Latest / SECOND CLOCK™ / SEASON 8 | EFFORTLESS

Transcript

SEASON 8 | EFFORTLESS · SECOND CLOCK™

• 0:01
  What if you learned that the time was always now to make a
• 0:04
  choice, change direction, choose you.
• 0:07
  But where do you start and how will you know when you got
• 0:09
  there? That's what the second clock is.
• 0:12
  It's a time to try, the chance to experience everything you
• 0:16
  wish you had but haven't yet. A time to re evaluate where you
• 0:20
  are and where you're headed while letting go of ideas of
• 0:23
  what you should be doing, who you think you need to be, and
• 0:26
  realize who you are. Now join me, click follow, like
• 0:31
  and subscribe and let's see where this leads.
• 0:37
  Effortlessness. That's something that I want to
• 0:39
  have more in my life. But to get there, we have to let
• 0:44
  plans fall through. We have to let things go as
• 0:48
  they're going to instead of as we wish they would.
• 0:52
  A lot of times you think things are going to go one way and when
• 0:56
  they start going a different way, it's hard to accept it.
• 0:59
  It's hard to pivot, it's hard to go with the flow.
• 1:03
  But that's what effortlessness is.
• 1:06
  It's complete acceptance. And I think for some of us, we
• 1:11
  can accept some things like a flights delayed that's out of
• 1:14
  our control. But for other things it gets
• 1:18
  harder. The self judgement, the
• 1:21
  judgement overall, it becomes present and any way that there
• 1:26
  was going to be effortlessness in a situation is overtaken by
• 1:31
  regret. Maybe you didn't leave early
• 1:34
  enough. Maybe you didn't think things
• 1:36
  through well enough. I came to this conclusion where
• 1:40
  I need to let more effortlessness in in my life
• 1:43
  after experiencing a day where everything kind of went
• 1:47
  differently than I planned, but perfectly all the same.
• 1:53
  It actually went better than if I had planned it perfectly.
• 1:57
  It was my last day in Bali and I just wanted to try and soak up
• 2:02
  every experience that I could. I wanted to sneak in a temple, a
• 2:07
  workout and two dates as well as go see a nightclub.
• 2:12
  I guess I was just trying to make up for lost time.
• 2:15
  I think that that's kind of the mode I've been in for a while.
• 2:19
  This feeling of time is moving so quickly and I just don't want
• 2:23
  to miss a thing. I want to try things that maybe
• 2:27
  I was scared to try before. I want to experience things that
• 2:31
  maybe would make me uncomfortable in the past, but
• 2:33
  now I'm like, bring it on, whatever.
• 2:37
  What's a little discomfort when I know it's coming my way?
• 2:41
  And why was I trying to make up for lost time on my last day in
• 2:44
  Bali? Well, that's because I had spent
• 2:47
  a few days in a retreat realizing that what I thought I
• 2:50
  wanted wasn't. I didn't want to come all the
• 2:54
  way to Bali to experience a hotel that was far remote from
• 2:58
  all the sights that I could see and be with 14 American
• 3:02
  strangers that were strangers to me in America and probably will
• 3:06
  go back to it when I get back to America.
• 3:09
  I also just wanted to experience Bali differently and so when I
• 3:15
  came to this conclusion, 2 days into the retreat, I realized
• 3:19
  it's time to cut my losses and venture off.
• 3:22
  So when I left, it left me with three more days in Bali.
• 3:25
  And when I reached the last day in Bali, which was a Friday, I
• 3:29
  wanted to do a lot. And I may not come back here
• 3:32
  because the humidity and the traffic are unrelenting.
• 3:37
  It's a lot to take in. I'm not going to lie.
• 3:39
  I've experienced a lot of traffic in my life growing up in
• 3:42
  New York City and then living in LA, but nothing like Bali.
• 3:46
  So on my last morning, I probably didn't sleep much
• 3:51
  because I wasn't sleeping much at all on this trip.
• 3:54
  And I guess I accepted it and I went to the gym at 5:30 in the
• 3:57
  morning. And that's when I decided that I
• 4:00
  wanted to go see a temple in Ulawatu.
• 4:03
  When I Googled it, it looked like it was about 45 minutes
• 4:06
  away. Then I decided that I wanted a
• 4:09
  harder workout than the gym was going to offer me because this
• 4:11
  gym at the West was pretty limited.
• 4:14
  Although I was grateful for this gym, I just wanted a workout
• 4:17
  that was more challenging and usually group workouts provide
• 4:21
  that for me. There's some accountability,
• 4:23
  some kind of like team effort. So I chose a degree class.
