Whose Timeline Are You On?
Ep26
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[00:00:00]
Audra Dinell: Have you ever asked yourself, whose timeline am I on? So when we first moved back to the Midwest, life was a little crazy. We have been gone for nearly a decade. We were in the middle of COVID, we sold most of our belongings and moved into an Airbnb. We had Cobra Health insurance. Things were just uncertain, to say the least, but there's something I remember saying to my parents when we moved back, I said.
We [00:01:00] don't have time to go slow. We have to catch up. We don't have the luxury of not doing it all. We're so behind. Can you relate? Do you ever feel like you're behind in life or behind in building the business that you want or behind in your home looking like a studio McGee transformation. Behind on having kids at the age you thought you'd have kids.
If you find yourself in the same type of self-created rat race I did five years ago, my hope is that this podcast will encourage you. This is a topic I come back to regularly in my own work, and so I'm recording this podcast for me just as much as I am for anyone else. Here's the thing.
This sort of being behind thought is rooted in comparison. I mean, it's so obvious in 2025 it's hard not to look [00:02:00] around. In this digital age where we see so much of people's lives, it's hard for our brains not to jump directly to comparison. So I wanna start out with a tool for you to use, and that is two questions you can ask yourself to create some reflection on this topic in your life.
This topic of a timeline, because I'm gonna venture to say that timelines are mostly made up. I mean, sure, there are some timelines. Kids go to school in kindergarten and graduate. 12th grade, but honestly with all of the different ways that education is looking these days, even that timeline is not quote unquote super real.
So here's two questions. Question number one, who in the world are you trying to catch up to? I [00:03:00] don't know about you, but I can often find myself with a person or. A school culture or a neighborhood that pops into my brain unconsciously, or even someone I don't even know, just see on social media, and it's helpful to stop when I'm making decisions or when I'm having feelings of jealousy or feeling behind to say.
Who is in my brain? Who in the world am I trying to catch up to? Oftentimes it might be another business owner whose content I follow on LinkedIn or Instagram, or it will be someone I knew from 20 years ago, or it will be someone who I know nothing about. I've just seen them in passing. [00:04:00] It's just so wild how our brain.
Does this just totally unconsciously. Okay. So the decisions that we make, if we're going to make them super intentionally, we have to be aware of this. We have to be aware of what the others around us or what people whose lives we are consuming are doing, and what our own values are. And gosh, I mean, I just so wish that this wasn't a real thing.
I wish we could just know our values and boldly live into these beautiful lives that we've been given, and that's it. But in 2025, it just feels. Impossible to not be infiltrated with other people's stuff, beliefs, achievements, ways of being, things [00:05:00] they have. And so we have to be just real about this, that this is a part of our lives, and ask ourselves, who in the world are we trying to catch up to?
More often than not, when we take time to be intentional and ask ourselves this, we'll realize, oh my gosh, I am accidentally trying to catch up to this person whose life is totally different than me. Okay, so question number two, whose timeline are we on? Are we on a timeline that our parents have created for us long ago that we don't need anymore?
Where adults, ourselves, are we on a timeline that the world is giving us? This is what motherhood looks like. This is how old you should be, this is how many kids you should have, et cetera. And if we ask ourselves, whose timeline are we on? What if we just let that go? Like would something explode? Probably not, unless it's a [00:06:00] baking situation.
Okay. That's a weird, bad joke from someone who was like trying to get into some homemaking hobbies. But what if really we just. What if the Audra five years ago who moved back to her hometown, who felt like she had so much to build because she left this life that she had been building for 10 years and was starting afresh back home.
I felt just so behind. What if I had let that timeline go? I don't know, but that's something that I think about. Now when I'm goal setting, when I'm visioning, when I'm planning for my family's future, I'm just trying to be hyper aware of whose timeline am I on here? Is it my own? Is it aligned with my values?
Or do I have someone or something subconsciously in the back of my brain that I'm trying to create my life off of? Because here's the thing. [00:07:00] We do not have a one size fits all life. What works for someone else? What brings someone else purpose and joy and fulfillment might not work for us. And the hard thing about this is that we have to experiment.
That's the only way we're gonna figure out what kind of timeline we wanna create for ourselves. Okay, so let's take this summer for example. This has been a big thing in my world because when I first moved back to Midwest five years ago, I dreamed of a summer like this. There were some influences in my life who thought that was a bad idea, and I listened to their timeline.
Now I will say I hustled my butt off to build my business, and that took solid like two to three. Years of all in, and I don't know if I could have done the first couple of years [00:08:00] differently, but I do know that now I'm in a season where our summer looks just the way I want it to, but I've had to experiment around.
I've had to prioritize work and put the kids in care and camp. I've tried to work and have them home. I've just tried so many flows and that's sort of the beauty of entrepreneurship is that it gets you comfortable with experimenting a lot. And so I've had to experiment to find my flow and things change as kids get older, as business evolves as I.
