Time Stories: Why you don't have enough Time

Time Stories: Why You Don't Have Enough Time

Episode Summary

Here's the truth: "I don't have enough time" feels like a fact — but it's actually a story. And the way you tell that story is quietly shaping every decision, action, and result in your business.

In this episode, Rachael Bodie breaks down the six patterns that keep high-achieving network marketers stuck in time scarcity — and how shifting the story you tell about your time is the real starting point for sustainable momentum. Because time management doesn't begin with your calendar. It begins with your mind.

Why You Should Listen: What You'll Learn

• Why "I Don't Have Enough Time" Is a Story — Not a Fact
• How Distraction and Buffering Steal the Time You Actually Have
• Why Saying Yes When It's a No Creates Misaligned Energy
• The Hidden Cost of Being in a Hurry
• How Checking Boxes Without Questioning the Why Overloads Your Calendar
• What Happens When You Stop Planning for Reality
• The Mindset Shift That Makes Time Management Actually Work

Resources Mentioned

Apply for a Free Mini-Session so we can connect 1:1, review your goals, and talk through opportunities for business growth
 👉 https://www.rachaelbodie.com/mini-session

Instagram — Daily leadership insights, social selling strategies, and behind-the-scenes mentoring
 👉 https://www.instagram.com/rachaelbodie

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to the Social Selling Leadership Podcast, the show for six-figure network marketers ready to scale with alignment and simple systems. I'm your host, Rachel Bodie, network marketing expert and industry veteran. Each week you'll learn the strategies and systems top leaders use to enroll high-quality recruits, create duplication in their downlay, and lead with confidence. Let's dive in.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

