Why You Need More Time, Space, And Support

As growth-oriented individuals, you're here to heal, usher in better, and, just like plants need fertilizer and light, you need more support, time, space, rest, connection, and pleasure.

Embrace the idea that growth demands receiving more than giving, fostering a net gain in energy.

It's time to let yourself need more.

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Mentioned:

Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, by Amelia and Emily Nagoski https://www.burnoutbook.net/

Bestselling author and podcaster Gretchen Rubin: https://gretchenrubin.com/

timewitchery.com/planner, where you can get a Time Witchery anti-planner to help you revolutionize your definition of success.

Make Magic:

Allow yourself to need more. Take a moment to reflect on what you're craving—whether it's rest, connection, or support—and actively open up to receiving it.

Transcript: Why You Need More Time, Space, And Support

Natalie Miller: Welcome to Mind Witchery. I’m your host, Natalie Miller, and I’m so glad you’re here.

Hello, my love. I am happy to be back in my little recording studio here, talking to you about today, allowing ourselves to need more and to receive more. This is something that is coming up, well, kind of perennially for me, actually. I think this is one of the big lessons, things I'm here to figure out for myself, and also to help you with.

I've been thinking about it lately, like, in humanity, we have all of these group projects [laugh], and this is the one, this is one of the ones that I have definitely been assigned to, is figuring out how we can allow ourselves to need what we need, allow ourselves to rest more, allow ourselves more time, more space, more attention, more affection, more resources, more love, more money.

And I know that for people who are high-achieving, people who are happily autonomous or, I should say, who think that we are autonomous [laugh], we have this idea that we are very sort of like self-sufficient and self-directed. Of course, everything is co-created, and we're always existing in co-creation with other people.

But, even so, we might have the sense that we are doing things on our own. We are entrepreneurs. We are single parents. We are activists on the cutting edge, at the forefront. And so I think a lot of times we feel ourselves to be self-sufficient and to be on our own.

And then, of course, right, there are so many stigmas and bits and bobs of social conditioning that ask people who are minoritized, ask people who are not members or apparent members of the dominating culture to receive less, to settle for less, to be, as Emily and Amelia put it in their book Burnout, human givers rather than human beings. Right? We have all of this conditioning.

I think the combination of being a high-achieving and self-directed and generous person with that social conditioning can make it really, really difficult to acknowledge how much we need, and to allow ourselves to receive as much as we need.

So this has been coming up for so many of my clients, and this is the kind of thing they'll say. They'll say something like, "Oh my gosh, I am taking more time off than ever, and I don't understand how it's not enough." Or, you know, "I look at my schedule and, honestly, it's pretty spacious. When I look at my calendar, like, my calendar looks pretty spacious. But I still feel overwhelmed."

Or another said, "Maybe I just can't do as much as other people can do. Maybe I just need to, like, lower my expectations for myself. I'm just—I'm not going to be as prolific. I'm not going to be as hardworking as other people." Or finally, "When I was younger, when I was in my 20s, I just—I could work so long and so hard, and I just don't have that in me anymore." Yeah?

So I want to give you an analogy, the analogy that I gave to them. OK, there's actually two. You know me. You can always count on me for [laugh] metaphors to explain and describe what's going on. But here they are, and I hope that, like conceptually, this will help us to understand what's actually happening here when we find ourselves needing so much more than we think we ought to need, when we find ourselves needing so much more than we want to need.

OK, so here's my first analogy. I'd love for you to think about your smartphone, and think about the charger that you have for your smartphone. Yeah? It's like a little guy. It's got a USB. You can maybe plug it into your car. Ooh, you know, maybe you even have MagSafe, and so you can just stick your phone on a magnet, and that will charge your phone. Yeah? OK.

So now I want you to think about the charger that you have for your laptop. Think about how it's different. Your laptop charger is a little more capacious, right? It's a little bit bigger. It's usually got some kind of block or extra component to it, right, because it needs to pull through more power, right? In order to charge your computer, you need more power, more volts than you need to charge your phone.