Gain information and become wiser as to what works for my unique family in this unique season of life. I'm grateful and I'm loving this flow. I would never have done this this summer. If I would have been looking around at all [00:09:00] the other entrepreneurs in my world and life who are growing and scaling, I would've pressured myself to.
Stay on course, do what they're doing because they're growing, they're scaling, and that's what business is supposed to be about. I would have made up those stories in my head, or vice versa years ago when I was first starting my business and I have moms in my life who stay at home with their kids. I could have thought, gosh, I'm doing parenting wrong because I'm not, you know, staying home with them.
Instead, I'm building a business. The point of this part of the podcast is just to say that it is truly not a one size fits all life. It takes experimentation to figure out what timeline is right for us, and there is not one way to do it. There is not one right way to do it. You have to find what works for you.
Gosh, I think [00:10:00] about just all my different friends and all their seasons of life, and I have this friend who had a great career and moved around the country for her husband's career, and hers took a back seat, and then they had a family and she had always wanted to stay home. She started this side hustle on
the side of being primarily a stay at home mom and following her husband's career around the country, and she knows so well her capacity. Her and I talk often about her being as booked as she wants to be because her primary role is home with the kids right now, and who knows what comes next for her.
Once the kids are school aged, but I just admire so much that she is doing her thing uniquely the way she wants to do it on her timeline. Because here's the [00:11:00] thing, seasons come and seasons go. So I'm tempted to be so black and white about it. You know, I'm an entrepreneur and my family life looks like this full time or
I am staying home with the kids and I only work on the business during school hours, but there's so much gray to be had there and seasons change, and it's just a beautiful gift that we don't know what it's gonna look like in five or 10 years, and we just have to be fully planted in this season and figure out where am I supposed to be now.
And so I wonder if we chose to get laser focused on our own lanes and find deep contentment in the life that we're living now, how differently would that feel if we were to focus on what we have instead of the goals that we [00:12:00] have for ourselves? What we don't yet have, what we are working for? We can still work for those things, but if we focus just on the joy and the gifts that are already in our life, it produces the type of feeling that produces the energy we want to be in, to get all of those other things.
If we're just looking at the next mile marker, which by the way is so easy to move and push once you hit it without any acknowledgement, right? But if we're just looking at the next mile marker, the next goal, the next quarter, which again, this podcast is for me, there have been so many seasons of life where I have done this and still do this, but if we're only looking on that, it brings up sort of a scarcity feeling, like not there yet, not at that revenue goal yet.
Not at that number on the scale yet. Not at that [00:13:00] remodeled bathroom yet, whatever it might be, not at the season, or I can. Be at home with my kids in the summer. Yet it just takes the focus off of what we do have, and instead of being content, which is just the most beautiful ground, to build a life off of deep contentment, instead of being content, it leaves us feeling scarce.
So getting laser focused on our lanes could be. Maximizing what we do have. Start with what we do have. So say you do wanna take more time off in the summer and be with your family, but you're not there yet. Your business isn't there yet. You work a full-time job. It's just not an option for you. Okay, well, what do you have?
What can you do? What can you start with? Can you turn your phone off at five every night? Can you pick the kids up from [00:14:00] camp and take them on a mini field trip a couple times a week to a pool that's open late, or a park or the ice cream shop, or a library? Could you take Friday afternoons off every other week and decide that that's your magic making Friday afternoon?
I really don't have any hard and fast tools to share with you during this podcast, but. Whose timeline are you on? It is just a thought that I have been rolling around in my mind that I know is married with that comparison and scarcity and looking around the corner and thinking that what works for someone else is gonna work for you, and so I just hope.
That if you're listening today and you're in a season like this, that this is just an encouragement to you, that you are not alone, that you get to decide your timeline. If you so choose that. You [00:15:00] can use those reflection questions to dig in a little bit and get some awareness around the possibility that you're building your world, your business, your life off of someone else's timeline.
And to encourage us all to really embrace gratitude as a lifestyle. One practice that I learned from Dr. Amen who you can find on Instagram and has written several books and has the Amen Clinics all over the country is as you're going to bed at night start. Your brain thinking back on your day from start to finish and naming all the things that went right and I find.
When I do this, first of all, I fall asleep really quickly, but even when I do this, and it's not bedtime, I'm just doing it in the middle of the day. Oh gosh, it's just so beautiful. You could also write that down [00:16:00] in a journal or on your notes app. There was one point where I was keeping like 10 things. I was grateful for every day on my notes app, just so I would notice a ton of the little things in my life that made me feel content with.
My lot where I am, what I do have, because for me, I always know when I focus on that the energy I bring to the world and the people that I love is just so much more fruitful than when I am constantly focused on what's next or not being there yet. All right, y'all. Hope you have a great week. If you're listening to this as it comes out, happy Independence Day and we'll see you back next week. [00:17:00]
