Scarcity Illusion: Rewiring The Brain For More Time and Joy

I’m unpacking time scarcity as a mindset and a nervous system pattern, and how it can quietly rob you of joy even when you technically have enough hours to do what matters. If you’ve been telling yourself you don’t have time to journal, meditate, take a walk, or simply breathe, this one is for you.  

I share three true stories from my life that made the lesson impossible to ignore. Along the way, I connect energetic spiritual laws (like the law of focus and the idea of “reflections”) with practical neuroscience-minded awareness, so you can see how a single thought such as “I’m behind” reshapes what you notice, what you choose, and how you feel in your body.  

We also talk about what happens when the message gets louder, including how physical symptoms can become a wake-up call to slow down, reset boundaries, and stop treating your joy like a luxury item. The goal isn’t toxic positivity or spiritual bypassing. It’s learning how to place joy into the mundane routines, the chores, and the in-between moments where most of life happens.  

If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend who’s always rushing, and leave a quick review so more people can find it. What’s one place you’re ready to stop saying “I don’t have time”?

Transcript

Welcome And A Real Reset

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Do you ever get the feeling that you're destined for an even bigger, bolder, more magical life? Welcome to the Conscious Glow Up. I'm your host, intuitive energy healer and coach Crystal Ward. My goal is to help you create the life you fantasize about by teaching you energetic spiritual laws of the universe and neuroscience tools. I'll share how I utilize these teachings in my own life with stories of single motherhood, entrepreneurship, finances, and relationships. Let's dive on into the depths of consciousness and glow up from the inside out. Hey guys, welcome back to the Conscious Glow Up. I am Crystal, your host, and I now know how it feels when I listen to a podcast and someone's like, I just accidentally deleted this after recording and I had to record it again. That shit sucks. And normally I script and edit my episodes. This time I was like, nah, we're just gonna channel something. This episode is about time scarcity, about shifting time scarcity to huge stories in my life where I really had to realize that time scarcity is not helping me with anything. And it is robbing me of joy. So the third story, situation for my life, is about enjoyment. So the first story was a huge reflection. If you don't know what a reflection is, welcome to the conscious club. Uh, we talk about those basically all the time because uh everything in life is just trying to show you your own internal imbalances. It's pretty fascinating. If you want more um in-depth on that, then go to the last episode where I share a vulnerable story from my life and it has to do with self-trust, but uh a big relationship reflection, so you'll get some juiciness over there and more of like what are reflections if you are curious to know further, but to understand

The Flea Problem As A Mirror

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them further. So last year uh I live in the country, and last year we had a flea issue, and I've learned that there are country fleas and there are city fleas, and they both suck. I don't really know the difference, but they're both horrible. And I'm running out a three-story home in the middle of the country, obviously, in the beautiful woods from my dad and stepmom, who primarily live in Florida, so I'm running from them, and then they have a place to go when they come and visit, which is awesome because when they're here, we like I get to see them every day. So we had a flea issue, and that also to say they were in Florida during this issue. So uh hopefully you've never had fleas, but if you have, you know it's not very fun. What we had what I had to do was take out all of well, first you have to sweep, mop, and vacuum everything, and then you have to take the furniture, all of it, three to four feet out from the wall, and then sweep and vacuum and whatever behind the furniture, and then the flea extermination gang comes to spray your house and it kills the fleas. What I realized at this in this instance in this event last year was uh how little time I thought I

