Balance & Beyond
Balance and Beyond is the podcast for ambitious women refusing to accept burnout as the price of success. Here, we’re committed to empowering you with the tools and strategies you need to achieve true balance, where your career, relationships and health all thrive and where you have the power to define success on your own terms.
Balance & Beyond
Moment: You’re Not Wasting Time, You’re Missing Kairos
The ancient Greeks recognized two types of time that we need for balance—chronos (clock time) and kairos (flow state where time disappears)—but modern society has devalued the latter despite its importance for creativity, fulfillment, and connection.
• Chronos is measured, ticking time built around clocks and efficiency
• Kairos is deep time or flow state where time collapses and we're fully present
• When we emerge from kairos, we always feel great regardless of duration
• Society has mistakenly deemed chronos more important, making us feel guilty about kairos time
• Hustle culture considers kairos unproductive despite being essential for creativity and connection
• As AI increases efficiency, consciously building our "kairos muscle" becomes crucial
• Women who only live by chronos without kairos tend to burn out faster
• There's a distinction between wasting time (scrolling) and genuine kairos experiences
• Intentionally scheduling kairos time (massage, reading, unrushed meals with friends) is necessary
• Giving yourself permission is the key mindset shift needed to welcome kairos back into your life
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Welcome to Balance and Beyond Moments. Your weekly dose of insight, wisdom and mindset shifts, all in 10 minutes or less, whether it's a powerful truth, a fresh perspective or a spark of inspiration, this is your space to pause, reflect and reset. Let's dive in Time, the great leveler, the thing that we can never get more of, and yet we spend our lives chasing it. Today, I want to share some wisdom from the ancient Greeks that we all need to grasp and embed into our being. The ancient Greeks actually had two words for time. One was chronos, which may sound familiar as the root of what we now call chronological, and they also had another word for time, which is called kairos. This is the type of time that we have forgotten and completely devalued. So today I'm going to share with you a little bit about these two types of time, share why we've forgotten what should be our most important and, importantly, how can we now get into both of these types of time and have better balance? Because that's what this is all about.
Speaker 1:Kronos, according to the ancient Greeks, was measured ticking, quantitative time that is built around clocks. We spend a lot of our life talking about saving it, efficiency, being better organized, all with this type of time in mind. We live our lives by it. We spend our days watching the clock. This is how we are spending most of our time in today's world. Time in today's world, the other type of time kairos is what the ancient Greeks used to call deep time, or maybe you've heard it as flow time, and this is where time actually collapses and the world outside of what you're doing stops. Some people call this being in the zone. When you're in kairos time, you are in the present moment and you are not at all worried about yesterday or tomorrow. It's literally the time when time stops, and for many people, that might be a moment of joy with the kids, maybe it's a walk in nature, maybe it's those nights you occasionally have out with your girlfriends where you sit down with a glass of bubbles and click your fingers and suddenly four hours have gone by and you've completely lost track of time.
Speaker 1:What's really interesting is that when you lift your head up from being in Kairos time, whether you've been in it for 10 seconds or four hours, you always feel great, you feel fabulous, and it's what we need to feel whole. You must have both. Yes, we live by a society that is dictated by a clock. However, if you never get any Kairos time, you are always left wanting. So what I find fascinating is not just to understand these two types of time, but, in fact, what stops us getting in to Kairos time then.
Speaker 1:If it's the time that we actually need, well, to be honest, it's the belief that it's less important. We as a society have decided that Kos time matters more, and if we get into kairos, we might waste chronos. Oh my gosh. We might waste time, and when you're a woman who lives in my world, you're probably going to feel guilty for wasting time, because you've got so much to do and we can't possibly take any time for ourselves, we can't possibly get into flow because we don't have time for that. It's this hustle driven culture we have, where it's all about better, faster, more and efficiency, where we've completely diminished Kairos time and considered it unproductive, considered it weak, superfluous. That's only for I don't know whether you call them hippies or that's only for artists, so that's only for creative people who have time to get in the flow. I've got too much stuff to get done. I definitely don't have time for that. But what's ironic is that when we get into Kairos, that is actually where we find our creativity, it's where we find our fulfillment and it's also where we deeply connect to others.
Speaker 1:As we move into this new era of AI, where Kronos is going to continue to collapse, where the time it takes to do something Now we might, you know, have to format a PowerPoint presentation. Well, soon we're just going to give an AI a prompt and it's going to make it look beautiful. Now you don't have to come up with a lot of things, you can just type a prompt in and out it comes. So there's this. Quest for efficiency is going to continue. Who remembers back in the day when we thought, oh my gosh, I remember when I first got my Blackberry. I'm going to be so much faster, the internet will save us so much time. I don't have to go through all those encyclopedias to find that information. It's at the tip of my fingertips. Well, we all know that now, having 20,000 things at our fingertips just means we can get 20,000 more things done.
