your way today and I’ll send you my Self-Creation Shift process for shifting it.

That’s https://selfcreationschool.com/yesblock. I’ll see you there.

What if you’re not behind on the life you want to say YES! to? What if time isn’t slipping away, but simply setting things up perfectly for you?

For years, I felt like I was racing against the clock to check off my life must-do list. I constantly felt behind on life. I was always rushing to catch up on being where I told myself I should be. Always running out of hours with this nagging fear that I was already too late to create the life I wanted.

But the more I chased time, the more I chased trying to be someplace by someplace in time, the more stressed, anxious, and overwhelmed I became, and the more time I felt like I was losing.

Until I changed the way I saw it.

And today, I want to share with you five powerful truths that rewrote my relationship with time and helped me stop rushing, start trusting, and finally breathe to enjoy the moment.

If you’ve ever felt the pressure of being behind on life, this episode is for you.

Welcome to The Self-Creation School podcast, for women who are ready to ditch mediocrity, step up and get more of what they want, and finally say YES! to a life that sets their soul on fire. I’m your host Leanne Letica, Self-Creation Coach, founder of The Self-Creation School AND Queen of YES!. If you’re ready to play life by your own personal rule book, and give yourself permission to say YES! to yourself and your wildest dreams, this podcast is the place for you.

Hello, and a very warm welcome to today’s episode where we are going to be talking about your relationship with time.

But before we do, I want to firstly acknowledge you for taking the time to prioritize yourself in this moment, to say YES! to you and your potential by listening in to this podcast. I am very appreciative of your time, and I personally am very committed to providing as much value as I can each and every week to make listening in worth your while.

The things I share are things that have allowed me over the years to completely reinvent myself and my life and they have helped me say YES! to a life today that I wildly love. So I know first-hand the profound difference what I share here with you can make in your life.

With that said, let’s talk about time.

I spent years feeling like time went by in a complete blur. I would wake up already feeling exhausted and overwhelmed by the day ahead, but I’d pushed through pretty much in an autopilot daze, just going through the motions to chase the next thing on my life must-do list.

My corresponding to do list just kept growing, I never made it to the end of my list, ever. Honestly, I set myself up for an impossible task every single day because no one had enough hours to do all the things I expected myself to do each day.

And I pushed myself beyond my exhaustion quite hard because here’s the thing, I had already made a lot of mistakes, and I told myself every day that I was behind on life and there was no time to waste in making up for the time I had already wasted. In fact, I had to times my effort by two or three to make up for it.

I spent all of my time trying to get somewhere, wherever somewhere was, to have something valuable to show for my time on this earth. And actually, not just something valuable to show, but what society told me I should have to show for myself by this point of time in my life. But no matter how much I achieved with my time, it never felt like it was enough.

And for me, time became something I didn’t enjoy it. It was something I raced against constantly trying to prove myself and my value to the world. I felt this constant pressure that I was supposed to be more, do more, have more by now, and that I was running out of time to figure it all out.

Honestly, by the time I hit 40, I was convinced my best years were already behind me and my life was what it was.

Maybe you felt this too, the weight of an invisible deadline. The fear that you’re behind. The anxiety that maybe you’ve missed your moment. I know it’s something that comes up a lot for the women that I coach.

So today, I want to share with you five powerful truths that changed the way I see time and helped me stop rushing, start trusting and embracing my unique process of becoming, and finally allow myself to breathe and enjoy the moment.

Let’s dive straight in.

And the first truth I want to share is this—there is no hurry. There is no hurry because this isn’t a race. And I know, it can sometimes feel like it is. We live in a world that glorifies speed. Faster success. Faster results. Faster everything.

I’ve lost count of the number of ads I see every single day in my social media feeds telling me that making $100,000 in 30 days is what makes a coach successful. That having my Instagram reels go vile overnight is the only way I can build my audience. That women are dropping their midlife middle in 15 days or less sometimes, like it’s some kind of race and there’s only one race we can be in.

Now, I’ve been around in business for a very long time. I was doing business online before most people even knew what an email was. Over the years I’ve seen a lot of people race to the top and just as quickly race to the bottom because they didn’t take the time to build the foundations required for lasting success.

