Why Today Matters

I wanted to share with you something that I teach, a simple tool that is behind all my big changes, and in recent years FLOW365ers..

How often do you get a download or an idea but struggle to bring it to life because your plate is so full? This gets even harder when you want a life of balance, a life that lets you be there for those you love and where you are not burned out.

I have lots of planning tools and balance tools in my toolbox. I’ll be sharing more of them, but I wanted to start with the one that kickstarted my health transformation 14 years ago — and has helped me every day ever since: the Today Sheet.

How Do I Find the Time

A few years ago, maybe 7, I went on the road to promote my book Plan SImple Meals. I thought I’d be teaching meal planning and how to feed your kids healthy food.

Instead I kept getting the same question over and over: How do I find the time? 

I saw a sea of women who were frustrated because they literally couldn’t figure out how to get to work, get their kids, get home, and make dinner. And I realized it wasn’t about dinner. This question came up around so many things that we say we want to do: exercise more, write a book, launch something new in our business, declutter the house, spend time with our kids, get back to a hobby like dancing or photography, meditate …

We all have the time we need to make the changes we want. But we don’t always see it.

Why? Because we are so busy doing everything. And there iis too much noise to notice.

Doing is necessary, but it needs to be balanced by being. Another way to look at this is that “the doing” is a masculine energy, and we live in a world that is skewed very masculine.

So let’s start by getting comfortable with the feminine and bringing it into how we think of tiime. Rather than starting from the long to-do list that you feel rather detached from, start by getting centered and allowing the vision to come forward. We make better decisions when we come from a place of feeling centered. We are better able to schedule from a place of being decided.

Once we have our vision and we’ve scheduled, we need to follow through. But here’s what makes this process different: we aren’t working from the assumption that every day is the same or that you are working 9–5.

Following through recognizing your cycles and seasons..

Learning to Bend Time

I struggled to answer that question women asked about how to find the time. It seemed that as I was making these big changes, there was time.

Time to learn how to cook. Time to eat raw vegan and be a great mom and grow a design company. Time to write a book as a dyslexic human who believed she wasn’t a writer. Time to educate my kids on the road and speak at schools and eat well.

I had always been told I had ADHD, or that I was just “creative,” because finishing on time or early was not my thing. But in the case of these important life things, in this phase, I was doing pretty great.

I started to look at what had worked for me.

It started with a health change. I was running a design company that was going well. I had a husband I loved, and three great kids. And I was exhausted and 70 lbs overweight from my three pregnancies. One day, staring at a stack of coffee cups and wondering how I could have no energy, I drew a line in the sand. It was time to get healthy.

It started with getting really clear on what I wanted, what was essential.

The first step I took: Ask around the office, “What would you do if you wanted to get healthy today?”

Everyone said I should go to a yoga class, so I called the babysitter and said I was going to be late.

For the first time ever I took care of myself instead of going home.

The yoga class blew my mind. I think I cried. It was such a release. I’m an introvert and I wasn’t great at talking to people at the time, but I felt like I needed to meet the teacher. After class, I introduced myself and I told her I had a design company and that I was ready to get healthy.

She said, “Listen, just come to my house tomorrow. I know how to get healthy, and I need a website.”

She was a raw vegan and showed me a new way of eating. [ Her name is Taylor Wells. You can find a conversation with her here.] She wasn’t a cook, which was great because I didn’t know how to cook even an egg or pasta. Taylor talked about a food change that was outside of diet culture.

She told me what to eat for a day. I shifted a few fruits in the morning or the veggies in my salad, but basically I ate the same thing every day. It was about getting my minerals back up. (It’s similar to what I share about Tess Masters). This simple, repeatable way of eating transformed my health.

That was my first Doable Change. (More  on this in another episode.)

I tell people the weight melted off, because that’s what we talk about most. But more importantly, my allergies went away, my energy went up, I stopped getting ear infections all the time. I felt like I had done 15 years of therapy in a week. I made a change in food that wasn’t about really about food. It was about choosing to take care of myself, about what I needed — and learning to make change happen.

On the day I changed my food, Taylor said something essential beyond what she told me to eat:

Each day choose the three most important things that you’re going to do for that day. Focus on being in gratitude and abundance.

She also suggested that I buy a book by Abraham Hicks about the power of our thoughts. I wasn’t paying attention and I bought an Abraham Hicks page-a-day calendar with an inspirational quote on the front and a space on the back.

My Today Page Process

I started a new morning practice. I would read the quote on my calendar and then I would turn the page over and say in the present tense what I wanted in a positive way.

I wrote: I am healthy and strong and full of energy. 

Then I would write three things I was going to do to be healthy and strong and full of energy. It might be a green smoothie or stopping work to go to yoga. It could be drinking water or focusing on sleep or just being with my kids.

And time expanded.

I went from a person who could barely get out of bed in the morning to get to work and had no time for myself to taking five times as long cooking and being more present with my kids and husband and working more efficiently and joyfully. Work was flowing in. I was going to yoga every day.

It was working.