Leaders As Agents of Consciousness - How To Have More Time

At the risk of using an old-school sales question, “What if I could show you a way to have more time, would you be interested”?

Would you think, “Yes,” or at least, “Let’s take a look.”

That’s the aim of today’s article - the final one in this mini-series - where we’ll explore the fascinating link between creating space and experiencing more time.

And here’s a thought: what if having more time meant more ease, joy, and connection with your purpose on this planet? Sounds big, right? Let’s dive in.

Pause - Space-Time

These three simple connection points - Pause, Space, and Time - unlock the path to experiencing more time in our busy lives. It all begins with a pause. Without pausing, we miss out on all the possibilities waiting for us in the space it leads into, one of which is more time.

If you haven’t noticed, all the big answers you’re seeking right now, in any area of life, can often be found by pausing long enough to allow them to surface in the space in and around you.

Yes, even the problem of “I don’t have enough time.” The catch is that most of us are hooked into a nervous system that prevents us from pausing: the addiction to too much “future doing.”

To experience having more time, we need to loosen our grip on future-doing. We’re all familiar with it - the constant push toward a “someday” when we’ll finally have more time and freedom. But like any addiction that promises freedom “in the future,” we never actually get there.

True freedom and more time are rooted in the present moment, not in some future achievement.

Notice how this addiction shows up. It’s in our thoughts, in our tension, impatience, frustration, judgment, and blame. It’s written down in our bulging to-do lists, in our stuck nervous system's need for perfection, and control, and in our ‘should’, ‘shouldn’t’ and ‘must do’ language.

This drive is so deeply ingrained that it represents an unchallenged survival strategy we rarely question. That convinces us we’re “not enough yet”, so we don’t dare pause until we’ve created that “better” future with more time and success.

You can also catch this pattern when you hear yourself saying, “I just need to do this one thing before I can….”

Recognising the pattern is the first step in realising that limitless time is available to us right now. The truth is we don’t make ourselves available to it.

To live joyfully, all the time we need is already here but when we’re caught in an overstimulated and stuck nervous system, we argue, “But I don’t have time to pause or slow down - look at everything I have to get done!” We all have our justifications for staying in this addictive cycle.

Here’s the real, unglamorous truth: until we pause, we will never experience enough time.

Try this now - But don’t just read it.

Breathe in through your nose, exhale slightly longer out of your mouth and as you come towards the end of the breath, softly place the tip of your tongue against the roof of your mouth just before your teeth. Allow your belly to relax and notice the pause (it's likely to begin in your body). But don’t go in search for anything to happen.

If it doesn’t appear straight away that’s typical. It won’t always happen immediately so do it several times over and slowly it will reveal itself. That might be for just a nano-second or two, to begin with.

The four main things that block us from finding the - always-available pause - are

1. An overstimulated nervous system
2. An overstimulated thought-led mind. (Thoughts, perceptions and beliefs leading you)
3. Challenging feelings and emotions such as fear (from our survival strategies, wounds and trauma)
4. Efforting to find the pause or work it out. Instead of allowing it to come to us.

The good news is, we’ve been given the power of the breath to tame and rebalance all four.

Pausing into Space

If you’ve been following the previous three articles, you’ll already know about the power of space. Space is the greatest quality we have (from both scientific and personal growth perspectives)

Space is the timeless, limitless aspect of Self. If you want more about this read the previous articles and/or just answer this question:

When we have too many thoughts or feelings and not enough space around them, what shows up in our bodies?

Overwhelm, tension, anxiety, pressure, shallow breath, a narrow focus of attention, snap decisions, judgments, reactivity, a tense jaw, back, shoulders, chest or head, to name a few.

A lack of space around these is uncomfortable and propels us into the imaginary future once more to find a future solution, beyond them. More thoughts create more thoughts, more emotions create more emotions and dis-ease in the body.

By accessing the pause we invite space to open up in between all of our thoughts, contractions and feelings and three things begin to happen by themselves.

1. The challenging thoughts and feelings lose their grip and influence as more space appears around them
2. Qualities such as ease, non-judgment, joy and clarity fill that space and our nervous system
3. We open to and experience more time, instead of being distracted and contained by these self-limiting phenomena

Space follows the pause but we have to stay in the quiet, still space long enough within a relaxed and fluid nervous system to receive the hidden gold. When I say, "long enough", it's just a few seconds at first but with practice that comes down to just one second.