Speaker 1:What is going to become crucial to your fulfillment and success in future is going to be consciously activating and building your kairos muscle, getting into creativity, finding those ideas, finding the prompts or asking the right questions of others, looking through other humans, finding the humanness in all of us. As we are going to perhaps move into a world that is a bit more robotic, a bit more stale, how do you find inspiration that's going to be so crucial? Not to mention ensuring that you don't burn out, because I have seen a trend, if you think about these two types of time, where women, who are only ever living by Kronos and never give themselves permission for any type of Kairos time, for any type of flow time, burn out faster, and it's in the mistaken belief that they don't have time for Kairos. And yet the ancient Greeks, many of our great philosophers, saw both as equal. As you start to think about all right, well, let me get into some Kairos time. The first thing that's going to come up is this is going to give you an idea of what blocks you have in your mindset, what limiting beliefs, as I call them, or weeds in your garden are going to stop you doing this. The first thing that's going to come up is you're going to say I don't have time for this, I've got too much stuff to get done. We say hello guilt, hello shame, hello frustration. And, ironically, if you ever give yourself permission for Kairos time, then you're going to feel guilty for getting into it because you think, oh, I spent too much time on that, I got lost. But really all that's happening here is that your muscle isn't built and you're not placing equal footing on both of these types of time.
Speaker 1:I want to make a key distinction here. There is a difference between wasting Kronos and getting in to Kairos time. By that I mean when you are feeling so overwhelmed by the ticking of the clock and by how much you have to do and all the things on your list. Very often we will end up procrastinating. We will find solace in the solidarity of the scroll or whatever platform. It is of choice whether you're playing Candy Crush or whether you're scrolling socials. That is actually just an avoidance of Kronos, because that is not deep fulfilling. Fill up your cup time, which is what Kairos is Usually.
Speaker 1:As we become older, kairos has to be something that we intentionally step into. Because our lives are dictated by so much chronos, we have to actually use our chronos time to make space for the kairos. So, booking in that massage and not feeling guilty about it, giving yourself time to go to bed early and get lost in that book, going out with friends and not having a return time. Whether it's breakfast, lunch or dinner or going out for that coffee, that is what matters. That is true Kairos time.
Speaker 1:So I want to make sure you're aware of the distinction here, because some people will say things like oh, I've got time, when I get in flow, when I'm scrolling. No, that's called numbing your emotions. There is a very, very big difference. It's pretty rare that somebody comes off spending 20 minutes scrolling feeling better about themselves or feeling like their cup is full. Usually, they just feel even more numb and they feel frustrated and angry because they haven't done what it was that they needed to do. Everything I do is about mindset and strategy. You always have to have both. You can't just have the mindset and go I'm going to think positive and then never have any tools to back it up. And likewise, so many people have tools and yet they don't have the right mindset and so they're not going to land.
Speaker 1:Perhaps the case for you is, maybe you've even forgotten how to actually get into Kairos in the first place. I have so many women I talk to who say Jo, I don't even exist in my life. I'm an Uber driver, I'm a chef, I'm a laundromat person. I take care of everybody else. I work, I'm a chef, I'm a laundromat person, you know. I take care of everybody else. I work, I'm manager, I'm miss, I'm a daughter, I'm a friend, I look after everybody else. I have got no idea how to actually get in flow for me. What does that look like? And perhaps some of the activities that you used to get in flow with as a child or as a teenager aren't available to you anymore. Perhaps the body doesn't allow it, or perhaps your circumstances have changed. Maybe you don't now live on a farm and that's what you used to do as a kid, but that doesn't mean that you can't do it.
Speaker 1:And I will say that, when it comes to getting into Kairos time, it is actually way more about mindset than it is about strategy, because as soon as you give yourself permission to get into Kairos and you decide that it matters, you decide that it's important, even if you have to block it out of Kronos time, and not say it's a waste of time. Say you know what, for my health, for my mental health, for my wellness, for my financial freedom, my health, for my mental health, for my wellness, for my financial freedom. I have to do this. It matters. When you start to give yourself permission, it will naturally come in and fill the space. Thanks for taking this moment for yourself. If this resonated, share it with a friend who needs to hear it today, and don't forget to subscribe to Balance and Beyond for full episodes and more of these bite-sized breakthroughs. See you next time.
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