How to Break the Addiction to Rushing

Has moving quickly or counting the clock become normal for you? Let's break down why that has happened, and how to break the addiction to rushing...yes, the addiction

This episode is a special one for your nervous system and feminine energy

My worship playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ymqW6Yjv7Iw5ZbTan2uuU?si=vfkZjBwQRMqU_1dhPE0gxA

Have a beautiful and blessed week! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, hello. Welcome into the Fruitful Feminine. I am Alexis and we are going to be talking about the addiction to rushing today. There is nothing that breaks feminine energy more than being in the state of rushing and feeling that you cannot get out. If you feel that you are always running late, if all of your tasks are taking right up until the last second, until you have to begin your next one. And if you feel that you just can't sit and be still and feel relaxed, this episode is especially for you. I thought that I had broken out of this myself last year, but there were still areas that would come up in the last couple of months, and I thought, all right, I am going to break this because it is not feeling good. So welcome in. I'm Alexis. I'm a feminine energy coach. I love Jesus. And so this podcast is a space to discuss both. If this is your first episode, I am so happy to have you. And if you've been here for a while, I am so happy to have you back. So breaking the addiction to rushing. When I was thinking about what to talk about today, I was flipping through the journal that I use. Whenever I do days of fasting and prayer, and I write in this journal, and I saw two highlights. Both of them were talking about rushing, and I thought, all right, here we go. What I had written in one of my journal entries from my last fast is was I ever socially anxious, or was I just rushing to live in the future or the next task that being present with people felt difficult? That was really hard to face when I wrote that out because something that I had been through before is feeling that hanging out with people was a chore. And I don't even like to say it now, but there was a point in my life where I would rather not make plans with anyone, except for when I had a lot of energy. And I just wanted to be with my family, close, close friends, and myself and God. And I knew that this was a bad habit. I knew that we are built for connections. And this had started for me during COVID, where I just did not like to really meet new people or invest in human relationships. I had become so comfortable with being alone or being with the people that I was already comfortable with. And I actually felt called out when I was reading Stephen Bartlett's Diary of a CEO book. He was talking about how we get so busy with life that we prioritize life over human connection and over other people. And when we stop practicing that muscle, we lose it. And that is why so many of us came out of COVID feeling so socially anxious. I remember thinking, I'm not nervous to make new friends. I'm not nervous to talk to strangers or people, but why all of a sudden do I feel this way? And it was really deep, uncomfortable inner work to have to break that off of me. And fasting is one thing that has really, really broken the last part off of me even more. Where I was reflecting recently and just thinking, we are so back. I always say that when I feel like a new identity level up has come. I feel now I talk to my neighbors all the time. They know Gus's name, I know their names, their dogs' names, and I talk with so many more people where before I would just kind of, this is what I would do is if I felt things were getting too close, like if someone goes, Oh, uh, where where did you come from? Or what is your business that you do out here? I would almost look for an escape. Like I would always try to have some sort of way that I could close that connection. All right, I I'm on my way to something, or I'm on the phone with someone, and it was a really bad habit. At the root of it was I was always in a rush. And so that entry in my journal, was I ever even socially anxious, or was I actually just so disconnected from being present because I was always living in the future. I think COVID kind of opened up a mini survival mode mentally for a lot of us. And of course, life afterwards has just piled on top of that. So if you are even feeling this right now, that oh my gosh, I used to be so much more extroverted or confident speaking with people, confident creating. There could just be an addiction to rush to rushing that is actually stopping you. And we'll get into this. First, we're gonna talk about why do we rush? Why is it harmful? Then we're gonna talk about Jesus' response when the people around him start rushing. And then I'm going to give you three tools on how you can start breaking the addiction to rushing. So, why do we rush? It comes down to survival mode. Survival mode is it has been such a hot topic for this community the last couple weeks. I just did a video yesterday on YouTube about uh survival mode and just how it really disrupts that polarizing side to our feminine energy. And survival mode, what it what happens is it does one thing to us. And this one um emergency mode disrupts our mind and our brain. So, what happens to our mind when we go into survival mode? When we go into, I'm in an emergency, I'm unsafe, whether it's physically, mentally, spiritually, our mind will go, I must outrun this predator. Our brain will go, I must continue this familiar sensation. This is such a deadly combo for our feminine energy, because when we when our mind is telling us you must outrun the danger, how can you sit down and relax? And when your brain is saying, I must continue this familiar sensation, because the brain is always looking to keep you safe. The best way it knows to keep you safe is to repeat the program that it has experienced. If most of your life has been in a chaotic, rushing storm, your brain is going to be familiar with that and it's going to like it. That is what is so dangerous. If you do not ever do inner work, is your brain is running on this program that it's telling you it likes just because it's familiar, but it's actually very harmful. And so nothing blocks feminine energy more than survival mode. But why is this? It's because three qualities that your feminine energy needs to come out is you need to be present, meaning you need to be fully in your body. The moment that you jump up to your head and you start replaying past memories that are there in your brain, or you start creating imaginations of the future, aka anxiety, you've locked your body out of being present because now you're swimming in the head. And