Managing your time and schedule is essential—but what if there’s more to it than just getting things done? In this episode, I’m joined by Heather Chauvin, a coach who takes time management to a whole new level by connecting it to energy, emotions, and the way you truly want to feel. Together, we explore how asking one simple question—“Wouldn’t it be nice if…”—can help you align your time with your life in ways that feel fulfilling and sustainable.

Heather shares her journey from overwhelm and survival mode to living a “time-rich” life and introduces the concept of energetic time management. If you’re ready to rethink how you approach time and take steps toward feeling alive and aligned, this episode is for you.

What You’ll Learn:

• How to pair time management with emotional alignment for lasting results
• How to use the “Wouldn’t it be nice if…” question that can transform your priorities
• Why being time-rich starts with boundaries and small, intentional steps
• How to reconnect with what really matters in your life

Connect with Heather:

• Listen to the Emotionally Uncomfortable Podcast
• Visit her website: www.heatherchauvin.com
• Follow her on Instagram: www.instagram.com/heatherchauvin_
• Time Rich Reset Challenge: www.heatherchauvin.com/time

Listen to the episode here!

Or watch the episode here!

I’d be honored and grateful if you would head over to iTunes to leave a review and let other female entrepreneurs know what you learned! While you’re there, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss an episode.

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Today's episode is going to blow your mind because you are going to learn one simple kind of prompting question to start asking yourself that's going to be a massive game changer.  

[00:00:18] Megan: Welcome back to Work Life Harmony. I have a new guest on the show today that I'm so excited to chat with and introduce to you all. Her name is Heather. I'm going to have her introduce herself in a minute but I just want to set the stage for you because when I hear the words living time rich, it almost just gives me goosebumps. 

[00:00:40] Megan: Who doesn't want that? And that's what we're going to be talking about today. So welcome to the show, Heather. I would love for you to introduce yourself tell everyone a little bit about you, what you do. 

[00:00:48] Heather: Time rich to me is kind of the whole concept of what I teach and how I got to where I am in in my journey, in my professional journey. And so today I work with women raising children who want to feel alive and aligned. And that kind of goes back to my start when I became a mother, I was a young mom, I was 18 years old. 

[00:01:09] Heather: And I remember looking at my son thinking I don't want to become a statistic. I don't want us to become a statistic. And I never want, I never wanted him to feel the way I felt as a child. And a lot of that had to do with emotional intelligence and emotional regulation and really seeing and understanding myself and really being able to step up and into how I wanted to feel. 

[00:01:33] Heather: But when I became a mom, I had no idea that that was, you know, a what I was seeking. And so what do we do, Megan, when we are raising children and we see them struggling? 

[00:01:43] Megan: We do everything for them. We give ourselves over to them. We 

[00:01:47] Heather: yeah, we 

[00:01:48] Megan: I don't know, for me, lose myself in the process. 

[00:01:50] Heather: 100 percent and we start investing in things for them. We start going after what they need, what they want, what they 

[00:01:57] Megan: Every book we read is about being a better parent. Like literally everything. 

[00:02:01] Heather: Yeah. And so that's what I started to dive into. He started to present anxiety. He showed me behaviors and I became a social worker. I worked with families and I was like, I'm a fraud. I'm like, there's such a misalignment here. And so I went on this personal development journey, this 

[00:02:18] Megan: Now, hang on. Why did you say you said you felt like a fraud? 

[00:02:21] Megan: How so? 

[00:02:22] Heather: I felt like a fraud because the families that I was working with were struggling to see and understand their children's behavior and I was at home struggling with the exact same thing and so I could see myself in these families but at the same time I was like we're kind of in this together and it seems like nobody really has it figured out so I'm gonna go on that journey and try to figure it out because It was keeping me up at night because this primal instinct that I was quote unquote, failing as a mother was just eating me alive. 

[00:02:55] Heather: so what do we do as women? We give, give, give, we educate ourselves. We learn, we build businesses around our children. We do all the things and we are telling ourselves we want freedom. We want abundance. We want all the things. We're living in a survival state, just enough, just enough to survive. 

[00:03:14] Heather: And so that was me left my job as a social worker, jumped into the business world went down the rabbit hole. You know, I want to have more quote unquote time to be present with my children, but I was living in a survival state mentally. Physically, emotionally I wouldn't say so much spiritually because I was giving myself permission to go after the cravings that I wanted, but I feel like I started doing all the prep work for it. 