Where Time Scarcity Gets Programmed

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had versus how much time I actually do have. And time scarcity has been a little bit of an obstacle for me my whole life because as children, like we were just with our parents, you know, always running late, always in a hurry. So I programmed that into my nervous system. And now I tell my well, I before this really, I would constantly tell myself I didn't have time for the things I wanted to do. For example, journaling at the end of the night or meditating or taking a walk, whatever it is, I was always like, well, there's more important things to do, and you don't have enough time. So don't prioritize what you want to do. And then what would end up happening is because I actually did have the time, I ended up filling it with stuff that wasn't. I mean, sure, I guess I wanted to kind of do it, but it's not stuff that I my higher self was like, hey, I want you to do this, like meditate or journal. So I was really, really frustrated because I was still in the in the thick of that time wound, and I was like, I, you know, I was the only one able to do this because it was just me and my little daughter, and she's not really gonna help me move furniture. So I got home one day and moved and vacuumed and cleaned for six hours, and then the next day it was like four hours. Oh my gosh, I had no idea what what I was about to embark on before that, and then during it, I started seeing how what was going on. I was like, that this is just gonna take me forever, and it actually was awesome though, because it showed me how much time I actually had. I was like, whoa, I didn't realize that picking my daughter from school, getting home, and you know the routine. If you have a kid, you've gotta unpack the backpack, have them do their homework, clean out all the lunchbox stuff, make dinner, maybe at the same time make lunch for tomorrow and breakfast, at least for us, because we live an hour almost from school, so she eats in the car, and so do I. And and then um, you know, and then you have to clean all that up and do bedtime and bath and just all of the things seem like so many things, but it really wasn't as much as like it wasn't really as time consuming as I thought it was because I didn't realize I had six hours from after we got home, even though it was an hour-long car ride. So by the end of this event, I was like, wow, okay, now when I tell myself I want to journal or maybe re-watch an intuition class or whatever it is, I actually know I have the time for it, so I actually do it. And I always realized that, oh, this thing that I in my mind it was so big, like, oh, journaling is gonna have to take you, you know, 17 hours. And no, it can be like five minutes, five minutes. So this because I was integrating that, so I was once I learned that last year, it's actually been about a year and a half. Oh no, no, just kidding, it's a year. Not that it matters, but since I've been integrating that in my life and looking at my life as okay, I don't, you know, I don't have as little time as I thought. I'm focusing on that. So because I'm focusing on it, I had another opportunity for it to grow thanks to the energetic spiritual law of focus. What you focus on will grow.

Summer Break And Resentment Creeping In

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So Liliana has seven weeks of summer, summer break. And back when I was a kid, it was like 10 weeks. So and she goes to her dad's every other week for the full week. So he and I split the summer, so basically, we each get about three weeks of time with her. So my boyfriend's mom is a caretaker for a quadriplegic, and he, I mean, he needs you to do literally everything for him, whole routine. Like this man cannot get out of bed on his own. She broke her, or not broke her shoulder, but she had shoulder surgery, so she couldn't actually do this routine, and his other daytime caregiver just left without notice. So that was really cool. So they are in a panic, and she called me and she was like, I don't, I literally have nobody else right now. And so I agreed to help her. And there was pay, it was, I mean, pretty small compensation in comparison to what I make in my business and at my job. But I was like, all right, I'm being compensated, I'm helping her, I'm helping him, I'll do it. But then I started realizing after agreeing, like the the week from agreeing to when I started, I started realizing that I felt like I was kind of robbing myself and my daughter of her summer break because the hours were from 6 30 in the morning to roughly 12 to 1. And I was like, oh my gosh, now I can't sleep in. And I usually I have to get up at 5 30 in the morning on school days, so I was so excited to finally sleep in. I was like, I'm gonna have to get up at the same time anyway. She's gonna have to be watched either by my boyfriend or his mom or whatever, and we're not gonna, you know, have our days together. So because I think I was so just like really didn't want to be there, I subconsciously created a situation where I didn't have to be there. So part of the process is he's in a wheelchair, he like lives out of his wheelchair, a really nice, fancy electric wheelchair. And part of the process is he makes himself like he's sitting in the wheelchair, and then he has it go all the way back down, so his back is horizontal with the floor, and you put this um, it's like a like a belt with straps over his chest, and you you do a maneuver where you you wrap your arms around and you're basically lifting his whole body up

