If time is money, how we optimize our day-to-day determines our experience of abundance.

It also predicts our experience of flow… or lack thereof.

Time flows – one second into the next. Humans love flow. Humans love abundance.  How we optimize our time in this post-information society determines what we experience in the domains of abundance and flow.

In this age of busyness and overwhelm, we need to wake up to how we use our time. Our subtle anatomy is geared to learn from yesterday to be smart, better, and faster today. (See  Smarter, Better, Faster by Charles Duhigg).  Aging is inherently a process of efficiency. If we’re paying attention – we’re optimizing. If we’re not paying attention, we’re squandering. Our time asyncronizes, or gets out of sync,  with the universe that created us. We suffer.

If you’re not driven to get smarter, better, and faster – you’re out of sync with evolution. You’ll suffer more as you age. Our very drive to optimize is how evolution shows up right now as us.

Those who master their time, by mastering their macro and micro habits, evolve. They experience higher levels of flow (time) and abundance (money). As a society, we can be more in control of our time and awareness than ever before. Yet, personally, we are more at the mercy of our own competing interests.

So, the question becomes – how do you, with great intention, optimize your day to meet your evolutionary desires? Read this post and find out how I do it.

Why My Day

As the Yogahealer tribe and team have grown, I’ve grown. As far as I can tell, Yogahealer and I have interdependent growth cycles. What I do – my responsibilities, workload, and job description – changes with every growth cycle. How I spend my time now generates my next cycle.

Living in a personal and professional growth mindset means being in perpetual cycles of reinvention. Dynamic change is THE constant. With all the shakti on the move, structure creates sanity. Simplicity creates sanity. Without building simple, non-negotiable structures into my everyday, I’d go crazy, deplete my ojas, and  fall apart. And, as I’m the center of my mini-universe, my mini-universe would then fall apart. Thus, simple non-negotiable structures are the name of my game.

What are your non-negotiables?

I learned a term during my first week of Ayurveda school close to 20 years ago – prajna paradha. It means that you should learn from your past. And, when you don’t, you stop growing. You also get sick, which is why Ayurveda beats this with a stick. Learn from yesterday. Take refined action that is purified by your own experiential insight.

Ignore what you could have learned and you lose your spark, your direction, and your self-sense. You breed karma, or perpetual de-evolution.

This most basic concept – this knowing and owning what you must do to thrive – determines your non-negotiables.

Non-negotiables are the lessons you’ve already learned.

Disregard the basic truths you’ve already discovered and you’ll start to hate yourself and your life. Honor them, and your growth cycle and your experience of thrive will blossom like a summer rose.

(My book, Body Thrive, goes into the 10 non-negotiables from Ayurveda and yoga for the human body. Also, see the next post for my non-negotiable habits as a Team + Tribe Leader, and Social Entrepreneur.)  

My Non-negotiables as a Yogi Mom

The mom part of this equation is about a few basics: eat, play, and (house)work. All of these are non-negotiable – they help kids and families thrive. I prefer to maximize play time through (a) streamlining meal prep, eating, and clean up, and (b) making housework more like play.  Here is what we do:

Streamline Nourishment

I streamline kitchen time. Meal prep is the big time sucker for most moms who actually cook.  If tomorrow’s meals include a grain or legume – I’ll soak it overnight and cook it in the morning. If I’m roasting vegetables, I’ll do that at the same time. Most of cooking time happens on it’s own, when I’m exercising. When you streamline the basics, your life takes on flow.

Every 10 days or so, I spend an hour or so making my basics: sauces or dressings, raw cookies, sprouted buckwheat, and soaked chia. The basics make lunch and dinner a whiz. My lunch and dinner often don’t look too different on a daily basis. But, tomorrow is a whole new ball game.

(I never understood those recipe books that had eating plans where you created a whole new menu for yourself with each meal. I found they were usually written by men who didn’t actually do the cooking. Who has the freaking time?)

Using the morning food prep method, I then spend 10 minutes to make an amazing lunch (I work from home). At dinner time, we walk into the kitchen hungry. We pitch in to get our super-nutrified home-vibe food on the table in minutes. We usually don’t eat left-overs. We don’t snack. And we all pitch in to clean up in minutes. Then, we have more time to play!

For more on this – see the Kitchen Sadhana chapter in Body Thrive.

Own Your Space

Owning our space, our homes, our rooms intentionally and energetically – and refining it to amplify how we are evolving as individuals – amplifies our growth potential. If you haven’t experienced this – I recommend building a habit around the KonMari method of tidying up.  We reap huge benefits by pitching in to improve our daily living environment… together.

Be Active After Dinner

Because dinner is fast, we have time to do stuff after. We garden, go for a walk or a ride, or do house projects. We have fun through being active and interacting. We’re doing stuff in our bodies, not our minds, in this Kapha time of day (6-10 pm). Naturally, we’re in touch with the end of the day fatigue – ready for deep, steady sleep. We’re not stuffed because we’ve moved our bodies after dinner. We’re productive but not mentally productive.

Thanks to SuperBetter, I learned that when you make something into a game it’s easier to build a habit. We have a 5 minute pick-up party before school. Put on the dance music – and everyone puts all of their personal belongings in the 1 place that item belongs. That way, the house is energetically clear for whomever wants to use the space.

Questions you need to answer

Listen to the free workshop where I go into greater detail: https://yogahealthcoaching.com/replay-yogi-mom

To recap, I leave you with a few questions:

• What did you learn yesterday? How can you take action on that today? Be specific.
• What are non-negotiable habits right now? What  should be non-negotiable habits right now?
• How do you streamline your nourishment?
• How do you optimize your play time?
• How do you refine your home space?