also, this goes for men too. Being in your body, this is not something just reserved for us women. I think we are more, what would I say? I think we are more comfortable and more alive and more powerful when we are majority in our body. For men, you still need to be in your body, you still need to have that mind-body connection, but your your body is meant to lead with logic. If you are only in your head and you're disconnected from your body, you're going to be thinking from the brain's programming only. You have to be able to connect the body too. So being present is one quality that rushing turns off. Being rested, because your body thinks it's running, that will also turn off. And the number one quality that feminine energy needs to come alive is to feel safe. If you're in survival mode and you're rushing, your body knows that it's not safe. There was a comment that I saw from one of the glowgirls a few weeks back, and she goes, My morning routine is four hours, and I'm so glad that you're talking about this, Alexis, because I thought that this was a bad thing. I had shared something about how my morning routine is really long, and I had to kind of get over the guilt telling me you can't start your workday at 1 or 2 p.m. Which by the way, it's 2 p.m. This is the first work. Like I put work in quotations that I'm doing today. It's a Tuesday. And I had gone to lunch with some of my girlfriends a couple weeks ago, and I just said, This is still a little bit hard for me to be out on a Wednesday like this, thinking I haven't done any work today, it's a weekday. And she goes, but you have worked so hard to create this life for yourself where you can do this, it's not going to undo the work that you did. And so that's something that I'm still trying to form into my brain is that it is okay to break the routine. And I think about our world. What was our life with before routines came along? When we were picking berries and fishing all day and making clothes. I think that's why a lot of us love uh classical movies or books. It's because there's no jobs. It's because they're living the true soft life. It's because they wake up and they're not thinking, oh, it's 8 30, I've got 30 minutes to finish the rest of my routine. They're waking up, they take care of what needs to get done, and then they leisurely start their day. I think this is what is so beautiful about places like Europe because they have siestas during the middle of the day where they have a nap and they have a huge lunch, and they don't start like I would walk to a bakery or a coffee shop and it's still closed at 9 a.m. They're asleep. And I love that. So when you can start to remember that we were not built to live in this structured routine that we that most of us have, that will help you see okay, I don't need to rush. Rushing does not need to be my norm. And if you have a really long morning routine, you're doing your guasha, you're stretching, you're spending time with God, that is a really beautiful thing. And guilt does not belong in there. So here's a question for you. Actually, here's two, and you don't have to answer these now, but take them with you as we do the rest of this episode. And if you want, come back and journal later. Question number one: where did I first start rushing? If you can remember the first time you felt that you had to move really fast, when was the first time that you felt you were running out of time? Question number two is what would be different in my routine if I had no structure? How would your morning, your evening routine look? What are some of the activities that you might start doing differently? Alright, I'm gonna read a quick story from Mark IV. And when I was preparing this episode, I was thinking, what would be a good story to talk about? And immediately this one came to my mind. I'm watching the Chosen TV series right now, and I'm so excited to get to this episode. Hopefully, they show this part in the show. But this show, I'm on season two, episode six, I believe. I think every single episode I have cried. This show has healed me so much. And if you love visual explanations, please watch The Chosen. It is so good. The actor who plays Jesus does such a phenomenal job of showing his humility and his kindness. And this show, I actually tried to start it with my family a couple years back. And I remember I watched the first episode and my heart just was not there. I felt, mmm, I don't think I'm ready for this. Now I watch it and I'm thinking, I'm so glad that I didn't force myself to watch it back then because I needed to be ready. Like I needed to have my heart open to learn even more about Jesus. And so if you have been wanting to watch it, I encourage you, just watch the first episode. If something stirs in your heart, keep watching it. But it will always be there. You can always come back later. It definitely took me a few years to sit down and watch it because I had this thing where I where I felt if I'm watching TV, I want it to be something that's not so educational. I want it to be something more entertaining. Now I'm thinking, oh my gosh, this show, it is so much, it feels like a real show. And I don't want to compare it to Game of Thrones. Um, but think of Game of Thrones, how much goes into the production of that, how on the edge of your seat you are watching it. That's similarly how The Chosen feels, but of course a lot cleaner. I never finished Game of Thrones, but I did watch a few episodes. All right, back to the Bible. So this is in Mark 4, verse 35, and it's titled Jesus Calms the Storm. Quick backstory to this: what is going on is Jesus is with the disciples. They have just had a full day of healing. Jesus was doing miracles, they were reaching people. And the disciples, it's not given how long they had been with Jesus at this time, but research guesses that it's about a few months to over a year that the disciples had been by Jesus' side, meaning they have seen Jesus casting out demons, healing people, healing the blind, the sick, um, performing all these miracles. They have seen it with their own eyes. And now they are out on a boat. It's late at night. And it says, as evening came, Jesus said to his disciples, let's cross to the other side of the lake. I'm thinking now I love Jesus because this man knows exactly what is about to happen. And I just think he's just guiding his innocent disciples, just waiting for things to unfold. So he goes, So they took Jesus in the boat and started out, leaving the crowds behind, although other boats followed. But soon a fierce storm came up, high waves were breaking into the boat, and it began to fill with water. Jesus was sleeping at the back of the boat with his head on a cushion. I love him. The disciples