• 4:28
  First of all, I wanted to know what a degree class in Bali was
• 4:31
  going to be like. Second of all, I don't generally
• 4:33
  do Lagree. It is like Pilates were former
• 4:38
  but turned up a notch or two. It's a very intense full body
• 4:43
  workout and it's one that I'll do right before I go on a trip
• 4:46
  if I know that I'm not going to be working out a lot.
• 4:48
  So here I am finding a authentic Lagree class in Bali.
• 4:55
  So not a touristy thing, which I loved because I hadn't been a
• 5:00
  non tourist this whole time from the time I was in Japan to the
• 5:03
  time I was in Bali. So I had two things on the
• 5:07
  docket with two other plans lined up.
• 5:10
  Those were both dates. I had an afternoon date in my
• 5:14
  neighborhood, which was Samanyak, followed by a date in
• 5:17
  Illawatu, the same place I was going to be going to the temple
• 5:20
  in the morning, I was going to be returning to at night, but
• 5:23
  this time to go to the number one ranked nightclub in Asia.
• 5:26
  I just wanted to see what that was all about and I didn't want
• 5:29
  to go alone. So I went on a dating app and I
• 5:33
  found somebody that wanted to go to another solo traveler and I
• 5:37
  thought this will be fun. Two people that had no reason to
• 5:41
  go to this club other than the fact that now we have a reason,
• 5:44
  let's go. So with this day fully stacked,
• 5:49
  I have breakfast. When breakfast opens at 6:30 in
• 5:52
  the morning, then things start to slide.
• 5:56
  I start losing track of time and by 7:15 I'm sitting in the car
• 6:02
  realizing, oh, I guess traffic patterns have really picked up.
• 6:07
  And again, taking a car in Bali is very different than taking a
• 6:11
  scooter in Bali. 1 is predictable, the scooter, and
• 6:17
  then there's going in a car, which is completely
• 6:19
  unpredictable. If a car breaks down on the
• 6:22
  road, which is one way up, one way down, you're kind of just
• 6:26
  stuck there waiting for everyone to figure out what to do with
• 6:29
  this car. Whereas with the scooter, they
• 6:31
  just zip in and out of all those cars and bypass everything,
• 6:34
  which means they can get to a place on time or at least follow
• 6:38
  some kind of idea of what the time should be that you should
• 6:41
  arrive. So when I realize it's not going
• 6:44
  to take 40 minutes to get to the temple, it's going to take an
• 6:46
  hour and 10, I realize I have to do something I don't like to do.
• 6:51
  I have to write to the Lagree class and ask them if I can push
• 6:54
  back my class to 10. Problem solved.
• 6:58
  Or so I thought. When I arrived at the temple, I
• 7:02
  realize I should have researched a little bit more.
• 7:05
  It's a little underwhelming. It's known for its fire dance at
• 7:09
  sunset, and here I am closer to sunrise and there's no dancing.
• 7:15
  So I knew that going in, but I thought that there'd still be a
• 7:18
  temple to see. I can't say that there was
• 7:21
  really like a big grand temple, not compared to the temples that
• 7:25
  I had seen all over Bali and in Japan.
• 7:30
  So I get back in the car thinking naively that it was
• 7:32
  going to take about an hour to get there to my degree class,
• 7:36
  only to find out that it was going to take an hour and 40
• 7:39
  minutes. Which means I am now going to
• 7:41
  miss my 10:00 which is now pushing into my day because I
• 7:47
  had scheduled my date for 11/11/30.
• 7:50
  So now I'm doing something that I don't like to do.
• 7:53
  I am reaching out to the Lagree class for the second time and
• 7:58
  telling them that traffic got really bad and I wanted to know
• 8:01
  if I could take the 11:00 assuming that there was an
• 8:03
  11:00. I write to the guy that I have a
• 8:05
  date with tentatively, and I said hey, can we push back to
• 8:08
  12? He's like sure.
• 8:11
  So everything's fine until I find out that there is no 11:00
• 8:15
  class. At this point, the old me, my
• 8:18
  old programming would have been like, just forget about it,
• 8:21
  forget about the degree clause or just cancel the date.
• 8:25
  You can't keep pushing things back.
• 8:27
  It's rude, but I didn't operate the way I used to, the way I
• 8:32
  normally would my expected mode. Instead I said what if?
• 8:39
  What if everything's going to be OK even if things are not OK
• 8:44
  right now according to my plan? What if my plan is just that, my
• 8:50
  plan, but not the plan? So I reached the degree studio
• 8:55
  and they said you can take the 12:00, there's still room.