And, you know, you could, like, think about other electronic things also, like, think about an electric car. An electric car has a big-ass plug. Think about a refrigerator, like, your little freezer. It's got a much larger plug and cord than does, say, you're curling iron, right?

The thing is that those devices—your computer versus your phone, an electric car versus a curling iron—those bigger devices can do more, meaning, a wider variety of things, and also a higher complexity of things. They can do more than your small portable devices. And that, my friend, is very likely you.

You are now pulling through more power when you're doing what you're doing, right? So when I think about my clients, once upon a time, they were leading a little strategic planning for a local city council. But now they're leading strategic planning for a multi-state organization.

Or I think about a client who, once upon a time, was working as part of a team, doing client advocacy, but now is consulting on her own, and is giving workshops to much larger groups, is consulting with multiple organizations. Once upon a time, she was talking to four members of a team about what she thinks next steps should be, and now she's testifying in front of Congress about what next steps should be, right?

So as we move through the world, as we develop our work, very often, we become more and more potent. The stakes become higher and higher. Sometimes we serve more clients. Sometimes we serve more complex clients or clients with needs that maybe we're helping them with in a more sophisticated way. Maybe our audiences are getting bigger. Maybe we have more channels. Right?

Once upon a time, I just wrote a newsletter. Now I write a newsletter, and I do a podcast, and I'm on other people's podcasts, and I help other people with the kinds of communications and writings that they do, right? So while once upon a time, I was pulling through a bit of power of expression, now I'm pulling through a much larger amount and also intensity of expression. So, of course, I need more charging capability.

Once upon a time, an evening off would fill my cup. It doesn't work that way anymore. Now I need a weekend. Now I need a monthly creative retreat. I need to plug in to receive more because I am giving so much more.

So you've no doubt heard me share before a spell I learned from Gretchen Rubin, who wrote The Happiness Project, and came up with the Four Tendencies. I really—I like a lot of her work. And she writes—I think it's in Better Than Before, her book about habits, which I really love—she writes, "The more I ask from myself, the more I must give to myself." Once upon a time, this was revolutionary to me. I just—I was like, oh, yeah, OK, that makes sense. Right?

The more I ask of myself, the more I must give to myself. And what I want you to know, what I'm discovering, and what I'm seeing with my clients is that as we move through the world, as the intense and passionate and giving people that we are, we are going to ask more and more and more of ourselves. We will be giving more and more, and so we will need to receive more and more. That's just how it works.

OK, I promised two analogies. Here's the other one. I want you to imagine a Honda Fit, and then I want you to imagine a Boeing 800 MAX. Is that a plane? I think it is. So two passenger-carrying vehicles, really.

If I'm going to zip around town in my Honda Fit, I don't really need to do a lot of maintenance on it before I go. Right? Like, I don't really need to check the tires or the oil or the engine. I might glance at the fuel gauge to see, hey, do I have enough gas, right?

But it's a Honda Fit, and I'm zipping around town. I'm not really going to attend to it in the same way that an airplane is attended to before it takes a flight, right? Just like the computer is more powerful than the smartphone, the airplane is more powerful, right? It's supporting more passengers. It's going further and farther and higher and faster.

It's got a lot more power, and with that power comes a higher responsibility to attend to its needs, to make sure all systems are go. Doesn't this make sense for these machines? It's like so fascinating to me that for these machines, we're like, oh yeah, that makes sense, totally. But then for us [laugh], it's like, I mean, I should be able to get by, right? I should be able to do a weekly podcast, and do all this writing, and support clients, and create new offers, and, and, and, and, and.

I'm not even getting to your sweet, aging body. I'm not even getting to the multiple relationships that you tend to in your life. Like, I'm just talking about work. We can be asking so much of ourselves but then trying to get by with so little, with just minimal support, with minimal rest. This is not sustainable. We would never ask a plane to fly without a good thorough check, like, hey, does this plane have everything it needs?