woke him up, shouting, Teacher, don't you care that we're going to drown? When Jesus woke up, he rebuked the wind and said to the waves, Silence, be still. Suddenly the wind stopped, and there was a great calm. Then he asked them, Why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith? The disciples were absolutely terrified. Who is this man? They asked each other. Even the wind and waves obey him. I would not like to be a disciple after that statement. Do you still have no faith? They had been with Jesus, seen him perform so many miracles, yet when water started to come into the boat and the waves started to crash around them, they still panicked. And I love that there's so many stories like this because it constantly reminds us we are human. No matter how deep you are in your faith with Jesus, there will be stormy moments where you get shaken up and there comes a decision, are you going to be faithful or are you going to lose faith? In this moment, the disciples lost their faith. And I'm sure it's easy for us now to look back and think, guys, you were with Jesus Christ. He was sleeping in the boat. You had no reason to worry. Do you really think that that boat was going to sink underwater while Jesus was there with you? No. But it was a test. Jesus was asleep and he was still testing them. And I love what it says. Jesus was sleeping at the back of the boat with his head on a cushion. This man is the ultimate picture of surrender, trust, and rest. So it shows how there's such a big contrast when we are rushing, when we are in survival mode, versus when we are faithful, when we are rested, when we are trusting. Jesus versus the disciples. I'm going to break down a few qualities that were different in them. Jesus was rested, the disciples were rushing. Rested equals present, rushing equals future focused. The disciples were so focused on drowning, which hadn't even happened, that it caused them to start rushing and panicking. Jesus was faithful, the disciples were faithless. Jesus was relaxed, the disciples were frantic. Jesus was present and the disciples were future planning, assuming the worst. And I had shared this in last week's episode, no, maybe two weeks ago. I think it was the one on how to have faith when you feel fear. My pastor at my church, he said something so profound in our church's devotional. He goes, Sometimes sleeping is the most spiritual thing that you can do because it says, God, I trust you. It takes so much courage to have faith. Because when you can close your eyes and trust God with the unconscious, that is when God goes, They trust me, I'm going to take care of them. And so I think there is a specific reason that it says Jesus was sleeping. He could have been laying down, but it specifically says he was sleeping. That tells us turning our mind off, turning those thoughts off, turning the future planning off is the key to having faith. It is the key to stopping the rushing and being rested. So moving on to more of the practical things that you can do to break that cycle of being addicted to rushing. Number one, sensitize your senses again. When I wrote that out, I was thinking, I hope that sentence makes sense. But I'll explain, I promise. Sensitize your senses again. When you cannot feel your senses, you are missing your body's connection. You are missing your body's deepest level of being able to feel. That is what dims our feminine energy. So how do you sensitize your senses again? One, clean out your consumption. Of course, fasting is the best way to do this. Not just fasting from food, but whatever it is that controls you more than you control it, you need to fast from. That can be social media, it can be seeking validation, it can be overeating, it can be uh not waking up on time in the morning, whatever you feel has more power over you. That is what you have to fast from, that's what you have to starve your flesh from. We have an episode on fasting, and it'll go into all the details. So something interesting happens whenever I fast, and I talk about it more in that episode. I remember how good food tastes. It tastes different after I fast. I was talking about in that episode how usually in the morning for breakfast I will have eggs. After I fast, I cannot eat any other eggs besides hard-boiled. Every other morning besides that, I'm eating my eggs fried hard or scrambled. So I put oil in the pan, I put the eggs in there, and I cook them. After I fast, that the thought of doing that, it kind of repulses me. And I don't know what it is. If it's the oil, if it's the warmth of eggs, I don't know what it is, but something about my body being cleansed from that day of fasting says this is going to hurt your body if you eat it right now. When my mom and I, we were having a discussion over Christmas, how it's so interesting how when we are eating really healthy, we're eating mostly whole foods, we're eating really clean. Things like dates taste so, so good to us. Because our palate is different when it has been cleaned out from overconsumption. When you're eating really healthy, you know when you take a bite of a cupcake or a piece of candy and you go, oh, this is way too sweet. Any Europeans in here, if you've tasted American food, you go, What is this? This is not bread, this is a pastry. It's too sweet because you're used to consuming something a lot lighter. Notice how after you haven't scrolled for a while, like I gave up TikTok for I believe 12 days in February, and that was huge for me. I love TikTok. After I gave up TikTok and then went back on it, I could only scroll for about 20 minutes before I thought, all right, I'm ready to get off. Normally before that, I could stay on for two hours. Also, I couldn't watch videos very fast and I couldn't scroll very quick. I could actually enjoy long videos, didn't even turn up the speed, didn't even go to the comments always. I would just watch and enjoy the video. And I think it's so beautiful. The only people, unless you've consciously worked on this, the only people who do this normally are older people or super young people. Like I have a cousin who is young and he always watches videos on YouTube about trains, and he can just sit and watch two-hour long videos. He's not checking the comments, he's not scrolling on his phone, he's just watching the video. Same with older elderly people. Their brains are not so fried, they're not so used to overconsumption that they are just able to actually feel the depth of a video. Another example is showering without music. This is something that I will do from time to time. When I feel that I'm rushing that day, I will say, okay, I need to do one activity where I'm not listening to anything. And you will notice how extra good your shower