• 8:59
  And I reached out to my date and I said, hey, it looks like it's
• 9:02
  going to be closer to 130. He was like, no problem, I'm
• 9:06
  fine. The only thing is, is that I had
• 9:09
  to be in a car to go to Ulawatu, that same place that I went to
• 9:12
  the temple. Now I learned that it's going to
• 9:14
  take an hour and 30 minutes in traffic.
• 9:16
  I had to be in a car by 4:30. So I just kept thinking, can I
• 9:21
  make this work? And then I decided to just let
• 9:25
  it be, let things be what they were going to be.
• 9:30
  And that's what I did. I'm now standing in an
• 9:33
  unfamiliar part of town where my class was going to be, but in an
• 9:37
  hour and 15 minutes. I then decided that I was going
• 9:40
  to go trade in my 2 braids, which had gotten a little sad
• 9:43
  after having been on many scooters and me having sucked in
• 9:46
  them for many days, that I was going to do a refresh and trade
• 9:50
  in these two braids for one. I hopped on the back of a grab
• 9:54
  scooter and headed off to a hair salon.
• 9:57
  Every hair salon does braids. It's kind of amazing there and
• 10:00
  they're like $5. I got one side braid, which I
• 10:05
  have to say I loved. I felt very put together, even
• 10:08
  though my day was kind of like falling apart and getting all
• 10:11
  sorts of messy. My hair made me feel contained,
• 10:15
  which was exactly what I needed for the rest of my day to play
• 10:18
  out the way it did. So I go back to the class and I
• 10:23
  have to say that class was the most challenging degree class I
• 10:26
  have ever taken. Maybe even the most challenging
• 10:29
  class I've ever taken. In any workout class.
• 10:33
  There was another element in play.
• 10:34
  No matter how much AC was pumping, it didn't affect
• 10:39
  anything. It was so humid and unlike
• 10:42
  normal, I was sweating. It was so unexpected and
• 10:47
  everywhere, I mean everywhere, I was that person where sweat was
• 10:51
  falling all over the machine. And at first I was so unfamiliar
• 10:54
  with what was going on with me that I actually thought that the
• 10:57
  ceiling was dripping moisture until I realized, no, it was me.
• 11:02
  And then I looked over and it was everybody else.
• 11:05
  At the end of the class, I was a mess.
• 11:08
  My hair looked great though, which was really the saving
• 11:11
  grace. And then I looked at the time
• 11:13
  and I realized, Oh dear, it's 1:15.
• 11:16
  There's no way I can get back to my hotel, shower, change and
• 11:20
  meet this person. I'm running out of time.
• 11:24
  Do I cancel or do I stay the course?
• 11:28
  And I decided stay the course, why not?
• 11:30
  This whole day has just kind of been whatever it's going to be
• 11:33
  and it's kind of working out. So let it play out.
• 11:37
  I went to some gross bathroom and threw on whatever I had
• 11:41
  which was a bathing suit and a pair of cut off shorts, Hopped
• 11:44
  in another grab scooter and off I went to my first date and this
• 11:49
  is when things started to shift for me for real.
• 11:53
  There was nowhere for me to hide, there was no way for me to
• 11:57
  be anything other than how I was at that moment.
• 12:02
  I didn't even have a mirror to look at.
• 12:04
  I just walked right into this date all natural, sweaty,
• 12:11
  uncomfortable, unaware of how I was presenting and too aware of
• 12:17
  how I felt that that was my leading comment in this
• 12:22
  conversation. I was showing up so differently
• 12:26
  at this moment. I was just me I guess, and when
• 12:32
  I look back now I realize I don't bring that side to dates
• 12:37
  generally. I think it takes a lot for
• 12:40
  someone to just feel comfortable, or maybe in my
• 12:44
  case, so uncomfortable that my baseline was me rather than me
• 12:49
  pretending to be something other, trying to be, I don't
• 12:54
  know, witty, coy, who knows. But here I am, uncomfortable and
• 13:02
  not shy about it. And things changed.
• 13:06
  I think they changed in me, and then it changed the whole
• 13:09
  dynamic between the two of us. Our conversation became light,
• 13:15
  easy, flowy. There was silence, but it wasn't
• 13:20
  awkward. It was just catching our breath.
• 13:24
  The time moved pretty quickly and then it was over.
• 13:29
  Such a pleasant, fun, easy experience.
• 13:33
  Done. I met a stranger and then he
• 13:36
  went back to being a stranger and I got ready for my next
• 13:40
  date. Here I am, the girl that loves
• 13:43
  to pack. I love to meticulously fold
• 13:47
  things and roll things and find ways to shove things in so it's
• 13:51
  more space saving. I like to vacuum seal my stuff
• 13:55
  in bags so that I can put more in more efficiently.