When The Body Forces The Lesson

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on the chair, and you're pulling, you're using your body weight to pull him up. And because um her her arm was in a cast and he can't really show me what to do, I was doing it wrong and I was really struggling. I gave myself a hernia, you guys. I didn't even really know what that was. I was having a lot of previews for it though, um, months ago, because multiple people I knew were getting hernia surgery, and I was like, I need to look at what this is because I'm probably about to get one. There you go. Spiritual energetic laws of the universe always at play. Law of previews. So I got my little hernia, and so this time reflection, the scarcity of time. I know the hernia is a different root reflection, but I think the time thing is played a huge role in this. Um, because what happens to our bodies, the reflections we get on our bodies are actually they're loud reflections because our higher self has been trying to get our attention with things out externally from our body. We didn't hear the message or integrate the message as loudly, as clearly, as importantly, as potently as we were supposed to, so then it moves to our body. And when something gets to my body, I'm like, okay, definitely time to pay attention to this. So hernia, and I I know now that it's not like it's not a severe one. I shouldn't have to get surgery for it. I probably won't have it my whole life. Some hernias are super serious though, and at the time I got it, I didn't realize I had it. I knew something like I got discomfort when I did it until I realized how to do it right. He was like, Oh, just stand up. So I once I stood up and pulled him, it it was fine. But um, so three days later I was in the shower and realized I had this lump on my damn the area where you get a hernia. And then I realize and then I because I didn't know how serious it was, I uh I worked for him the next day, but I didn't do that specific maneuver with the pulling him up because I didn't want to irritate that area again. And there were some things though that I was doing, like you pull when you pull his wheelchair into the bathroom, you have to lift it up, and that takes a little bit of strength. And then into in and out of the shower, in and out of the room, um, and I it started hurting. So because I didn't know how serious it was, I really I couldn't risk anything. So they ended up finding someone on care.com. Luckily, they found someone fantastic who I think will probably work for him more permanently, too, which is great since you know that other person just left. So this worked out for him, and I was I told him I'm not going to leave you stranded. Like he had a neighbor upstairs who who helped me on the last day I was there do this, you know, the lifting thing that I couldn't do. But I wasn't just gonna leave him hanging. But luckily he found someone, so then I didn't have to finish the job. But what's funny is because I thought I had such scarcity with the time that I was, you know, being robbed of my summer, like robbing myself of summer. Well, then I was robbing myself of joy because we think time, oh I don't have enough time, I don't have enough time for you know the things I want to enjoy, the things I have to do. And because we're so because with the time that we have, we're worried about not having enough of it that now we're having less of it because it's spent worrying, we're not enjoying it.

Moving Everything For New Floors

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And so the third part to this story is we are getting all new wood floors in our house. I mentioned this is the house where I'm renting for my parents. It's actually the house I grew up in, which is quite a trip, really trippy, with the people I lived there with. Really trippy, and um less so now, but at the beginning it was bizarre. Um so when we moved in, they cut they had about six trees cut down because we are in the middle of the woods. It's awesome. And they they I think it's milled. You take it to a mill, you take that wood to a mill, and they have the mill has been drying it, they cut it and dried it, and now we're using our own trees for the floors. But you can imagine that means uh you need to access the floors during the installation. So we had to move the entire house except the basement because we're not getting the wood floors down there. All of our stuff, so my stuff, my daughter's stuff, is all in my one office room down there, and then I piled everything else in our bathroom because they're not putting floors in there. Wouldn't that be funny if they called? They're like, uh, Crystal, you like the bathroom's almost it's not ceiling high, but it's it's pretty, pretty piled high with stuff. The tub is full of they're like, Crystal, we were doing the bathroom, you gotta come get all your shit out. Um so everyone we had to move everything into the garage or into the barn, I mean. And then, yeah, that's how you know I'm in the woods. It's a barn, not a garage. And then, even though they they still have garages in the woods, but then I moved a bunch of my stuff, like my plants and my cat, to my boyfriend's house, where we're gonna stay for a few weeks during the whole process because we cannot cram all of us into that house. So, um oh and something just came to me about the flea thing. The we I have an indoor cat, so it was very bizarre that we got fleas in the house because I lived there forever and we never had this problem growing up, and we had indoor-outdoor cat and dog, so I don't know how the fleas got there. Um, it was very strange. So, and that's a high-level reflection. Fleas are a reflection, so all just great things, you know, that I get to work through in my life. So, yeah, that was just a bizarre thing. I was like, I feel like I shouldn't even have to be doing this because we're not dirty people, we're not wearing shoes all over the house, or most of us aren't, and we don't have any indoor outdoor animals. But okay, so back to the floors. So we're moving everything out, like as if we're moving, and I moved, I've lost track, but for in the past 15 years, uh yeah, 15 years, I have moved like 15 times. And I'm not exaggerating, like at one point it was year for time, like I'd moved every year or the equivalent of every year. And I was like, sweet, I'm actually at this place for more than two years, and then bam, I have to move anyway, move on my stuff. But it's okay, and the point of this part is that I haven't actually during this whole experience, I have not had any limiting thoughts about time at all. It has been really cool to have that moment of reflection where I was like, whoa, I had no complaints about the time. I didn't think, oh, this is taking too much time, I don't have time for this, blah blah blah. So that was really neat, and it's just a testament for when we do the work, when we do choose to look at our reflections and look at what's you know going on in our life that we can shift our perception of something, even if it has kind of had a hold on us forever. So that was amazing.

