Hey, you guys, welcome back to the podcast. This episode is inspired by a lot of the conversations I've been having with my private clients about creating a spacious summer, and so I'm calling the episode “Spacious Summer” so that you can create your own. It's something that's been on my mind for a long time.
As I've grown my business, there's been summers I've really pushed and tried to get ahead and tried to use my time in the summer to learn, to grow my business, I think in quote-unquote, “get ahead,” not that there is such a thing as actually getting ahead because the work really never ends. And I really resonate with the word infinite game that Simon Sinek coined in his book.
But the infinite game is something that like, you don't play to win, you play to keep playing. I see business that way, and I've talked about that concept a lot. One of the things that has been on my heart and on my mind is really learning how to have a slow and spacious summer as I'm watching my kids get older, how precious this time is, and what I really want most.
And so one of the things that I've gotten a lot of feedback on is, like I said, many of my private clients want a spacious summer. And I've noticed even people like in my audience, either on Instagram or my email list, have resonated with that idea. What I want to be clear about here is in my opinion, spacious summer is about a ratio change of work, play, rest, and learning. So I think, like many moms, when my kids are in school, my ratio of working, playing, resting, and learning is different than what I will create in what I'm determining this is my spacious summer. I want you to consider that a spacious summer is more about increasing how much playing and resting you do in comparison to the rest of the year.
So to me, the spacious summer does not mean that I will not work, and it does not mean that I will not learn because those two parts of my life I love. Like I don't want to not work and I don't want to not learn, but I want to increase the percentage of my time that I spend resting and playing and decrease the amount of time that I work and learn, but not eliminate it.
One of the concepts that I think is important is to do what needs to be done still. So one of the things that I committed to is like I'm still going to record the podcast. I'm still going to do my posts on social media, but I'm going to do more playing and resting.
I’m still going to do the work. I'm also still going to show up for my client calls and host the Matrix calls and things like that. But I think it's like the mindset of choosing to rest and play more than I do in my typical school year when my kids aren't on summer break. So for you, you might decide, what are my non-negotiables?
What are the things that I'm going to do in the summer to maintain, and sustain the success in my business that I want, or to plant seeds for the future? I really believe in business like a garden. You can scroll back and find that episode, but I really, really believe in it. So if you think about your business like a garden, in a summertime ratio where you're playing and resting more, it might be like I water the seeds, I plant some seeds, I make sure that every day it's safe or whatever.
It might be low-maintenance work for your business. Like I said, for me, that looks like recording this podcast. It looks like maintaining a presence on social media. It means that every once in a while I send an email, and I, of course, take care of my clients and it feels like maintenance mode.
It doesn't feel like push mode. It does not feel like I'm striving hardcore. It feels like maintenance so that I can make room for playing and resting. The next thing that I think is a useful frame is to close the tabs in your brain. I realized how hard this is when you work at home or when you have a business that like, technically, it's true that you could always be working. There's always something to do. There's always something that could be done to make more money.
And I'm actually reading a book right now; it's called “How to Do Nothing” by Jenny Odell, resisting the attention economy. And in this book, she talks about how easy it is to always be working because we are so plugged in digitally, especially when you run an online business, it can be so easy to just always kind of work, even if it's just mentally. When I think of closing the tabs in my brain it's like, okay I am clocking out of work in my mind. Cause a lot of times, it's not that I'm working hard at my desk all day.
It's like I'm doing the dishes and I'm thinking about a podcast that I want to make or I'm on a walk and I'm thinking about a client call I just had. And that's not bad. It's not that I don't like thinking about my clients or thinking about business. It's just sometimes I want to be fully present like when my kids are showing me their perfect backflip in the pool, or like we're on a nature walk and my three-year-old wants to show me the pine cone or whatever.
I want to be fully engaged and present. If I'm secretly distracted in my own mind, I know it, and it doesn't feel an integrity to me. And so I try to close the tabs in my brain so that I can engage with my life the way that I want to in the forms of playing and resting.
Because sometimes our brain needs the rest from thinking about work and thinking about business and thinking about personal development. I try to do this every time I watch a movie or watch a show with my husband at night. We love watching Netflix and stuff. I mentally like close the tab in my mind so that I can stop thinking about work on purpose, and be fully immersed in the movie or the show that we're watching and be fully at present with him. So close the tab in your brain, and master the art of doing nothing. I mentioned I was reading the book, “How to Do Nothing,” and doing nothing doesn't mean that you just like sit there and literally do nothing, but like things that aren't monetizable.
So this has been useful for me. Doing nothing, to me, means that I'm not trying to monetize it where I'm capturing people's attention or I'm doing it to be projective. I'm doing it because it feels good to be alive. So when I go on a walk, sometimes I'm going on a walk to process my thoughts about an offer, a podcast, or an idea that I'm contemplating for business.
That does not count. But a walk that I go on without my phone or without my AirPods in, and I just am enjoying my neighborhood, enjoying the sun on my skin, enjoying the light breeze, enjoying the views of the mountains or whatever. That's the art of doing nothing. I'll give you another example, writing is like this for me.