If you’ve ever built a house or seen a high rise being built, you’ll know the foundations take the longest to build, but without them you are building on very shaky ground. If you ignore the foundations in the hurry to produce a result, you compromise the long-term success of the overall project.

This is why I spend a lot of time with my private clients, helping them take the time to set solid foundations before rushing out to do all the things. Because I don’t want them to just create a quick transformation. I want them to create a life they will love waking up to for years to come.

And there are many things in life that simply are not a race and hurrying them can actually have a detrimental effect on the outcome. Weight loss is one of those things. I mentioned being bombarded with the midlife weight loss ads just a moment ago—I’m sure you’ve seen them too.

Now, I have a lot of experience in helping people lose weight. I was a health and wellness coach for many years. I still do a little bit of work in that space. And I know that weight loss is absolutely not a race. Not if you want the weight loss to be lasting in any case. And yet every day, there are people out there trying to sell us on the magic bullet, right? The surefire way to losing your stubborn midlife belly fat overnight.

Here’s what I know from years of my own weight loss struggles and helping countless others with theirs. The faster you lose the weight, the faster you will likely regain it and more. When it comes to weight loss, there is definitely no hurry.

So, we are constantly being sold on this idea that things like weight loss and business success and financial success, amongst others, should happen not just in a set time, but in record time. That life should happen according to certain benchmarks, or you are failing.

And I’m not suggesting that taking timely action isn’t required if you want to achieve results. But taking intentional action in a timely manner is a very different energy than taking panic-based action in a race against time.

Intentional action is moving towards something you want with considered effort in every moment. Panic action is scrambling towards something because you’re afraid of being left behind without any real regard to the moment.

And panic will make you rush past the very things that matter most. Like building that solid foundation for your success. Like the magic in all of the moments along the way. Like seeing the signpost and taking the turns towards a life you do actually want to experience.

For me, after years of rushing, pushing, forcing things to happen on a timeline I thought I had to meet, I eventually realized that I was so focused on getting to a destination that, in reality, I didn’t even know for sure I wanted to go to, that I wasn’t actually building a life I loved waking up to. I wasn’t enjoying my time, I wasn’t living each moment.

And that’s the real cost of the hurry. When we convince ourselves we’re behind, we stop appreciating the life we actually have. We stop giving ourselves the space to explore, to grow, to enjoy the process of becoming who we can be over time and because of time. Instead, we exist in a state of panic, overwhelm and anxiety because we believe we are behind and so we are in this constant race to play catch up.

The question we need to ask is, behind who? And behind what? Because there really is no master schedule that says by 30 you should have this, by 40 you should be there, by 50 you should have it all figured out, and by 60, well, all is said and done. Because there really is no one size fits all way that life should look, am I right? If you’re listening to me in this podcast, I know you’ve either realized this already, or you are in the process of realizing this.

Human life is so much more complex and unique that a single set of standards and benchmarks could possibly allow for. And while there is no set in stone timeline, still we hold ourselves to these invisible deadlines. We convince ourselves that if we don’t hit a milestone by a certain age, we are behind. If we didn’t make the right choice at the right time, we’ve missed our shot. That if we want to change paths after a certain age, we’re too late.

And so we must ask why we are holding ourselves to these invisible deadlines as if they are the law. Why we judge ourselves against them. Why we shut down the possibility of making our dreams happen because we didn’t make the finish line according to someone else’s timeline or some invisible timeline we’ve been conditioned to follow.

The truth my friend is that time belongs uniquely to each of us. Your time is yours and my time is mine. It’s not a competition, it isn’t a race, and there is no hurry. Time is not your enemy. Your belief that you are running behind or running out of time is. But you cannot be behind or out of time if there is no set in stone timeline, am I right?

And in knowing that there is no timeline, how does that change the way you feel about your life today in this moment? What do you do differently without this pressure of time? Do you breathe a little deeper? Think a little more clearly? Do you stop second-guessing who you are and where you’re at? Do you stop rushing and allowing yourself to be present in this moment instead of obsessing over the next? Do you take more intentional action to make your moments matter?

Imagine how different life would look and feel without the need to hurry. My friend, here’s what I know. The more you chase time, the more it feels like time is slipping away. But the moment you let go of the hurry, you stop running against the clock and you start living.

Now, the second truth that changed my relationship with time is understanding that everything blooms at a different pace.

