Building a Utopia For Realists. 

Step 1? Time Freedom 

And here’s why. 

In 2023 I read two books. 

Well ‘read’ doesn’t really describe what happened.

Devoured. 

Inhaled. 

Mentally danced with.

Are more appropriate. 

They filled in the gaps I had between gut feeling and fragmented knowledge. 

Book 1? Utopia for Realists. If you don’t read it, here’s the main idea: solutions elegantly presented to every problem our global society is experiencing. 

It’s the repair for the rupture.

But. Like many of us have felt in the last few years, after the initial excitement of these solutions, I felt deflated. It left the problem of humans being self-sabotaging and generally doing a lot of inexplicably awful things. 

Luckily Book 2 was there for me. Human Kind. 

Human Kind neatly shows through one thoughtful example after another how humans, when released from a system that causes essentially malfunctioning behaviour, will do good, we want to create, to connect, to heal, to experience joy, it’s in our nature, just as Rita my dog has an innate need to sniff, roll in the grass and joyfully chase squirrels with zero thought to the consequences. 

So. I was sold. 

• Belief in the solutions? Yes. 

• Belief in the capacity for humans to enact the solutions? Yes. I’m a life coach. I know how to help people move from procrastination to action.

• Belief in the current motivation for humans to enact the solutions? Ooh. Bottleneck. 

Most of us live in an environment where our background level of stress and anxiety is higher than our nervous systems can handle. 

Imagine your laptop has been running all the software, on a warm day, with YouTube playing and notifications pinging from email, social media, bills coming in, financial red alerts mixed in with triggers from family members. Images that make you second guess yourself and feel less than. 

Your confidence getting nibbled away at each day. 

Behind all these things? Our relationship with time. 

The reason we do/don’t do most things each day? Our thoughts about time. 

• Eating the sugary processed food that gives us a quick energy boost but then a slump? Not enough time to cook nourishing food.

• Seeing what our friend on the other side of the world is doing on an Instagram post instead of a phone call to check in with how they really are, or even better, a visit? Not enough time. 

• Revisiting if your relationship is what you need/want for where you are right now? No time to find a new one, make this one work!

• Going at the pace of your dog who is stressed and barking? No time. Deal with it later

• Creating a slow business away from Social Media (because your instinct is telling you it will feel amazing)? No time. Too much experimentation involved. 

• Change your job so it’s more rewarding? Too tired. (Because no time to sleep earlier right? Have to do the fun things we didn’t have time for in the day!)

• Pausing to practise self-love, slowly giving yourself space to breathe in the aroma of your coffee and make eye contact with the world instead of necking it as you reply to emails? Hah. Maybe this works for people without (kids, my boss, my life, insert your own here)

• Replacing self-critical words with self-compassion instead of rushing through the day shouting at yourself? Not a priority. No time. 

And on and on.

Creating time freedom first means we can tackle everything else from a place of calm spaciousness, it’s like taking all the other cars out of the car park before you manoeuvre. 

Speedier right? 

So, that’s why The Coaching Studio will take you through a 90 day process (The Life Balance Retreat) to create time freedom, before anything else. 

I’m certified to teach the Time Hackers methodology (and I actively coach and continue my training in the Time Hackers program) but with my spin on it. 

Teaching you to create time freedom and trusting that you will explode with innovation and creativity is my commitment to building Utopia For Realists. 

STEP 2: Welcome to the choose your own adventure bit. 

Because here’s what happens when you create time freedom. 

The process has some side-effects that mean you position yourself to now choose your own adventure. 

When you go on the journey to creating time freedom you also create:

1. Confidence to vocalise what you want to yourself and others

2. Clarity on what you want to create and how you want to live

3. The self-trust to take on any challenge you decide to

4. The knowledge that choosing the luxury of support instead of struggling alone is how to create the world you want now, not in 20 years

That’s why when I thought about my role as your coach I could have gone in a thousand directions but I returned to the less is more approach (thanks Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and not Coco Chanel… good job I googled to check who came up with the expression!)

Step 2 is up to you. 

You don’t need a big vision. You don’t need an ‘impressive plan’ 

You creating time freedom and living life on your terms is enough. 

Every time one of us decides to connect with ourselves, to be part of the natural world, to say ‘I want or I don’t want’ with calm clarity we are building a Utopia, because we’re moving the needle back towards repair instead of rupture. 

And if you want to go further and set up your foundation, start your business, set up that dream retreat space in Mallorca? Perfect. I will be here to support you and cheer you on, because I know you can do it, because you’re a human with a human brain. 

Just as I know Rita can do everything a dog can do.

But today?

Let’s start with time freedom and your life balance retreat. 

Emma x