Vivacious Cycles

Today I want to share with you the first lesson

from the audio course that goes along with my anti-planner Time Witchery.

I talk about two concepts that really help me to divest from

the cultural imperative of productivity above all else,

to invest in a more sustainable, self-honoring way of being,

which happens to be productive

in the most delightful, aligned, integrated, sustainable way.

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Mentioned:

timewitchery.com/planner, where you can set some vivacious cycles in motion with your very own Time Witchery planner.

Make Magic:

Instead of asking what you want to do in the New Year,

what if you ask yourself,

"Who do I want to be?”

“How do I want to feel?”

In this container of a new year,

in this venue for growth and experience,

“How do I want to show up?"

Transcript: Vivacious Cycles

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

Hello, sweetheart. Welcome to 2023. I wonder if you are feeling or if you've heard—this is what I am feeling and hearing all over the place—that this is a new year to ease into. Like, this is not a big, dramatic, turn-the-calendar-page kind of new year. This is a kind of slide, slip, slide into kind of new year.

On New Year's Day, I offered a little New Year's workshop about the new year. And something I said, which I wasn't actually planning to say—it just kind of came through—was what if we didn't decide to look at 2023 as a project? Like, what if a new year is not actually something to be accomplished, something to be done, something to be maximized, you know, like a project? 

And I think, so many times, our New Year's resolutions kind of turn into that, right? It's like, OK, I have a new year. What am I gonna do with it? What are the projects I'm embarking upon, as if the new year, in and of itself, is a project, or as if you are a project, right [laugh], as if you and I, we, human beings, are actually projects to work on. Yeah?

What if we, this year, refused that line of thinking? And what if, instead, we thought about the new year as an experience that we will have? What if we looked at the new year as a container, like this new year will hold us? Not that it's something to do or accomplish but, rather, it's a container, it's a venue, it is like a field or a greenhouse? Like, the new year is actually here for us, rather than us having to be here for the new year? 

So, in that way, maybe as we enter this new year, it's less about projects, and doing, and maximizing, and it is more about creating the conditions that help us to thrive. So, today I want to share with you the very first lesson from the audio course that goes along with Time Witchery, with my planner or [laugh], maybe better put, my anti-planner.

Time Witchery is really invested in everyday life. Underlying Time Witchery is this idea that when we are most present with our needs and desires, whatever those are, that is actually when we are most potent. And this is contrary to conventional understanding, right, which tells us that what we need is a strategic plan. What we need is a smart goal. What we need is a resolution. And this logic says that the way to thrive is to make a plan, and execute it.

And, my love, that has just never worked for me. [laugh] I am not a programmable machine. I am a whole human being, and I exist in this field of change where the weather is changing. My hormones are changing. The circumstances around me are changing. Everything is always changing. 

I'm always changing, and so what I find is that the key to thriving isn't so much like create a plan and then execute it. For me, the key to thriving is to (a) treat myself like a whole human being whose only constant is change, and then (b) to start to invest in the things that help me feel good; that help me thrive. 

Now, this requires a pretty big shift in values, yeah? Our cultural value is productivity. That is what capitalist culture, white dominant culture—that is the key value, and that is the value behind looking at the new year, and looking at ourselves as a project to be accomplished, right? It's like what are you going to do with this year? 

My proposed alternative is that instead of asking ourselves, "What do we want to do with the year?" what if we ask ourselves, "Who do we want to be? How do we want to feel? In this container of a new year, in this venue for growth and experience, how do we want to show up?" 

So, this is not project-focused. This is being-focused. This is not about productivity. This is about wholeness. This is about a more humane, a more self-honoring, a more loving and sustainable way of being.

So, in this first lesson of the Time Witchery course, I talk about two concepts that really help me to divest from the cultural imperative, like, productivity above all else, and help me to invest in this more sustainable, self-honoring way of being, which [laugh], fascinatingly enough, happens to be productive in the most delightful, aligned, integrated, sustainable way. Like, what do you know? When I treat myself like the magical creature that I am, rather than treating myself as a machine that is running upgraded software, when I treat myself as that magical creature, it just turns out that I thrive. And my thriving is actually the most important ingredient in whatever it is that I am creating, making, offering into the world, into my community.

All right. So, without further ado, here you go. Learn about vivacious cycles and, I hope, experiment with them. Just see what happens when you say, "You know, 2023 is a container, a venue in which I can treat myself better, in which I can cultivate even more self-trust."