Sometimes I am writing to clarify my ideas, to get specific ideas out, to make decisions about an offer. Whether that's like writing what the price or what's included. Whether I'm writing about concepts that I want to teach. That does not count. But if I write to write for the enjoyment of writing, and a lot of times that's more poetic or like maybe reflective, that is different.
You can use your own discernment on what counts as doing nothing and what does not, but I think that is included in a spacious summer. The other thing that I'm going to encourage you to do, and this is what I'm doing, is reflect, celebrate, and get present. Those three things to me feel spacious. So like reflecting could be writing, could be meditating, could be chatting with a friend or a partner or a spouse, but you're reflecting on what's been great, what's working. Maybe it's even reflecting on what you'll do differently or what's not working. I think summer is a great time to celebrate the year that you just completed, especially if you have kids in school, like celebrating with them. What are you proud of?
What are you going to remember about this grade that you're in? What are you going to remember about 2023 to 2024? What are you taking with you from this period of time? And then, of course, getting present. There's this quote by Brandon Burchard and I can't remember it exactly so I'm going to paraphrase, but at the end of the day, what everyone wants is to feel their day more.
He said that, and I think about that all the time. That only happens when we are present in our bodies. We're not in our minds. What's interesting about being getting present is that you stop labeling what's happening around you. So it's like when you're doing dishes, you're just noticing the sensation of the cold water on your hands or the way that the dishes sound.
You're not even trying to label it. You're not in your mind. You are so present in your body that you're just there witnessing and observing. You're not thinking. Byron Katie is a masterful teacher on this, but so is Eckhart Tolle. His book “Power of Now” and the book “A New Earth” both talk about being present in your body where you are just witnessing life.
You're not labeling or thinking. It's a powerful practice, and it creates that spaciousness that we yearn for in the slowness of summer. The other thing that I thought of that might be interesting for you to play with, and that I'm actually going to be thinking about journaling, how do you want to remember the summer of 2024 in five, ten, or twenty years?
That's a really interesting question because for some of you it's going to be like, “I want it to be the summer that I got ahead of my business” or like “that I made an impossible goal happen” or “that I made more money than I ever made before.”
Some of you, and this is where I land, it's like, “How do I make a lot of money without working more?” I'm solving different problems. I'm thinking differently about my business. How do I grow my financial part of my business while slowing down the way that I experience business?
That's what I'm thinking of for the summer. But I also want you to answer it personally. How do you want to remember the summer of 2024 with your kids? With how you treated your body? With what you did on a day-to-day basis? What do you want to remember about the summer of 2024? The other idea that I had, I already kind of mentioned it, was the work, play, rest, learn ratio.
So if you think about how you spend your days when my kids are in school, I work about 25, sometimes up to 30 hours a week. Usually, it lands between 20 and 25. So that's my ratio of work, but I often will fill a lot of my day with learning, whether that's reading or podcasts, mostly reading books.
It could be audiobooks. Sometimes social media, sometimes courses, sometimes in-person events, like I mentioned, I went to Santa Fe with Rich Litvin and things like that. But what's interesting is, in the summer, I imagined less consuming, less learning, being more intentional with the books I read.
So I'm even noticing in the books that I'm being drawn to right now. I finished a book called “The Wealth Money Can't Buy” by Robin Sharma, and that felt like a slow, rich book because it wasn't about pushing ahead in business. It really was about looking for areas in your life that have to do with the wealth money can't buy.
I mentioned that I was reading the book, “How to Do Nothing.” I read “The Creative Act: A Way of Being” by Rick Rubin, books on creativity, books on slowness. I've also started reading fiction again. I can see even what I'm attracted to as far as learning goes is different than when I'm in a season of pushing and growing my business.
And if you're in that season right now, that is okay. I don't think it's bad to be in a season of pushing and growing. I've been in seasons like that including during the summer, and I don't regret it. I think you have to use your own discernment to go inside on what you want this summer to be for you.
Some people it's like, I have more time in the summer to think about these things, so I want to push ahead and that's totally fine. The spacious summer for me is, like I said, a higher percentage of play and rest. And so play takes intention. This is what I found. It's hard to play if you don't plan it.
And I know that sounds like a counterintuitive thing because we're talking about spacious summer, like the slowness, but you do have to plan play. Taking your kids to a water park or going on a hike in the woods or going to a reservoir or a lake or the ocean, going on an adventure, going somewhere new, traveling. A lot of times play is planned, and I also think rest has to be planned. You have to carve out the space. It has to be intentional. How are you going to play? How are you going to rest, if that's how you want to spend your spacious summer? And that's kind of what I've been thinking about is making it an intentional choice to play more, to rest more.
So I hope you do that for yourself if the spacious summer is something that you are working on creating as well. To just end and close and to give you some food for thought, one, do you even want a spacious summer? Just because I'm sharing it on this podcast doesn't mean that that's what you want, but if you do want a spacious summer, how can you increase the percentage of time you are playing and resting?
And how are you going to plan it into your calendar and spend the time to do that with people that you want to do it with? That's what I want you to think about. Hope you have a spacious summer. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.