feels. You will notice that when you do play music, you can't listen to it as loud. And you feel that you don't need it. Sometimes it's just a distraction. Even sometimes the days that I'm fasting and praying, if I'm listening to worship music, I will feel God say, turn it off. Because although it's something light like music, it's still mixing with the thoughts that God is trying to send. The more of the world that we are consuming, the less of Him we are consuming. And if we are consuming the world, we will always be lacking. We will always be rushing. It's never enough. It's like what Jesus says to the woman in at the well. He goes, if you continue to drink from this water, you will always be thirsty. But I have water that when you drink from it, you will never thirst again. Meaning a relationship with him. Anything from the world will leave us thirsty. And do you know when you're really thirsty? How you gulp down that water? That's what we are doing to every part of our life. We're trying to gulp it down and rush and consume so much of it because it's not enough. So number one, clean out your consumption. That's how you sensitize your senses again. Number two, clean out your storage physically and mentally. Things like cleaning up your camera roll, um, cleaning up your text, doing spring cleanings, fall cleanings. Something so interesting that I would always think about is when I was a kid, my mom, she is just amazing. And every spring, every fall, we would sit down. She would do this with my sister and I in our room, and then she would go into my brother's room the next day and do the same thing. And uh my brothers, they didn't really like it as much as my sister and I did because I think it's just such a such a girly thing to clean and organize, right? Well, when my mom was cleaning out our closets, cleaning out our toys, she had us get rid of a lot of things, things that we haven't touched in a while, things that we haven't used. And when she would pull out our toy bin from underneath our bed, I remember so specifically this happened every time we did a cleaning. She would pull out and say, Okay, what are the toys that you haven't touched in the last few months? And my sister and I would point to them, but then we would say, No, we want this actually. We want to play with this so bad. Old toys that we had not cared about all season long suddenly felt new again. And whenever our room was clean and we had lightened the load because we donated a lot of our clothes and toys and just things, our room just felt light. You know, when you clean out your your uh cabinet or your fridge and your home and you just feel, oh, my energy is back. My business students, I always tell them before you even get into setting up your business, go and clean your home. And they're like, What? What is that gonna have to do with anything? Then they see your energy is back. You need your storage to be cleaned out if you want new ideas to come, if you want more energy to come. And so a lot of us are so desensitized because we have too much stuff. The older that I get, the less I want stuff. Every single month, I'm looking at my closet, looking at things in my home, and I'm like, what can I get rid of? The minimalistic life is looking better and better. And it's so funny because Jesus was such a minimalist, he barely had things. And I think if I just lived like he did, I would be so much happier. But how come there's periods where I think, no, I need all this stuff, I need all of this security. It keeps us needing more and keeps us rushing, and it always takes away our happiness because it takes away our peace. I think happiness and peace go together in a similar way that being pain-free and being happy go together. If you've ever had an injury and then you get it, you're uh working on getting it fixed, like maybe you're doing physical therapy, you're probably thinking, this is such a weight on my life. Like I would be so happy if I didn't have this pain right now. When you get sick, oh, I miss having a healthy immune system. What it would be like to have my immune system and my energy back. So we take things for granted. And I think that equivalent of being pain-free, like I hear a lot of older people talk about, I would be so much happier if I didn't have this pain, didn't have this injury. That's the same with our peace. The less peace we have, the less happy we will be. And peace comes from having your storage and having your consumption cleaned out. Of course, things are not evil. There's so many little things like maybe you have a vibration plate that you love, or uh face masks, or certain foods and vitamins. Things are beautiful and wonderful. It's when we are fully dependent on them for our peace that they become disruptive. And the less you have, the lighter you will feel. On this point about sensitizing your senses again, I always think how interesting it is that with products like hair products, I don't know if this is the same for having straight hair. Please tell me in the comments because I'm very curious. I'm obsessed with researching about curly hair. I've always loved it. Even as a kid, I would just sit on blogs and forums and learn about products, oiling the hair. And there is a known idea in the curly hair community that you have to recycle your products. After about one to two months of using a certain shampoo or a certain gel, you have to switch the brand that you're using. Otherwise, your hair will get used to it and the product will stop being efficient for your hair. And I was always so mind-blown by this. How does our hair get used to this? If we don't take away what our hair is used to, then our hair will become desensitized to the product and it will not penetrate the hair follicle. It will not have the healthy effect that it's supposed to on our hair. On the other side of this, if we think about things like the corn industry, but with a pee, why men who are addicted to this, men and women, and then they can't feel deep intimacy with their partner, is because they're so doled to pleasure. When you feel pleasure over and over and over again, it's like eating chocolate, like a bar of chocolate for every single meal. That first meal that you have chocolate, it might be amazing. It might be so delicious. The second meal, uh, it'll be less. Then the third meal, and if you keep that on for 40 days, you're going to be sick of it. Because now you have wiped out the dopamine that fires up when you first taste it, when it's like fresh and new for your brain. And that is what the corn industry does, is it desensitizes us so much to where now we can't experience pleasure when we are actually doing the real thing. I think this is similar with things like ChatGPT AI