Different flowers bloom at different times. They have their own growing and blooming seasons. A rose doesn’t rush to bloom just because the tulips blossomed first. It doesn’t question whether it’s behind, whether it’s missing its moment, or whether it’s too late. It simply follows its own timing, trusting that when the right conditions align, it will bloom.

But as humans, we don’t tend to do that. Instead, we look around and we compare. We measure where we are against where others are, and if someone else has bloomed before us, we question why it is we haven’t done so.

And it’s easy to get caught up in the story that you’re putting in all this time and effort, you may be doing the exact same things as someone else is doing, and their life is flourishing, but yours? Not so much. And you start making it mean that it won’t happen for you.

But the reality is everything blooms at its own pace. Growth isn’t linear. Everything has its own timing, and just because someone else is blooming right now doesn’t mean your season isn’t coming.

And the thing is, forcing growth doesn’t actually make things happen any faster. In fact, sometimes it does the opposite, it stunts your growth. Here’s what I mean, and let’s use flowers again as an example.

There are things a flower needs in order to grow, like sunshine and water. Without them, it won’t thrive. But if you drown it in water, or scorch it with too much sun, you don’t speed up its bloom, you kill it. To grow, it needs the right balance of nurture, and part of that balance is allowing time for growth to happen. You can help the growth but there is a certain component of growth that rests in the hands of time.

And the same is true for you. Yes, you need to take action to grow. Yes, you need to nourish your dreams. But forcing something to happen before it’s ready, that’s like drowning your own potential. There’s a difference between nurturing growth and desperately trying to force it. Honestly, forcing growth simply doesn’t work, and sometimes it actually snaps you back further than where you started.

Think about times when you push yourself too hard, too fast. Maybe it’s been in your career, your relationships, in your business or your health. And suddenly everything collapses under the pressure. That’s what happens when you force growth instead of allowing it to unfold at a pace that you can sustain.

It’s like stretching a rubber band too far, too fast, and eventually it snaps back. And when that happens it just provides more evidence for the stories you likely already have that what you want won’t happen for you.

I talked earlier about trying to grow your business too fast without building a foundation. That is a very good example of how forcing growth can backfire. But how about relationships that move too quickly? You rush into something before you’ve built the emotional foundation, and then when challenges come up, the whole thing falls apart because it really wasn’t strong enough to last.

How about putting yourself out there in a huge way before you’ve done the inner work to support it, and then you find yourself feeling overwhelmed, second-guessing and retreating because it feels like too much, too soon.

What about those extreme diets or fitness pushes? You force your body into rapid transformation, but because the habits weren’t built in a way that you can maintain, you snap back, or worse, you end up feeling worse than when you started.

You see the pattern? When you try to force growth instead of nurturing it and allowing it to happen at its own pace, it doesn’t just stall you, it can actually set you back. And that’s because true growth isn’t about how fast you get there. It’s about becoming strong enough to hold what it is you’re growing into.

So what if, instead of trying to rush your own becoming, you simply allowed yourself to grow? What if you stopped questioning whether you’re blooming fast enough, and trusted that your time to bloom is coming exactly when it’s meant to? That just because you can’t yet see the results of your efforts, it doesn’t mean you won’t eventually bloom.

Now this brings me to the third truth that changed my relationship with time. Everything is unfolding perfectly for you. I know, sometimes life doesn’t look like it’s unfolding perfectly, sometimes nothing is going according to plan, and everything feels like it’s falling apart.

I don’t think any of us reach midlife without some really messy moments. But when you look back on things, on the delays, the disappointments and heartbreaks, and the detours that made no sense in the moment, chances are you can now see how these things happened for you, not against you.

How they made you grow, built your resilience and strength, which now means you can handle the bigger and bolder things you dream of. How they actually saved you from going down a road that would have led you a long way off track.

If you cannot see how things happen for you, I encourage you to ask the question. How did this happen for me? And look for all the ways that it did in fact turn out in some kind of positive way. Maybe not as you wanted or expected, and no less heartbreaking or disappointing, but positive in some sense.

I am a firm believer that all of our setbacks, as we tend to view them in the moment, are actually a setup for our success. I know I have had so many near misses that devastated me at the time, even cost me quite dearly at the time. But when I look back, I think, what a lucky escape that was.