I was about to say we would never try to use a phone charger to charge a computer but, in fact [laugh], I have tried that [laugh]. I've been at a café, having forgot my computer charger, and I've said, I don't know, this is a USB-C. Let me go ahead and plug it in. I can tell you it doesn't work. It's just not enough. It can't pull through the necessary voltage to support the more powerful and energy-intensive machine. Right?

My love, here is the thing. We need more when we are doing more. And more doesn't necessarily mean a higher quantity. In fact, I think for my clients, more usually means a higher quality or a leveled-up intensity, or sophistication, or impact. Yeah? Again, I'm not talking to a tiny audience; I'm talking to a large audience. I'm not offering a little day-long retreat downtown; I'm offering a week-long retreat in Tuscany. P.S., that is coming in 2025, a week-long retreat in Tuscany with me. [laugh]

I digress. You see what I mean though, right? It's a higher intensity of giving, of output, and so it will require more input. Now, what is the input that's right for you? This is something I think that also can change over time. Sometimes we need more alone time. Sometimes we need more connection. Sometimes we need more rest, more relaxation, more pleasure. Sometimes we need, like, supportive rigor. Yeah?

Like, so for example, right now I have, oh my gosh, I have so many helpers. In my appreciations in my Time Witchery, I just put all the helpers because there [laugh] are so many helpers, right? So, for example, right now I really need Pilates several times a week in order to nurture the core strength that I need in this moment in my body.

I really need to make time for massage, for physical therapy, for osteopathic adjustment, for coaching, for breath work, for somatic practices. [laugh] Like, you know, do I sometimes feel like an airplane before takeoff with the big-ass checklist of like, OK, let's shore up all these systems? Yes, I do. I do. And also that's what's required for me to be able to show up in the world as powerfully, as potently, as generously as I do.

So I often say, we need so much more than we want to need. You do need more—fill in the blank—whatever it is you're craving. Again, it can shift over time. I just can't seem to rest enough. Yeah, you need even more rest. You are clearly pulling through so much more power, and so yeah, you'll need to rest in order to be able to open, to fill your channel with more power.

We need so much more than we want to need, and the more we ask of ourselves, the more we must give to ourselves. Very importantly, you asking more of you is so second nature, it's so natural, it's so expected, it's so ingrained that I think maybe you don't even notice you're doing it. I sure don't. I sure don't. So we are asking more and more of ourselves. We must give more to ourselves in return.

Finally, one more thought. This is something I learned from a coach that I worked with. Her name is Amanda Renee [sp]. She taught me that in order for something to be growing, it must receive more than it gives. Right? It's like it needs to be a net gain. If it's a net loss of energy, there is a decay or a dying that's happening. If we want to be growing and thriving, we must receive more than we give.

That is probably a whole other episode because that feels, I think for many of us, pretty scary actually. For the human giver in us, for the theoretically autonomous, self-sufficient person, that can really feel like a lot. But I want to leave you with that thought because I know that you're here, meaning, here on planet Earth, and also here listening to this podcast. I know you are here because you are growth-oriented.

I know that you are here because you want to heal, because you know that there is better available, and you know that you can help usher in what is better. And all of that requires growth, and all growth requires even more receiving, even more energy. You will need more. Just like your plants will need fertilizer and light and more water, so do you—so do you.

Expanding your capacity to receive, to open up, to need more, to allow yourself the support, the time, the space, the rest, the connection, the pleasure, the help, whichever one of those were plucking your heart and gut strings [laugh], that's what it's time to let yourself need. As always, thank you so very much for listening. Bye for now.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Mind Witchery. To catch all the magic I’m offering, please subscribe to the show, or if you want a little bit of weekly witchiness in your inbox, sign up for my Sunday Letter at mindwitchery.com. If today’s episode made you think of a friend or loved one, your sister, your neighbor, please tell them about it. We need more magic-makers in this troubled world.

Like all good things, this podcast is co-created by stellar people. Our music is by fabulous DJ, artist, and producer, Shammy Dee. Our gorgeous art is by the sorcerers at New Moon Creative. Mind Witchery is produced in conjunction with Particulate Media, K.O. Myers, executive producer. And I am Natalie Miller. Till next time.

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