tools. AI tools are very powerful, but when we use them for our mental health, when we use AI as a therapist, that's where there's a problem. Because we're so used to the comfort of just opening up our phone, typing something in, that now to go and sit down and open up with a real person, it's too stimulating for our senses. So I think we need to be careful about using too much of anything. It will desensitize our senses. Fasting and praying, it is the most powerful, at least from my experience in life so far, it is the most powerful tool to make you sensitive again. I can't listen to music at the same volume. Like everything feels louder, food tastes uh more flavorful, conversations with friends feel deeper, like putting on lotion after I take a shower feels way better. Everything regarding my senses feels heightened after I've fasted and prayed because now my flesh has been starved, it's all of the consumption taken out, and my spirit is filled. There's a peace, there's a happiness there. And I think that's why, you know, when you eat food when you're really, really sad, how you can't really taste it. Like when everything was uh really, really chaotic a couple weeks ago in my neighborhood. My neighbor and I we went out to dinner and we were just sitting there, we're talking, neither one of us could finish our food. And I told her, I promise I'm not normally like this. I was like, this would be gone if I was not in survival mode right now. And she goes, I know my appetite is just gone because we were stressed and we were in such a mode of panic. And so our senses were doled because we were in this rushed survival mode state. When you fast and pray, it is the best reset for your nervous system. Because when your nervous system is in this sympathetic state, meaning it's activated, meaning it's triggered, it's running from the danger. What happens is your adrenaline becomes higher. This is also why food does not digest well. When your adrenaline is higher, you can't feel the pain as much. It's like those people who get into a car accident and don't realize they've been hurt because they have so much adrenaline running. They're in such a mode of uh survival mode. Well, when you fast and pray, your nervous system gets reset because you don't have food to go to for comfort. And thank God, I was reading one of your guys' comments a couple months ago, and this woman had asked, Alexis, do you work when you fast? And up until that point, I did. Now when I fast, I do not work unless there's an emergency. It has changed how my fasting and prayer life is. It's so much deeper, it's so much stronger. And now I don't have any mode of comfort other than God and the Bible to go to. No social media that day, no food, no work. Work is very pleasurable for me. So to even take that away, it's hard. And what happens at that point is nothing is making me rush. Nothing is giving me pleasure outside of God. And so my nervous system calms down. I have no need to rush. And when I'm in this mode, when my nervous system is calm, all these emotions suddenly start coming out. I'm journaling, I'm crying, I'm worshiping, I'm crying, spending time with Jesus, crying, sometimes happy tears, sometimes blocked emotions from before. When my adrenaline is high, I cannot cry. Because your body cannot experience pain. So what happens if you're always in a high adrenaline state? All the emotions that you feel getting blocked and blocked and blocked. One of the biggest things that I do with my clients is help their body feel safe before we do any feminine energy work. And usually on our calls, there's a lot of crying, a lot of tears, a lot of I don't know why I'm crying, and I say it's beautiful. Your body has needed to be safe for a long time so that it can just release. So sensitize your senses again, and that will help you break the addiction to rushing. Number two, add a barrier to experiencing discomfort and easing it. What I mean by this, here's an example. This actually very recently happened to me. Usually in the morning after my workouts, I will meditate. I'm playing ocean sounds, I'm just spending time with God, just being aware of my thoughts. And I have this back pain. I haven't talked about this on YouTube or my podcast, but I have this lower back pain that I have had for months and months. And I don't know why. I just haven't gone to a doctor to do anything about it. But when I was meditating, I realized why I haven't. And I hurt my back a while ago when I was lifting in the gym. And something just happened where it felt like this deep, deep um ache, and it felt like something I don't even know how to describe, it just felt like this deep ache in my body where something in my back shifted. So now when I bend over or I do heavy lifting, my lower right back hurts so so bad. But I've just kind of gotten used to it. But no, that's not gonna work for me anymore. So, anyways, I when I was meditating and just thinking about, oh, my back hurts. Like I need to do something about this. The first thought that came to me is what if when I do go to the doctor, they tell me that I need back surgery. All of these emotions and adrenaline starts coming up, and I'm thinking, no, no, no, I don't want back surgery. I've never had surgery. Um, I don't want to wear a back brace, I don't want to have to go through that, be put under anesthesia. My mind racing. And I'm so tempted in that moment to stop my meditation, to open up Google and type in my problem and say, Will I need back surgery? I was so tempted to do that. And I felt God say, stop. Do not touch your phone, keep on relaxing, keep on meditating. That feeling of discomfort to sit with my eyes closed when I could easily just reach over for my phone, that is what breaks the addiction to rushing. Because if I had reached for my phone and opened it up and started doing all this research, it probably would have shifted, not probably, it would have shifted me into this mode of being in survival mode, trying to plan my next doctor's appointment, messaging family and friends, all of this. One decision to sit in the discomfort eliminated that rushing. Other ways that we do this, easing our discomfort, snacking, scrolling, um, sometimes snoozing our alarm, sometimes even running to friends or family as soon as something goes wrong. It is so powerful to have good relationships where you can run to with problems. What I am saying is before you run to them, have you run to God? And I think about how sad it is. Sometimes when I pray at night, I feel God say, I've been waiting for you all day. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I consulted this person, I was on Chat GPT. I should have just sat with you more, God, and I'm so sorry. We have this loving father who all day long is waiting for us to run to him and just sit with him. And sometimes running to people instead of God is a form of easing that discomfort. And if you always need people to ease your discomfort, you're never going to be able to feel peace without them. Feel the peace first through God and then go and get advice from people, share with people. Another example of this, I used to do this all the time until I became conscious of it, is in public, I would always be holding my phone in one hand. This is when I was still living in Las Vegas. And I remember one time I was walking into Earth Cafe, I remember this so vividly, and I was like, I am not going to have my phone. I'm going to have both my hands open when I walk in here. It was so uncomfortable for me because I had become so used to having my phone if I was nervous in public or um if I felt shy or if I felt someone look at me. That trigger, immediately I could ease it by looking down at my phone and checking something. I think it is such a subtly dangerous tool that we have to be able to go and open up another thought, open up another activity in the blink of an eye through our phone. It is such a subtly dangerous weapon because when we don't have it, what's going to happen? We are going to feel in this mode of rush, in this mode of panic to ease the discomfort. I was listening to this podcast where they said we touch our phone over 150 times a day, average. And she goes, if you are addicted to being on your phone, every time you touch your phone, have a piece of paper around you throughout the day, write a tally. And I guarantee you will not be touching your phone as much when you see those tally marks. I haven't done this, but I'm very curious to do it. My screen time has gone down a lot. Like it used to be five, six hours a day, even though I do use my phone for work. But now it's gone down to about two hours a day. And my mental health has just gone up. So add a barrier to when you experience the discomfort, to when you ease it, even if it's a few minutes, even if it's a few seconds. If you can't walk in public without your phone in your hand, go 10 seconds without doing it, then you can take your phone. Slowly, as we say on YouTube, stretch your rubber band to be able to hold that discomfort. If you can hold discomfort, you will be so powerful. I think most of us why we struggle in relationships is because we can't hold discomfort. So either we become anxious or we we become avoidant. When you can learn to sit with discomfort, you become more secure in your attachment. You don't need people to validate you or to give you reassurance to feel secure. And that is the best, most freeing way to live, coming from someone who used to be anxiously attached. All right, number three, this is the last one. We must quit multitasking if we want to break the addiction to rushing. What happens when we multitask is our brain enters into a stressed-out state. It's not meant to be able to juggle two activities at once. And so now we're doing something that's not normal for our brain. Our brain is getting stressed out because it doesn't have the computer upgrade to be able to do this. Now our brain is stressed and we are telling our brain something is unfinished. Because if we're not giving our full attention to one task, we're giving it our split attention to two, our brain gets even more stressed, even more stressed thinking one of these is unfinished. And so now what happens when we're stressed and we have an unfinished task? All throughout the day, we will keep rushing because there's something we didn't fully get done. We need to hurry. We're in a rush. Some of us are even trying to multitask with rest and efficiency. And it is hurting us so badly because we're not dedicated to either. An example of this would be sleeping in so that you can get more rest, so that you can improve your aura ring score, talking to myself. Sleeping in, but then you're rushing out the door to get to that meeting or to get to that appointment. And like I was saying in the beginning, if you feel everything goes till the very last second, there is some sort of addiction to rushing. If you feel how come I'm always running late? How come I always have only 30 seconds to spare? You could be trying to pile on too much to your plate. Even at night, I have felt God say, you need to remove things from your routine because you're always struggling to get in bed by 10:30, by 11. I felt I needed to even take away a devotional. And that was really hard to do. But then I realized I created this religious routine. God did not tell me to do this. When I'm rushing with my devotional and I'm rushing with my journaling, and now I'm rushing with my praying, all of those I'm doing poorly. And I was thinking, God, I just want to pray at night. That's it. Can that be the last part of my routine? No devotional, no doing this, no doing that. Those are all routines I've created. That's our human effort. Even this morning in Deuteronomy, I was reading a part that said, don't try to add or take anything away from what God has told us. A lot of us are rushing because we've added to what God has told us to do. God says, I want your heart. He doesn't say pray three times a day. He doesn't say have this devotional that you do in the morning and the night. It's great if you have that time and it doesn't disrupt your relaxed state. But for me, when I took away the devotional at night and only kept one in the morning, my prayer life did so much better because now I could just talk with God and spend more time with Him and I could get to bed at the time that I wanted. And so when we are trying to do something efficient and we're trying to relax, like we're trying to enjoy doing our makeup and we're trying to enjoy getting to church on time, sometimes we can be extending our routine so much or not waking up early enough because our brain is familiar with stress. And if you wake up 30 minutes earlier and you can make a tea in the morning, you can stare out your window in the morning, you can answer texts without um needing to glance at the clock, and you can leave to church with five minutes to spare, your brain's going, This is dangerous. We don't know what it's like to not be stressed and to not be rushed. And so it will keep systems in place to keep you in that stressed state. The moment you become aware of it is when you can start to reverse it slowly over time, just waking up 10 extra minutes earlier. So you must quit multitasking. How to break the addiction to rushing again to recap these three points. Add a barrier to experiencing discomfort, and then when you ease it, and number three, you must quit multitasking. Why we rush timelines? There's two