Hello, and welcome to Time Witchery. I am so honored that you are investing in and experimenting with this particular approach to time, to your time, to your days, your weeks, your months, your year. I've created this audio course to help you make the very most of Time Witchery. I know it looks quite simple, but the ideas behind it, the philosophy behind it is both sophisticated—if I do say so myself—and also deeply countercultural.

This is not what we're taught to do with a planner, Time Witchery. Planners are usually only forward-thinking and very to-do-list-focused, and Time Witchery is not. Time Witchery is interested in you as a whole human being, and insists that when you honor your whole humanity, that is actually what helps your everyday life to expand, to make room for every part of you, all of the things that you want, and all of the things that support you, as well as the things that you want to do.

So, the primary and, to me, most magical "why" of Time Witchery, like, why I created it, why we're here, is to help you make time for yourself, for your dreams, for your body, for what lights you up. I really truly do believe that we can make time, and that it is easiest to make time when we are well resourced and well rested.

It is easiest to make time when we are respecting the ebbs and flows of our energy. It is easiest to make time, that is, to be present, to be efficient, to shift away from busyness and numbing behaviors, and toward engaging the world in the way that we really want to. It is easiest to do that when we are attuning to our desires, and when we are treating ourselves not as machines, not as human doings but as human beings. 

So, to elucidate this, to show you how it is that treating ourselves as whole human beings with emotions and moods, whole human beings who are not existing in a vacuum [laugh] without things like weather and current events and hormonal cycles and all of the things that come together to influence how we feel in any given day, to elucidate how when we treat ourselves as whole human beings, we make time, I want to introduce you to two key concepts: the vicious cycle, and the vivacious cycle. So, someone caught in a vicious cycle might sound like this.

"I've had a long, long day. I'm finally closing my computer here because, honestly, I can't look at it anymore. And I know it's dinnertime, but I don't have any energy to feed myself well, so I'm just going to scrounge around in the fridge, and make a do with what's in there. 

"And then I'm going to watch television because I don't have the energy to do much else. But I'm actually so stimulated and wired that watching television isn't enough, so I'm going to engage a second screen where I'm going to scroll Instagram or play a game on my phone. And I'm going to stay in this place of kind of lounging, and half-attending to my various screens, and snacking. 

"And I'm going to engage this kind of late because, honestly, I haven't had any time today to myself. I haven't been able to just enjoy myself, and so, damn it, I'm not going to bed. And, anyway, I did have too much caffeine this afternoon, trying to stay awake and alert for my work, and so my body doesn't feel ready to rest either. 

"So, I'll go to bed later than I want to, and I'll wake up later than I wanted to, and I'll rush around in the morning. I'll be in a pretty bad mood. I'll be frustrated. I will be loathing getting into the day. I will be self-loathing that I didn't just go to bed last night, or get my breakfast ready for the morning. 

"Speaking of breakfast, again, I just don't have time, so I'll just grab something really quick, and make a double big cup of coffee, since I'm so tired. And then when I get to work, I won't really have the wherewithal to focus on what it is that I want to focus on today. So, I will just dive into email, and do a little responding because at least that feels like accomplishing something, and getting something done. And then by the time lunch rolls around, I realize I'm not prepared for the meeting I have after lunch, and so I'll work straight through lunch, and then I'll be hungry."

And, I mean, listen, I could go on and on, but I think you know this. You know this vicious cycle. You have your own version of the vicious cycle. Maybe you have kids or pets in your vicious cycle. Maybe you have lots of time sitting in front of a blank screen. Maybe you have many glasses of wine or bong hits in yours. I don't know. But this vicious cycle is a place where it is as if life is dragging us behind it, like life is rolling on, and we are just trying our very best to keep up. 

To me, "vicious" is really the right word for this cycle. It is so hard on our bodies, and it is so hard on our self-conception. We are raised up to believe that if we are in a vicious cycle, it is because we are lazy. It is because we lack discipline. It is because we're not good enough. We're not focused enough. We're not organized enough.

If we are in a vicious cycle, we are raised to believe it is all our fault, when, in reality, the dominant culture, our societal structure, is very perpetuative—I kind of made that word up—perpetuative [laugh] of a vicious cycle, because there isn't a lot of space to attend to our very human needs because it is so work-focused and productivity-focused. It actually exalts something called a deadline—a deadline [laugh], like. So, that's a vicious cycle. 

What Time Witchery is here to do is to help you cultivate a vivacious cycle. And a vivacious cycle looks like you realizing at 2 p.m. that you're exhausted, and no good creative work is going to come out of you today, and so you close your computer at 2 p.m.