“There Be Treasure In That There Space” (The subtitle is best read in a pirate accent!)

Imagine I show you a treasure chest - Ornate with sumptuous gold embroidery on its edges. It’s heavy, substantial, and securely locked and I ask - Do you want to look inside to see the treasure?

When I open it and reveal the treasure chest is full of space, I will forgive you for concluding there is nothing there and the disappointment that follows.

A disappointment, that unless careful could become your personal reality that somehow you have missed out or I have misled you.

But the disappointment is unfounded as you have duped yourself into believing that space equals nothing of worth.

If, at first, we approach space within a linear, logical and reductionist (thought-led) mind this is what happens.? We become wrapped up and confuse ourselves away from the hidden treasure found in the richness of space.

If we seek more time to fully live, love, laugh, discover, grieve, reflect, and heal, we may find it’s not a path of instant gratification. True awakening rarely happens that way; it often requires us to break through the barriers of our own illusory thinking and dysregulated nervous systems.

Since the beginning of the universe, time has always been limitless. Yet, through our education, ego, and illusions of control, we've convinced ourselves of the opposite. We assume that time is scarce, and to "get more" we must sharpen our time management and prioritise endlessly - before it slips away.

When we see time as finite and clock-based rather than infinite and interconnected with us, we trap ourselves in a race, like addicts chasing potential in a closed system. This leaves us blind to the vastness of space and possibility, too restless to pause, to listen, or to truly explore.

You Already Are The App

If I could sell you yet another App that would promise to create more time in your life, out of convenience you might buy it but I don’t need to because you already are the App that you've been looking for.

Through our natural design, we already have the ability to invite space into each pause, lingering long enough for our psychological self to release its limitations. In this openness, time and a joyful sense of purpose can flow freely through, gently weaving into our lives.

To experience this, you may need to "update your inner app" - a shift that happens through hands-on practice. This kind of exploration builds the proof you seek, rooted in your own lived experience..

This Is The Practice

Breathe in through your nose, exhale longer out of your mouth and as you come towards the end of the breath, softly place the tip of your tongue against the roof of your mouth just before your teeth. Allow your belly to relax and notice the pause - but don’t go in search of the pause or look for anything to happen.

When or if your mind comes in to criticise you for spending precious seconds doing this, or doing it ‘wrong’ or justifying why you must crack on with your tasks - and continue in your time seeking addiction - immediately relax your belly, soften and relax the muscles around your eyes and begin a new breath.

• Give yourself permission to do this experiment consistently - and when it happens - to rest in the pause.
• Take your mental attention out from behind your eyes and down toward your belly
• Notice with curiosity what sensations appear (some will be pleasant and others can be more fearful)
• If they are challenging use your breath to create space around them. Allow them to be. Don’t avoid experiencing them or try to change them.
• Don’t seek to achieve a goal in this experiment - Trying to achieve is a major block to the pause, space and time opening up
• Don’t try and work out the pause or the space when it appears. Just notice them.

Slowly, through its own will, the qualities of space and more time will begin to reveal themselves to you.

This often becomes noticeable through the sensations that come through your body - Such as ease, lightness etc.

Do this 4-5 times a day. It takes just 20 seconds of your time to notice how these three inner dynamics begin to coalesce within and around you.

It’s not the same for everyone so I can’t tell you how many experiments it will take. If it’s more than a few that’s normal. Be mindful that your thought-led mind and hooked nervous system may try to get you to give up on experimenting.

It's not as though we don't have more than enough time to do this micro practice because most of us are pointlessly checking our mobile phones and social media, every day far more frequently.

If you get stuck, (which is normal) drop me a note about what’s happening and I’ll happily guide you/put you back on track. At no charge because I can always find the time to help and open up to being limitless.

Until next time - be spacious!

Glenn :)

• For expanded consciousness through 1-2-1 coaching go here: https://glenn-bracey.com
• For expanded consciousness for leaders and teams through training go here: https://futurevisiontraining.co.uk