more stories in the Bible that I think are so powerful, specifically with timelines, because rushing in day-to-day is different than God, where's my husband? God, where's my dream business? God, where are my best friends? God, where is my next answer? God, where is my reward for this? All questions like this that a lot of us have. So the first story, I'm so happy as I finally read Esther all the way through, like read it deeply and studied it. And I felt God was telling me to do that during the three-day fast that I had a couple weeks ago, and it was so good. So in Esther, there's a part, let me go to it real quick. Quick backstory about Esther. I feel like I'm like I need to give spoiler alerts, but I think most of you know how the story goes. So Esther is a woman, she is a Jewish woman at the time who is crowned queen by King, I don't know how you say his name, but I think it's King Xerxes. We're just gonna call him that. So King Xerxes at the time, extremely powerful king, and he was looking for someone to be his wife. And Esther had a lot of favor. She was described as being very beautiful, very very lovely. She was just such a humble, uh, good woman. And she has a cousinslash uncle named Mordecai, who is also Jewish. And so Mordecai is kind of like Esther's father. He adopts her into his family, and just they have a really good close relationship. So Esther becomes the queen. I believe at this point that I'm about to share this next part. She had been queen for one year, one to two years. And when Esther was becoming queen, something had happened where some of the king's officials were plotting against the king. Esther's cousin Mordecai heard that this was happening. Mordecai was not a palace official, but God put him in the right place at the right time to overhear this discussion, to overthrow the king. And Mordecai told Esther, Hey, someone is plotting against your husband. They are people that he trusts. You need to save him. So Esther tells her husband, tells King Xerxes, hey, these two officials, my cousin Mordecai overheard, they want to overtake you. And it turned out to be true. The king caught them and they were put to death. So, anyways, Mordecai is not recognized in that moment, but Esther kind of receives uh great recognition for that. And fast forward a little bit, there's an evil man named Haman in the story. We're not going to get too much into the story because that's gonna need to be a whole episode. But Haman is an evil man that is an official of the king, he's pretty much the king's right-hand man, and his ego is hurt because Mordecai would not bow down to him. Mordecai was a very good man of God, and so of course, he's not going to treat any human like a god. Because Haman is so insulted, this lowly Hebrew man won't bow down to me. Haman says, All Jews, I want them killed. All Jews in the nation. Thousands and thousands. And Haman tells the king, he's like, hey, all the Jews need to be killed. They're a threat to our power. Talk about manipulation. The Jews are a threat to our power, they need to be killed. And the king, he has so much on his plate, he trusts this man Haman so much that he goes, Okay, let it be done. Let a decree be issued. And once the king seals a decree, it cannot be undone. So the news gets out, all of the Jews start freaking out. King Xerxes just put out this order that we all are going to die. Mordecai runs to Esther and says, Um, hey, something needs to be done about this because all of us, your family, we're going to die. You included, probably. Esther never told King Xerxes that she was Jewish, by the way. So now Esther and Mordecai, they're freaking out about what to do. They decide immediately, let's fast and pray for three days. Let's get direction from God about this. Now, here's the part that is important. Um, Esther starts preparing for how she's going to go to the king. And it was not legal for a queen to approach her king at this time. King Xerxes had to invite Esther into his presence. She couldn't just walk up to him. And so at this time, Esther, she, I believe she had gone. Yeah, Esther had gone to the king. And when she goes to him, it's a huge moment. It's literally life or death. And King Xerxes holds out his gold scepter to her, meaning you can come forward. And he says, total masculine energy. You guys know I love how he treats Esther. He goes, What do you want, my queen? Even if it's up to half the kingdom, it's yours. And Esther, she's so wise in her strategy. She uh she talks about how she wants Haman to come to this banquet with her and the king. And uh, we're gonna skip a few parts here. So that plan is in motion. Well, I believe this is the night after that banquet, and that night King Xerxes is having trouble sleeping. Something is bothering him, and I love how God begins to stir our heart here. I do think it is some sort of ripple effect from the fasting and praying that they did, Esther going to the king. I think all of these motions did something to King Xerxes' subconscious, where at night he can't sleep. There's something that's troubling him. And so he wakes up and he orders one of his attendants to bring the book of history of his reign so that it can be read to him. I'm sorry, but that's so funny to me. This man, he's like, I can't sleep. Someone come read about the history of my own life. So it says, in those records, he discovered an account of how Mordecai had exposed the plot of Big Fana and Toresh, two of the eunuchs who guarded the door to the king's private quarters. They had plotted to assassinate King Xerxes. So he was reading about that part where Mordecai had discovered the traitors. King Xerxes goes, What reward or recognition did we ever give Mordecai for this? The king asked. His attendants replied, Nothing has been done for him. And also at that moment, Haman was coming by. I don't know what Haman was doing at this hour, but he comes by, he's so full of pride and arrogance. He's like, Yeah, Queen Esther just invited me to a dinner with her and the king. I'm on top of the world. Haman comes by to the king. And the king, he hears someone outside, he's like, Who is that outside? Bring them in. So Haman is brought into the king's quarters. And the king uh he says, Let me find out real quick. Haman came in and the king said, What should I do to a man who truly pleases me? Haman thought to himself, Whom would the king wish to honor more than me? So he replied, If the king wishes to honor someone, he should bring out one of the king's own royal robes, as well as a horse that the king himself has ridden, one with a royal emblem on its on its head. Let the robes and the horse be handed over to one of the king's most noble officials, and let him see that the man whom the