Welcome back to the show. So it's actually hilarious that I landed on this topic today to talk about time because things did not go according to plan. So I want to give you a little sneak peek behind the scenes because I want to normalize that sometimes we plan and things go sideways. So I had an interview planned for the podcast tomorrow. And so I opened up, I used a script to edit my podcast. So I opened it up on my laptop because my Mac Pro crashed. And like, who even hears of a Mac crashing, but it crashed. So I opened it up, the file was corrupt. And it says you need to re-download the file. Well, the original was on my Mac Pro. So I started feeling a little panicky since tomorrow is podcast day. I'm like, oh, this is going to be a whole thing. I've got to write a new podcast outline. And you know, that takes a good bit of time on a solo episode. So I took a breath to downregulate my nervous system. I took a beat and I redirected my brain. I started to ask better questions, high-quality questions. Why? Because the quality of your questions will determine the quality of the answers. My former boss, John, wrote a book, Good Leaders Ask Great Questions. So the first question I asked was, okay, what topic is going to add the most value to you, to the listeners? Second question was, what if this could be easy? That's a question, by the way, from the book Effortless by Greg McCowan. Love, love, love his stuff. He also wrote Essentialism, which is one of my favorite books of all time. So as I was thinking about what's going to add the most value to you guys, there are a lot of things that were top of mind, but I kicked off with a brand new client this past week. She is crushing it. And she actually hired me because she wants to level up her own mentorship, her ability to lead and her systems. And for context, when I say she's crushing it, she's doing uh close to multi-seven figures. So she generated $137,000 last month in income. Okay. And one of the very first things we dove into was her time because she was starting to feel burned out. And as someone who's burned out multiple times over my career, I feel like I'm able to coach on this topic from a deep place of understanding. Because here's the thing like, it's not just about getting results in your business. Of course, anyone can hustle their face off and create results. It's how you feel, it's how you experience your business because that's actually what creates sustainability. So she's she noticed she was starting to feel burnout. So I have a time audit process that I walk my clients through. Um, so she did the process. We we walked through it in her very first session, and she left with a plan to prioritize time for herself. We created a delegation plan and a process to hand things off to her VA. So things were not just getting done, but getting done at her standard. But she also left with a different way of thinking about herself, about her relationship to her business and her time. So there's the skill of time management, which I'm a huge fan of, you know, telling your time where you want it to go in advance. But then there's the mindset that informs how you show up to actually manage your time. Because really managing your time starts with managing your mind. So I thought that could be super valuable to share with you all today. So that's what we're gonna talk about. So that was the answer to the first question. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna do an episode on time, the mindset of time management and time stories and why people actually don't have time. And then question number two. So, how could it be easy? So I actually taught this concept to a group of six and seven-figure network marketers at a live event in Nashville. So I'm just I took that outline and I made some tweaks. And so I'm gonna share that with you here. And so before we dive in, I want, I'm giving you kind of a sneak a peek behind the scenes of how I think and how I run my business. Because a lot of times I notice we want to just reinvent the wheel. So instead it, instead of reinventing the wheel, I built on something I already had. So make a mental note of that. Where are you making it harder in your business? And how can you do this in your own business? For example, instead of feeling like you have to redo content or create all brand new content all the time, something that I do a ton and I recommend to my clients is flip the format with high-performing content. So if you just had a reel that went viral or that did really well, turn it into a carousel. If you have a carousel, record it as a face-to-camera yapping video, right? Same message, different delivery. So that's just one example of how you could do that. Okay, so let's get into it. So the episode title is Time Stories, Why You Don't Have Time, Why You Don't Have Enough Time. And it's a little bit of a faulty title because it's stated like a fact, like you don't have enough time. Feels like a fact. I'm sure if you were sitting down with me, you'd be like, Rachel, no, you don't understand. I just don't have enough time. But here's what I want to offer to you. I want to offer that this actually is a story that you're telling yourself. It's subjective. And here's what I mean. It couldn't be proven in a court of law. Because if someone, I guarantee, someone could look at your life and look at how much time you have and the schedule you have and be like, wow, I wish I had that schedule. So that's how we know it's subjective. It's not 100% factual, like it's either true or false. And there's a lot of versions of this belief. And I have to tell you, this particular belief was the one that drove me for years in my business. I operated from this place of scarcity for a long time. And here's some other versions of this. There's too much to do. I'm behind. I should have done more or I should be doing more. There's not enough hours in the day. So here's why this matters so much. Remember the think, feel, act cycle. Okay. This again, I didn't create this. This is the foundation of cognitive behavioral psychology. When you have a thought, like I don't have time, it creates emotions. It creates feelings. Typically, what I find, and what I found in coaching literally thousands of network marketers is it creates overwhelm or defeat. And those, those feelings of overwhelm and defeat, those fuel