[00:03:41] Heather: And then in 2013, while I was in startup in my business. I had nine years of personal development under my belt, meaning I hired the coaches. I read the books, I listened to podcasts before they were cool. You know, I was getting on airplanes and going places and I was doing it all because I wanted to be a good mother. 

[00:04:00] Heather: 2013, I was diagnosed with a stage four cancer. And my physical body was screaming at me to try to get my attention. And I had to surrender. I had to stop. I was at my rock bottom, all the beliefs I had that nobody could help me. No one could take care of my children. Every single belief that I had about what a good mother, a good woman, good life, like how I needed to do everything by myself. 

[00:04:28] Heather: And only I can control it all came crashing down. And so in that moment, I felt like I was backed into a corner and I thought, okay, I feel like all the work that you've done up to this moment, Heather has been the training. And now this is the, the race. You don't know what tomorrow's going to bring. But we got to figure this out. 

[00:04:49] Heather: And that's when energetic time management was born. Because I had to figure out how to use. Time like physical time, like the 24 hours in a day in alignment with how I wanted to feel and the life that I wanted. And that took me on a completely different trajectory of life and how I run my business, how I parent everything. 

[00:05:12] Megan: So what is energetic time management?  

[00:05:17] Heather: I see time as energy. I also see like four types of energy. We have physical time, like the physical 24 hours in a day. We also have our mental, emotional time. Like, you know, you think you can get something done, but the reality is it's No, that's not how it works, right? We need, it's not just the 30 minutes that you need to write an email or do the thing. 

[00:05:40] Heather: It might be all the creative time that you need before that and the space and capacity. So energetic time management is like a process I created to get super crystal clear on what you're craving, the feeling that you're after. And it's not necessarily time blocking or putting yourself on the calendar. 

[00:05:58] Heather: It's about realigning how you want to feel because Let's be honest, most of us are conditioned to be the doer and not really be the beer. But the reality is what we're after is a feeling. And so if you're not even considering the feeling part You're operating and living like a robot and then saying I'm exhausted. 

[00:06:22] Heather: I don't have enough like what's going on When the reality is what we're craving like the meaningfulness the fulfillment Connection aliveness is actually a feeling and there's specific actions you Uniquely are going to have to take in order to feel that way.  

[00:06:40] Megan: So many things are running through my mind right now I'm wondering if and i'm curious to get your professional thoughts on this, you know Most women we talk to all say I just don't have enough time, right? 

[00:06:50] Megan: I don't have enough time I don't have there's not enough time to do all the things Do you think maybe it's not a time problem? It's this energy problem where we don't even know So what feeling we're after, we just know that the one that we have isn't it. 

[00:07:07] Heather: So have you ever had a A moment or I'm sure you've seen people like this. Like I don't have enough time, but they have time to be sick. They have time to take those days off when something happens to their kids or like their physical body is shutting down and saying, you need to quote unquote rest. And they're like, Oh, I got to clear my calendar. 

[00:07:28] Heather: So we actually do have time, but we're not owning Our time. And I mean, it dives so much deeper, but when we have mental, like I say mental, physical, emotional, spiritual energy. So to me, spiritual energy, and I'm not talking about like bigger beliefs or like religious beliefs, everyone has unique perspective of that. 

[00:07:48] Heather: But to me, spiritual beliefs are like, what is my soul craving? Like, what is that part of me? That's like, Oh, I wish I could do this. I wish I could do that. Like those desires, the mental is. the stories and the beliefs that we hold. So perfect example, I don't have time. That is a mental energy, how you are literally pushing away having more. 

[00:08:14] Heather: I feel like I don't have enough time, but I'm going to make this a priority. Emotional energy is really all that's where the magic for me. That's where the magic is around emotional intelligence of managing emotion, emotional regulation, understanding, you know, I hear a lot of women say I'm resentful. I'm angry. 

[00:08:35] Heather: And I'm like, Yeah, that's a breadcrumb. All that is, is telling you, you had a boundary somewhere and you let people cross it. You didn't own it. You didn't hold that. So it's really getting super crystal clear on what it is inside of you that you desire. And then learning what's the feeling I'm actually after. 