king wishes to honor is dressed in the king's robes and led through the city square on the king's horse. Have an official shout as they go, This is what the king does for someone he wishes to honor. Excellent, the king said to Haman. Quick, take the robes and my horse and do just of you as you have said for Mordecai the Jew, who sits at the gate of the palace. Leave out nothing you have suggested. Haman felt so dejected and completely humiliated. And he had to lead Haman, the one who he really despised and wanted dead, he had to lead him around and honor him and lift him up. Why I'm choosing to read the story, there's so much more to it, but we're gonna pause there, is because our timeline says we must be rewarded right now. We must be recognized right now. We must be blessed right now. But what if there was a different timeline that God had where He is arranging the steps? It might be days, months, years from now. God is arranging the steps so perfectly that you are lifted up and blessed and rewarded far more than you could have been if you were rewarded on your own timeline. And so that alone makes me go, I never want to rush again. Because imagine Mordecai rushed, and all of this played out so perfectly. Because also, if Mordecai was recognized earlier at the time, the the Queen Esther also had another banquet for Haman and the king. I believe this was the next day. And King Xerxes, he goes, Okay, uh, Queen Esther, what is it that you really, really want from me? And she delays, she delays. Then she tells him, I want you to know that Haman wants all of my people killed, and that includes Mordecai. The king is probably going, What? But I just honored this man because he saved my life. This memory was fresh in King Xerxes' brain because of the specific timeline God had. That the king looks at Haman during the dinner, who it says in the Bible, Haman paled, meaning he got so scared. He looks at Haman and goes, What do you mean you want to kill my wife and her family and all these people? And it ends up leading to Haman getting killed, and the Jews were later saved. God's timeline is so specific and so intentional. And there's one more part here. This is very short. Another story, this is earlier in Exodus. When God frees the Hebrew Jews out of Egypt, out of slavery, and he takes them into the wilderness and he says, I'm going to lead you to the promised land. Well, what was it that I wrote here? In Exodus 13, verses 17, it says, When Pharaoh finally let the people go, God did not lead them along the main road that runs through Philistine territory, even though that was the shortest route to the promised land. God said, If the people are faced with the battle, they might change their minds and return to Egypt. So God led them in a roundabout way through the wilderness toward the Red Sea. Sometimes we are in a wilderness season and we're like, God, I'm not seeing any fruit from this. I'm not, I'm not feeling a direction. But God is sometimes making us go the long route or making us go in circles because if we went direction directly to the desired outcome, we would run because we are not ready. We would sabotage because we are not ready. And if you read Exodus, you know that the Israelites continue to sabotage again and again. They saw giants and they're like, oh no, we can never fight them. And they run and they turn around. They literally taste fruit from the promised land, but go, there's giants there. They have a big army there. We can never beat them. Not knowing that if they had, if they knew they had God's favor, they would win. They would have their promised land. But because they were not ready, God kept them in the wilderness to try to get them ready to accept the blessing that he had. Because they kept sabotaging it. And I think how often do we do this in our own life? We pray, God, please send me my dream partner, but then we sabotage them when they come. God, please give me my dream business, but then imposter syndrome sneaks up, and then we don't feel worthy to run the business. Don't rush your blessing because it will minimize how powerful that blessing is. And I think our blessings are never fully just for us, it's always to glorify God. I think a great example, even with my own business, I had two businesses before the feminine glow. I really wanted them both to work out. Uh, but they never gave me financial security. They never felt like my dream business. And now the feminine glow, how that business started, just the age that I started it, the luck, the not even luck, the favor from um the creative ideas from TikTok videos going viral, all of the favor, I could not have done it without God's favor. And so now the business can glorify God, not glorify me. Even the way that my income has jumped glorifies God because he told me exactly what I would be making while I was still broke. If I had been able to snap my fingers and have the income that I have now back then, I would have felt that the credit belonged to me, not to God. We never have to rush our blessings. They will be so much better when they are in God's timeline. So this is going to wrap up how to break the addiction to rushing. Remember those three points. Sensitize your senses again. Add a barrier to experiencing discomfort and easing it. And you must quit multitasking. It is the best thing you could ever do for your nervous system. I say that as I'm holding Gus on my lap and doing this podcast. Anyways, you know, one thing that I should say about multitasking is you don't have to fear it when there's something that your brain has to learn to do on autopilot. Perfect example. When I am back in Vegas and I'm driving around, I can listen to music, I can listen to podcasts because I know the roads. I'm so familiar. I could drive home and be like, whoa, I don't even remember how I got home. When I first moved here to Dubai, I had to turn down the volume. I could definitely not listen to a podcast because multitasking was too stimulating for me because there was an activity that my body did not know how to do on autopilot. So there's certain things like cooking your favorite meal. Totally. Don't be afraid to play music. Um, getting ready, doing your makeup, listen to a podcast. You can, I know moms especially are like, how do I not multitask? Moms are superheroes, okay? So there are ways that you can, but just be careful not to always be in a mode of multitasking. Make sure that you can still feel peace doing only one task at a time. All right. I love you all so much. I hope that you have such a beautiful and a blessed week. And always let me know your suggestions of episodes that you would like to see. I'm here for you, and I'm always praying for you, and I can't wait to see you next week.