what actions you take or the actions you don't take. Okay. And overwhelm and defeat are really powerful, I would say, negative emotions. And there's a physiological response that happens in your body when you feel these emotions. And for many people, they go into fight or flight. So fight looks like frantic energy. You're doing all the things, but it's from this place of scarcity, inadequacy, fear, right? Which leads to exhaustion and burnout. It may lead to flight where you don't take action or you withdraw. Or maybe you are showing up, but you're kind of spinning your wheels or comparing or overthinking. That's a big one. Worrying. Sometimes people avoid and go clean, go do laundry. I call this buffering, right? You don't want to feel the emotion. So you do something to distract yourself. But the point with this, the point of this is the think-feel-act cycle, this story of I don't have enough time causes an emotion that has you showing up in a way that proves that thought true because you're focusing on the time you don't have versus using the time you do have effectively. So you end up wasting time. So this story, this opinion that you have that you don't have enough time, creates overwhelm and causes you to make choices as if time isn't available. Now, maybe you feel like this is true, but just listen, it maybe it is true that you don't have as much time as you would like. I mean, that's true for me. I think it's true for most entrepreneurs. But just because something is true, doesn't mean you should repeat it over and over again. I mean, I could go outside my house and go get in a car accident, but I'm not gonna think about that because that is not going to create very positive emotions. So, what I want to do here is I want to deep dive into patterns that are created when you don't challenge the story. I don't have enough time. And then we're gonna talk about how to shift it. Okay. So, number one, what happens when you believe the story? Well, I already touched on it, but um, we distract or we buffer when we feel overwhelmed from being in time scarcity. So, what does that look like? Distracting your attention. It could be obsessively checking social media or your back office, multitasking, being reactive. It really is about splitting your attention. And the reason why this is so challenging is this increases cognitive load. And not only does it decrease our energy, but it makes us feel like we don't have enough time because we're constantly splitting our attention. This is, by the way, I have all notifications turned off on all of my social media. I don't get so notifications for Facebook, for Instagram. And that is something that I put in place years ago. Uh, I was coaching a client of mine. I actually have a couple clients who have ADHD. And for those clients, I tell them it's a non-negotiable because it will just take them off track. So this shows up with also mentally thinking about your to-do list and what you have to do in your business when you're with your family. Right. So it's it's actually mental multitasking. This is the opposite of constraint. Constraint is intense focus, right? You're not really focused and grounded on one thing at a time, and our minds don't do really well with that. Studies actually show that that humans are not good at multitasking because of the context switching. And going back to what I shared earlier, if you want to learn more about constraint, that book, Essentialism, is excellent. The it's a terrible name for a book, honestly. I don't love the name. I thought it was like some type of philosophy book. But the subtitle is The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. So really great book. Okay, number two, you create the result of not enough time when you say yes, when energetically it's a no. And this happens all the time because I coach you guys on it all the time. For example, someone from corporate reaches out and asks you to do something, and you really don't want to, but you say yes. When you say yes, when it's a no, you create misaligned energy, right? You're not aligning your energy with what you really want and what's true for you in that moment. And this isn't even just about other people asking us, it can be even your own ideas that aren't meant to be brought to the reality. A perfect example is this podcast. For years, people asked me to do a podcast. And I just, it was an energetic no. I was at a point in my business where I was working 25 hours a week, and there wasn't a way to add in the podcast protecting that time. So it wasn't until January where I was like, okay, I've got the time and space to do this. Okay, here's another pattern. Being in a rush. Oh my gosh, you guys, this is so convicting for me. Oh, I noticed for myself, I was in a huge rush to hit this major wrangle in my business. But I was literally hating my life. I was aligning my entire life around work in an unhealthy way. When really I could create the life and business that I loved and still get to the goal in a way that felt good without rushing it by asking the question, you know, what if I create the life I wanted now? The life that I think I will have when I hit that goal. What if I zoomed out and played the long game? How would that take the pressure off? Because really, here's the question, you guys. And please, like, take a moment and sit with this. Why are you in such a hurry? And I'll tell you why. We're in a hurry because we think we need to get to a certain place to feel a certain way. Once I'm earning seven figures, six figures, 20K a month, 50K a month, once I hit that rank, then I can feel proud, relaxed, present. But if you want to do that now, you can create that experience right now. Because remember, think feel act cycle, your thoughts create how you feel, not the external circumstances. And you guys, you can't earn beliefs about yourself. You just decide. You get to decide what you want to think about you and your business. You can feel proud of yourself right now. Okay, next one. Another way we perpetuate the thought there's not enough time is by checking boxes. And listen, when I tell you, I am a systems girl and I love a good tracker, I love a good spreadsheet. But sometimes we get we go on autopilot and we we just approach our work like checking boxes instead of thinking, like, what am I ultimately trying to create here?