Some of my setbacks have happened because I needed to learn things that would later serve me extremely well. And indeed today, I have so much to offer in the space I now work in, only because of the things that I thought were not unfolding perfectly for me at the time. Turns out, they set me up perfectly to do the very thing that lights me up today and helps me change the lives of countless other women.

So things may not seem like they are unfolding perfectly in the moment because sometimes they don’t unfold in the way we want, right? And it’s hard to see anything less or different than what we wanted being a good thing. But looking back, you can often see how things were aligning for you in ways you didn’t expect. How one door closed, but another one you never thought of opening, led you in the most amazing direction.

With hindsight, you can see how the moments that felt like setbacks were actually set ups for something so much better. How the things that didn’t happen were often protection, not rejection. And the waiting for things to turn around wasn’t wasted time, it was preparation for things to come.

And this is where we tend to get it wrong. We think that we have to control the unfolding and the unfolding needs to happen exactly as we plan for it to be a success. But the reality is, you can control some of it, but you cannot control all of it. And you don’t have to micromanage every step to get to where you’re actually meant to be.

I think that is a bigger lesson.

Some of us place a whole lot of time and energy into trying to micromanage things that are simply not within our control. But when you let go of needing things to be a certain way, and the more you trust that each step you take is leading you somewhere you’re meant to go, even if you can’t see where or why just yet, the less pressure you will feel to control every little outcome and the less pressure you’ll feel around time being wasted.

The next truth I have to share with you today follows very much on from this concept. So, the fourth truth is, what is meant for you will not pass you.

You might be starting to notice that what a lot of these truths are really about is having trust. Trusting that you have all the time you need. Trusting the pace of your own timeline. Trusting in things falling into place in the exact way, at the exact moment they are meant to. And trusting that what is meant for you will not pass you.

Now, that doesn’t mean it’s meant for you today. Sometimes we want things that are meant for us at a time when we’re not really quite ready for them and we need to become the version of ourselves who is ready to receive them.

Like for me, moving to Europe. I wanted to do that 10 years before we actually made that happen and because at the time it wasn’t possible, I made that mean it would never be possible. And yet, the timing eventually aligned, I aligned with it, and today I am living out my dream of having moved to Europe.

Then sometimes, things really are just not meant to be. Or at least not meant to be in the way we want them to be. But I really believe that you cannot miss what is truly meant for you. And having trust in this will allow you to embrace all of the detours and leave the door open for where they lead you.

So many of us live in fear that if something doesn’t go to plan, we’ve missed our chance or that we have failed and it’s final. But listen, it’s not always final and failure is just feedback. Failure is redirection. It doesn’t mean that what you want isn’t for you, that it’s not meant for you. Sometimes it’s simply that you need to grow in some way to be a better match for it. And sometimes it means there’s something even better coming.

I’ve seen this play out so many times in both my own life and the lives of others. Like that dream job you didn’t get that led you to a similar job with better working conditions and higher pay. Or that relationship that ended only for you to realize that it was never the right fit and leaving it made space for the person who was the right fit to come into your life.

I know if my first marriage hadn’t ended, I would have drowned in misery instead of experiencing the 25 years I just celebrated with the love of my life. Sure, there were some really heartbreaking things that had to happen in both my husband’s and my life for us to come together. But the bigger heartbreak would have been trying to force relationships that really were not the best fit, that really weren’t meant for us.

In walking away from those relationships, we both had to trust that the love that was meant for us, would not miss us. In fact, we could have easily missed the love that was meant for us if we tried holding onto the love that wasn’t.

And the interesting thing is we had every reason to let our relationship pass us by. It wasn’t what either of us were looking for, not just at the time, but ever.

But the door opened, the opportunity presented itself, and thankfully we both allowed what was meant to be to unfold exactly as it was meant to unfold. We let go of the need to understand it, and simply trusted that if it was meant to be, it would, and if it was meant to pass, it would. Either way, it meant trusting that it came about for a reason, and it would serve us both perfectly in some way, no matter what happened.

Now, I get it. Trusting things to turn out in the best way possible for you and that what’s meant for you will not pass you can be super hard when you’re in the thick of it. When you want something so badly and it’s just not happening.