• 14:00
  And here I am feverishly taking out my foldable duffel bag that
• 14:03
  I brought in case I overflowed out of my carry on and shoving
• 14:07
  stuff into the bag. Pulling stuff off of hangers and
• 14:10
  just throwing them. Why?
• 14:13
  Because there's something that I like more than packing, and
• 14:18
  that's being on time. And nothing about my day was on
• 14:21
  time. But now I felt like I could get
• 14:25
  back a little bit of normalcy if I just packed messily.
• 14:30
  And that's exactly what I did. I got dressed for a club and off
• 14:36
  I went. I grabbed a car at 4:40 and made
• 14:41
  it for sunset. The sunset there is special in
• 14:44
  Olawatu on the Cliff. It's exactly where that fire
• 14:48
  dance was taking place. Just a little bit of ways from
• 14:51
  where I was, where I started my day but didn't see the fire
• 14:55
  dance. Here I am meeting another
• 14:58
  person, this time to just experience what a club is like
• 15:03
  in Asia. Something else I needed to
• 15:05
  experience was eating because I was starving.
• 15:09
  That is the one thing I forwent because of my day getting so off
• 15:13
  track. I was hungry and here I am
• 15:18
  eating a hamburger and loving every bite.
• 15:22
  I actually ate all the fries too.
• 15:24
  Then a plate of fruit. I was happy.
• 15:28
  And then I ended the night with dancing.
• 15:30
  I can't say the music was great because it wasn't.
• 15:33
  I would say having grown up in New York City, you're a little
• 15:35
  jaded when you think about what good music is, especially since
• 15:38
  I grew up in the 90s. So we had really good music, at
• 15:43
  least good music club wise. And here I am dancing, enjoying
• 15:48
  myself and realizing today was perfect.
• 15:54
  Everything about this day was just right.
• 15:58
  I was able to fit in everything that I wanted to.
• 16:02
  I was able to experience more than I expected, and I was able
• 16:07
  to find something in all of it and all of the messy bits and
• 16:13
  everything that went off track and in the way I was showing up,
• 16:18
  I was able to find ease, effortlessness.
• 16:23
  I was able to really embrace what it is, to just let it flow,
• 16:28
  let it be. I didn't think that I'd have to
• 16:31
  go all the way to Bali to find that.
• 16:35
  Surely I could have found it any day in America.
• 16:40
  Just accepted traffic as it is. Just stack plans and let them, I
• 16:46
  guess, be what they are. But I wouldn't have done that
• 16:50
  here. I think when you're on trips,
• 16:53
  you give yourself permission to show up differently, maybe be a
• 16:57
  little bit more forgiving for giving to schedules, for giving
• 17:02
  to what you think you should be, how you should act, how you
• 17:07
  should respond, etcetera. I don't know.
• 17:11
  But after a week of being back, I can tell you that that's where
• 17:15
  my mind goes back to that day, that perfectly imperfect day.
• 17:21
  I thought about it when I was sitting in traffic, LA style,
• 17:25
  and I realized there's no way I'm going to get to my plans on
• 17:28
  time. And for a moment, I showed up
• 17:31
  differently. I just accepted what was, what
• 17:36
  would be. And I remember how I felt when I
• 17:39
  was sitting in the car on the way back from the temple in
• 17:42
  Ulawatu on the way to my workout class, accepting the fact that
• 17:46
  there's no way I'm ever going to make it on time and I'm going to
• 17:50
  have to reschedule for the second time and maybe all of my
• 17:54
  plans are going to fall down or come undone.
• 17:58
  And I was OK with it. There was no pressure.
• 18:02
  There was No Fear of missing out or fear of letting someone down
• 18:07
  or the need to explain or apologize or justify.
• 18:11
  There was no pressure at all. There was just accepting that
• 18:15
  this is where I'm at, Sitting in a car on vacation without any
• 18:21
  control of the situation, going somewhere that I chose and
• 18:26
  figuring it out as I go. Maybe that's something that you
• 18:29
  can bring when you're on vacation.
• 18:32
  That feeling of no pressure, no need to get frustrated or resent
• 18:38
  the situation you're in, but instead just go with it.
• 18:43
  Maybe I brought something back from Bali better than a souvenir
• 18:48
  or a beautiful photo. Maybe I brought back a new way
• 18:52
  of being something very different for me.
• 18:57
  Something easy, something, well, effortless.
• 19:06
  Thanks for listening. These episodes are unscripted.
• 19:10
  They're my free flowing thoughts as I reflect back on past
• 19:13
  conversations, experiences, what I've learned, would like to do
• 19:18
  better, and what's next. Join me on Thursdays for new
• 19:21
  episodes and catch up on past episodes.
• 19:24
  Click Follow, Like and subscribe and let's see where this leads.