Maybe you go for a walk. Maybe you go to the grocery store, and grab some things to make a delicious meal. Maybe you grab your knitting, and put on a movie. Maybe you take a nap. 

And then when dinnertime rolls around, you make yourself a good dinner, and you eat maybe with loved ones or with friends. And then after dinner, maybe, you're feeling all charged up on your restorative afternoon, and your delicious food, and you have an idea, and you sit down at your computer, and you write in 20 minutes what you would have struggled with for three hours had you not allowed yourself to go with your flow. 

So, now feeling good about that, and good about your afternoon and evening in which you're not starved for pleasure, and so starved for time to yourself that you revenge stay up until midnight, no, you maybe connect with a good friend, and have a great conversation with them, and then you take a bath, and you read a novel that you've just started. And when you go to bed, it's a little bit early, so when you wake up the next morning, having had a pretty good night's sleep, you wake up, and you're well rested. And, oh look, it's a little earlier than usual, and so you have time in the morning to sit with your journal, or your Time Witchery, and to really think through what's important for the day ahead.

And, so, when you arrive to your workday, it's not with exhaustion and an extra-large coffee. It's with energy and intention. That is what the vivacious cycle looks and feels like, and that is available to you. So, a huge part of what we are doing in Time Witchery when we are not being obsessed with tasks and to-dos, but rather we're also interested in our values, our energy, interested not just in what we're doing but also in how we are being.

When we show up to our lives in that way, it is so much easier to instigate a vivacious cycle. One more thing. Remember, we are not machines existing in a controlled system, and so all the time, things are coming in to disrupt our cycles. Right? 

It's not like you just set it and forget it, a vivacious cycle, no, because sometimes the school is going to call, and your kid is sick [laugh], and you got to go pick them up in the middle of the day, or sometimes you get sick, and you got to delay a project. Yeah? So, creating and sustaining this vivacious cycle, this is something we're actively doing all the time, and Time Witchery is designed to help you to do that. 

We do that in many ways. We do that in the Daily Pages, which attend to far more than just your to-do list. We do that in our weekly and bimonthly and biannual Reflections and Intentions. And, more than anything, we do that by insisting, again and again and again, that we are human beings; not human doings. 

I can be task-obsessed at all costs, and I can do that task under duress, under stress, exhausted, and over-caffeinated—or I can be interested in a whole-self-honoring way of being where I will do the task when I feel up to it, when I feel inspired, when I feel energized. That makes all the difference in the world, and it also makes for a task much better done. So, that is what we're up to, creating vivacious cycles. 

Now, let me be clear. It does take an enormous amount of self-trust, and trust in the process, and trust in the universe to be able to fully step into your power to initiate vivacious cycles. But that too is something that Time Witchery is here to cultivate in you. It is here through reflections, and through attending to your body, mind, heart, and soul. 

In my experience, and in countless of my clients' experiences, when we are attending to our whole selves, and when we are creating whole-self-honoring lives, we are unlocking, and we are stoking all the transformative power we need to make our life systems work for us. And in that, Time Witchery is evolutionary, not just for you but for everyone else with whom you share life systems. 

I know because I've seen it so many, many times. I know because I've created it. In fact, I know because you are here listening to me talk about it. So, here is to the continued unfurling of humane and evolutionary vivacious cycles.

All right, my love. So, I hope you give this a try. When you find yourself trying to push through, when you find yourself prioritizing productivity over your wholeness, your integrity, I hope you will pause, and ask yourself, "What is it that could initiate a vivacious cycle for me right now?" 

I hope you'll play with this. And I promise you, I really do, that as you experiment with this more self-honoring way of being—I mean, listen, it sounds small, right, to close your computer at 4 p.m. rather than force yourself to sit there and finish something. It sounds small, but the ripple effect of that self-honoring choice is beyond your wildest dreams.

Time Witchery, my planner, of course, can help you with this because Time Witchery is so interested in reminding you of the power in everyday life. Time Witchery is asking you how you want to feel; who you want to be; how you're fueling yourself; what resources you have at your disposal. Time Witchery is really asking you to look at a day, not as something to slay or accomplish but rather as this wondrous opportunity to be alive. So, if you'd like to see more of Time Witchery, just go to timewitchery.com/planner. You can also see it through my website, nataliekmiller.com. 

All right, my love. Thank you so much for listening. Happy New Year. And even if you aren't listening to this [laugh] at the beginning of 2023, happy New Year because, really, any day can be the start of a new way of being. Any day can be New Year's Day. All right. 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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