But energetically, what’s meant for you will never require you to chase, to beg, or to force it into existence. Will it require you to become the woman for whom it is meant for? Yes. Will it require you to show up for it? Yes. I’m not going to tell you there is no effort on your part required. And will it require that you let go of needing things to be a certain way and to happen in a certain time frame, to be open to the unfolding of the process? Yes.

So what if you let go, just a little? What if you stopped trying to force things into place, and instead leaned into the idea that your path is unfolding exactly as it’s meant to?

What if you could trust, just for today, that nothing meant for you will miss you, and nothing that isn’t meant for you will stay? Would you feel lighter? Would you breathe easier? Would you stop clinging so tightly to what should be and start seeing the possibilities of what could be?

My friend, when you stop gripping so hard, you make space. You make space for opportunities to find you. Space for the right things to fall into place. Space to actually enjoy where you are while you step into what’s next. So take a deep breath and trust the timing of your life and that you are right where you need to be.

And with that, let’s move into the final truth that changed my relationship with time—you can be both a masterpiece and a work in progress. Now you might wonder how this relates to time and I’m going to do my very best to give you my take on that.

There is no moment in time where you magically arrive. When you’re suddenly done. Where everything is finally perfect. And that’s actually a really good thing because life isn’t about finishing. Remember, it’s not a race. It’s about living. Living fully as you are right now. And also living into what you can become.

And right now, you are worthy and complete just as you are. You are a masterpiece of human life. You don’t need to achieve certain things by a certain time to be worthy or for your life to be considered a success. The sheer fact you exist means your life is a success. You don’t need to earn your place in life by meeting timeline milestones. You are not unfinished business on some invisible deadline to complete.

So many of us think our worth is tied to our progress, and not just our progress, but our progress based on that invisible timeline that we’ve been talking about here today. That we must become something, achieve something, arrive at something, otherwise, what do we have to show for our time?

But when you understand that you are complete right now as you are, that you do not need more time to perfect your masterpiece, the race against time and the pressure to perform in time, it falls away.

And it frees you up to keep becoming what you can become at your own pace, on your own timeline. Not because you have to in order to be enough or for your life to be complete. Remember you are already a masterpiece. But because you want to and because you can. Because as humans we can both be enough as we are and capable of so much more.

That, for me, is the shift. When you stop believing that your worth is something you have to catch up to, you stop seeing time as something you’re running out of. You stop feeling the pressure to prove yourself on some arbitrary timeline.

And instead of racing against time, you start using it as a space to explore, create and expand. Not out of pressure, not out of fear. But because you choose to. And that’s the difference between feeling like you’re constantly behind and realizing that you are never behind at all.

So let me ask you this.

If you fully believed that you are already enough, that you are a masterpiece and that time is simply the space where you get to grow, expand and create just because you want to and you can, how would that change the way you move through life? Would you stop feeling like you have something to prove? Would you let go of the pressure to be somewhere by now? Would you finally give yourself permission to enjoy where you are right now?

My friend, you are not running out of time. You are right on time. Remember there is no hurry. Everything blooms at its own pace. Life is unfolding for you perfectly, and what is meant for you will not pass you. You don’t need more time to perfect your canvas. You are a masterpiece as you are, and you also get to be a work in progress using time as a space to explore, expand, and create, not because you have to, but because you want to.

That’s all I’ve got for you today. If this episode spoke to you, I’d love to hear your thoughts. So drop me a message over on my socials or an email and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.

And if you’re ready to dive deeper into this work and truly start saying YES! to yourself and the life you love, make sure you are on my list to receive my weekly email CREATED. That link is in the show notes for you.

One last thing. If you found what I shared here today helpful, I’d love it if you would leave me a review. Your reviews help more women find this podcast and start saying YES! to lives they love too. Your few words can have a big impact. So if you could take a moment to leave a review, I’d be so very grateful.

I’ll be here again next Wednesday. I do look forward to your company.

Until then, be the woman who says YES!

Hey, want to know what’s stopping you from saying YES! to you and a life you love?

Head over to https://selfcreationschool.com/yesblock and take my FREE 60 second quiz to find out what’s standing in your way today and I’ll send you my Self-Creation Shift process for shifting it.

That’s https://selfcreationschool.com/yesblock. I’ll see you there.