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Take a nice deep breath. 

Hold it for 4 long seconds. 

Exhaaaale sloooowly.

Ahhh okay. Now we can say hello. 

Hello! 

I just returned from an off-grid retreat in the desert. It was one of the most beautiful weeks of my life. I learned so much about myself, about life, and about how I want to cultivate my business. 

There are approximately 7,435 things I want to share with you, and I’m going to do my best to share them one at a time. Might take a few years for me to get through them all. 😂

I thought my favorite thing about this retreat center would be the setting. 

This idyllic space is nestled between the mountains and dunes along the coast of the Baja peninsula. The sand is pristine, the cactus are plentiful, and the birdsong is beautiful. It’s perfect. 

But the element that really took my breath away? 

There were no clocks anywhere in sight. 

No clocks! Absolutely no way to keep the time! And as if not having clocks wasn’t enough, there was also no agenda.

My protective parts squirmed. If I don’t have an agenda, how will I know when to show up? How will I know when it’s time to eat? How will I squeeze every ounce of value out of this retreat? 

The facilitator, sensing my apprehension, said gently, “Your invitation this week is to release the clock and embrace the land. Allow your body to sync naturally with the land and trust that everything will work out just fine.” 

My mind was ready for this experiment, but my body resisted the lack of structure. 

I took a deep breath and surrendered to being blindfolded to time for seven days. 

By day two, I started to feel free. 

It started with a loosening in my chest. 

When I arrived, my body was a spool of thread, tightly wound and sealed with a piece of tape to prevent unraveling. As I unplugged from the clock, I felt the tape peel away and the end of the thread fall gently to the sandy ground. The rest of the week was a dance with this thread, a tender unraveling of my soul as my body merged with the natural rhythms of the land.  

As I synched with these natural rhythms, I noticed something shifting… 

I was no longer feeling any sense of urgency. 

For me, urgency feels like a complicated tangle of scarcity, fear, and pressure. 

Here’s what each of those things sounds like in my brain:

Scarcity → This isn’t enough! You need more! Work harder and be quick about it! 

Fear → If you don’t figure this out, you’ll be a failure and everyone will know it. 

Pressure → You’re falling behind! Go faster or you’ll get lost in the dust.

Urgency, as we experience it, is a byproduct of capitalism. 👎

Let’s think about the evolutionary function of urgency for a moment. In olden times, urgency was reserved for emergencies. You’re being chased by a tiger, RUN! The river is flooding, MOVE YOUR FAMILY! Your child is injured, GET HELP! 

Urgency is here to help us survive. 

But somehow, modern society has injected false urgency into our bloodstreams and brainwashed us into believing our bodies are machines and our businesses are nothing more than profit factories.

Well, I am officially opting out of urgency, and I’d love for you to join me.

First, ask yourself, how do you experience urgency as a business owner? 

Do you feel pressure to produce? Do you feel rushed or shamed for not moving fast enough? Do you feel like you’re in a race against the clock? Do you feel like someone will beat you to the finish line if you don’t get there first? Do you feel like you’re dishonoring your potential by not pushing yourself to your limits? 

(Btw, these are things I’ve heard directly from the mouths of my clients in the last two days. I am not kidding.) 

I want you to write them all down. Keep a running list next to your computer. 

This is an important step in the de-programming process. We must recognize, with gentleness and non-judgment, the ways in which false urgency is plaguing our daily lives. 

Next, we need to work together to remove the hook of urgency from our bodies. We need to stand together and shout a collective “NO” to scarcity, fear, and pressure. 

Together, we can design a paradigm where we create and serve from love without sacrificing ease and peacefulness in our lives. 

The “together” part is important. 

I don’t believe we can do this work in isolation. We need community. We need each other. 

If you want to join me, it’d make me really happy to hear from you. You can hit reply and just say “I’m opting out!” or feel free to share one of the ways you see urgency infiltrating your life.

I’m in this with you.