unknown 13:25

Right.

SPEAKER_00 13:25

We don't ask that question. We're like, I just have to do this thing, I just have to get the invites out, I just have to get the post up. We don't question the why and purpose behind things, right? Really distilling down the why will help you to cut out the excess that may be weighing down your calendar in ways that aren't even necessary. You might think that you have to do certain things. You know, you might think that, yeah, I've got to do this, but it's not even true. There are so many ways that you could create more time to do the things you want to do, but but you got to slow down enough to get strategic about this. This is why I love the time audit I do with my clients. Um, because it allows us to strategically look at what's going on in the business. What can we eliminate? What can we automate? What can we delegate? And it also allows us to look at okay, what are the systems that we want to strategically put in place? And how can we strategically plan time and business activities? I also have an evaluation process I do with them to allow them to really like step outside their business and look at it every week as a CEO. Because the truth is, if you want to build to seven figures, even multi-six figures, seven figure social sellers have scalable systems in place. And then they stack those systems: mindset, time management, marketing, recruiting, onboarding. That's what creates duplication. Okay, the next one that creates not having enough time, not devoting energy to what you really want. So often we go through our life or we go through our business going through the motions and doing what we think we should do, especially as working moms. My gosh. So the question I want you to ask is what do you really want? And how can you start to create that in your life right now? Next one, not planning for reality. I tell, I talk about this like as planning for fantasy land. So maybe you're using time blocking and you're you're not making enough space for the reality of life. Y'all, I did this again. I'm there's no judgment here. I used to try and plan and cram three days worth of work into three hours, and then I would judge myself for not getting it all done. Can anyone relate to that? You know, maybe you're not putting enough time in your calendar to check in with your team or for content creation, or you're not creating any white space or margin. I see this a lot with my high-performing, you know, top-earning clients. I look at their calendar and there's like no margin. It's like back to back to back. You need that extra space for things that come up, right? Or maybe you're not creating rest for when your body needs rest or or to be able to go on walks. I go on walks a lot. Not only do I just love walking, it's good for my body. As someone who has Hashimoto's, I do like low impact activity. I get some of my best content ideas, it's a way to regulate your nervous system. So many good things. I really think that you have to consider that things are gonna come up, right? And I even when I work for John Maxwell, we, when we would work with our uh top clients in the corporate space, we would always recommend them building in white space, completely unplanned space that's protected and devoted to whatever comes up, learning, self-care. So I hope this is helping you to kind of shift how you're thinking about time because so many people are like, well, I just can't succeed. I don't have time. Time is seldom the reason you aren't succeeding. It's likely because of what you aren't doing with the time you do have, right? What if you don't need more time? What if you need to be more courageous and taking the actions that kind of scare you with the time you do have? And I'll give you some hints here. It's showing up and taking action that will result in someone either saying yes or no, you know, reaching out to someone and inviting them to the business, going live and doing a live public offer. It's leaning into the things that scare you. Because when you have more time, what I see happen frequently, if someone does have more time without changing their mindset, they just end up doing more of the wrong things and staying stuck. Because time management starts with mind management. It starts with believing it's possible to create the results that you want in the amount of time that you have. And listen, I again, I'm sharing this from a place of experience. I built to my first two years in my network marketing business to six figures on part-time hours in my business while working 50-hour work weeks with John Maxwell. I had two small kids. I was traveling, Matt was traveling internationally. And then I uh went on to build that to seven figures, and then I scaled my coaching business to seven figures, working part-time hours. I was working 25 hours a week. So the way that you're able to create the results you want with your time, it begins with always creating awareness around what are your current time stories? What are your opinions or your thoughts about the time you have? So we start with awareness, and then from there, we can decide on purpose what do I want to believe? Right? Because your beliefs drive your behaviors. Your behaviors create the results that you have in your life and business. So I want to share a couple of thoughts that I have that are some of my favorites from over the years. First one is from the book Essentialism: less but better. I want to show up and do less but better. That's just a quick mantra. There's a here's another one. There's a lot to do today, and this is what I'm gonna focus on. So you're not arguing with your brain, you're like, yeah, there is a lot to do today, but here's what I'm gonna intentionally focus on because overwhelm isn't created by having too much to do. It's by create, it's created by treating everything as equally important. So that allows you to prioritize. There's enough time to do everything that is meant for me. Oh, that just makes me want to exhale. That one gave me so much peace. And I would say it over and over again, and not just in the beginning of the morning, you know, during my morning process, but I would say it all throughout the day. Here's another one. This is for my future me. I'm taking care of her. I would tell myself that when I was doing my time blocking planning. I have time to do everything that meant that's meant for me. God is directing my steps. I'm guided and not expected to figure it all out. Again, that just creates so much peace for me. And listen, you've got to try these thoughts on these, try these new stories and see how they feel. Because it's not the thought that's magical. It's when you think it, what type of shift does it create in your body? What's the emotion it creates? When it creates relief or peace, that's when you know you're on to something. Here's another one. The more I tell myself I'm behind and didn't do enough, the less productive I am tomorrow. And the last one, it's always my choice. It's always my choice. You always have agency. And for me, these thoughts create purpose and alignment and calm and peace, right? And so often those are the things we want. We think once we hit a certain level in business, we're gonna feel those things, but we want to feel those things on the way there because how you get there is how you will be once you arrive. Okay, I want to hear how this episode landed for you. This was a little different than normal. I took you a little bit behind the scenes. So reach out to me on Instagram, tell me what resonated. And as always, I'm so blessed that you guys spent your precious earbud time with me today. And I'll see you guys next week.

SPEAKER_01 20:51

If you're a six-figure network marketing leader and you know your recruiting and duplication systems need a revamp, this is exactly the work I do in my private one-on-record chain. I help established leaders become the mentor their dream team is looking for so that growth becomes duplicatable, scalable, and sustainable without the burnout. If this episode resonated, you can apply for a free mini session using the link in the show notes. We'll look at your current systems and goals, identify what's actually creating the ceiling in your business, and map out the top three shifts that will position you to double your monthly income.