Training Yourself To Feel Joy

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And what it has done, so what that opened up for me was realizing that oh, I haven't necessarily been enjoying the process, and it's not something that your brain would automatically think, oh, let's enjoy this process of moving everything out of our house. But how can you find joy? Like, what can you find joy in? Even if it's, you know, untangling my ivy plants from one another, like that's actually joyful for me because I love sitting with my plants, like in their energy. I don't know, it's such a cute feeling. I'm like, oh, okay, well, I could either look at this as really annoying or this is actually I love doing this. And so I stopped robbing myself of time by thinking negatively about time, and then it opened up room for joy, and now I'm realizing, oh, okay, well, joy doesn't have to just come when my boyfriend and I go to a really nice dinner, or if I go to an amusement park, or you know, make a lot of money at work or sign a new client and connect with someone new. Joy actually, I think more importantly, deserves to be placed in those mundane areas of life where you know it's the the school routine and the making of the lunches. And I don't know if you've seen the breakup movie with Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn, one of my old favorites. And she's like, I just want you to want to do the dishes. And he was like, Who wants to do the dishes? I feel like that. Like with my own life, you know. Obviously, I don't want to do the dishes. Sometimes I do, sometimes I really like cleaning because I like the feeling I get after it. But it doesn't things for me. I always take things so seriously, and I'm realizing the more serious I take everything, the more reflections I'm gonna have because in that state of like too serious is not good enough, not perfect enough, not balanced enough, and that's what that's what how source wants us to see things and how our higher self wants us to see things, which is why we get reflections. It's from imbalanced perceptions, limited thoughts and mindsets about our life, that then they create these reflections where you're like, look, you actually do have the time. Look, you actually can infuse what you do with joy, and not to not to what do they call it, a spiritual bypassing or something where things that you need to process emotionally that are lower on the frequency scale emotions, you know, what they would call more negative emotions, we still have to process those pain, grief, anger. Um, but so it's not like I'm a big fan and proponent of process your shit or it will grow in your energy field and then turn into probably something physical down the road. But what I'm talking about here is like just for myself and for you, if this if you need to hear this, how can we find joy in our life on the day-to-day basis where even our our brain might be like, oh, well, this is such a arduous task, and oh, moving all your house, this is you know, just so annoying. Or like, well, the family, we're all doing a big project together, and then I love decorating. That's one of my favorite things is reorganizing rooms and redecorating. So it's gonna be so fun to me to get to go and redecorate my daughter's room and my room, and I love decluttering, so I get to declutter, you know, a bunch of stuff in the process. So and but had I been boss bogged down with the idea that I didn't have enough time for all of this, I don't think I would have had access to the to the frequency of joy in the process.

How To Reach Me

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So if you have any questions or want to dive into your own reflections or just keep the conversation going, I love hearing from you. You can reach me at crystal at crystalwar.com, crystal spelled with a k R Y S T A L and um or on Instagram, crystal underscore baller. It was a pleasure, and I will talk to you soon.