[00:08:57] Heather: You're, you're going to say it's aliveness, energy, abundance, blah, blah, blah. But if you keep telling yourself, I don't have time, I don't have time, I don't have time. You're not even at the starting line. You are so afraid to start because you're afraid of failing. So once you go on this journey and you were like, I am committed, I am so done with my BS. 

[00:09:20] Heather: And that was me when I was diagnosed. I remember checking this box mentally. I said, Oh, 

[00:09:26] Heather: I'm done suffering. Like I will be in moments of discomfort in my life and I will have to push through, but I will never get to a point where I've neglected myself so bad and I've neglected symptoms of my life where I have to wait for something to slap me in the face to get my attention. 

[00:09:47] Heather: And. Becoming that type of person that's proactive in their life instead of reactive takes a completely different identity shift. It takes, habits and tiny baby action steps and investment and determination and grit. And I can say now on the other side of this, it's gonna be 11 years this year, December, the end of December. 

[00:10:10] Heather: It's wild to observe who I am today versus who I was then. And I can honestly say the number one quote unquote secret, like tell me your strategy, tell me this, is I was not willing to quit. I was like, fail forward, keep going. What are you learning from this? Lean in. And now I'm at the point, time richness to me is like, rich is a feeling. Rich is something that you crave and maybe it's what does that mean to you? You have one life and we're so obsessed with money and how much, you know, how many activities our children are in and how much we can get done. But if we're being radically honest with ourselves, what we truly want is to be proud of ourselves. 

[00:10:58] Heather: We truly want our Children to feel safe, to be healthy, to want to come home when they get older and leave home. We want connection. We want to feel fulfilled. You know, besides my diagnosis and becoming a mother at an early age. Like, my teen years, I was incredibly depressed. I didn't understand the value of, or know what it meant to feel alive or energized or joyful. 

[00:11:25] Heather: And so, I think part of the reason why I'm so passionate about this is because I've had such contrast on both sides and I, There's evidence that we can retrain ourselves. We can retrain our brains. And just because we're used to feeling a certain way, or, you know, we look up and culturally all women are saying, I don't have time. 

[00:11:46] Heather: I'm exhausted. Oh, the holidays are coming. I'm chronically overwhelmed. You too. And we're starting to create connection with each other through toxic culture. And I just, I've opted  

[00:11:57] Megan: and through the negative side that the unfun stuff that we're sharing together is what's bonding us. 

[00:12:04] Megan: Now I, something I'm noticing with a lot of the women that I work with is that ties into this is one of the things that we go through when we're kind of creating our, our annual plan and thinking or any kind of goal setting maybe is really to take a step back and honestly ask ourselves if, you know, if time or no issue, if money knows, like release all the boundaries we think we have. 

[00:12:29] Megan: Like if I were to gift you. A box full of free time, like what is it that you would do that fills you up that's just about you? And the vast majority have no idea. They can't, they, and it kind of comes out like I, it's been so long since I've thought about that or had that time. I don't even know anymore. 

[00:12:57] Megan: And what I'm noticing is this is really. Not really becoming problematic when, I mean, problematic in the sense that it breaks my heart problematic of the stage of life where now maybe you're going into the empty nester. Like now the kids are off at school and, you know, for the last 25 years you been going, once I get past this stage, once I get past this stage, I would keep thinking that the next stage is going to be easier. 

[00:13:19] Megan: Well now suddenly. Here is open space on calendars and people, women are in a tailspin because they don't know what to do with it. There have a craving of wanting something, but it's like, we don't even know where to begin. So how, what would you say to, to women today that if you're telling them, Hey, how do you want to feel? 

[00:13:41] Megan: Like what is the ultimate end game here? And they don't even know how to figure that out. Where do we start?  

[00:13:47] Heather: So I'll give you some practical tips, but at the same time, I just want to shed some hope on the situation that if 

[00:13:56] Heather: Like I have all these cups near me cause I have water, I have coffee, but you have a cup. There's nothing in the cup. It's okay. All you gotta do is pour a little bit in the cup, one drop at a time and you will have more of what you want and desire in your life. 

[00:14:12] Heather: So the pouring of that is just baby action steps. We are conditioned. I mean, marketing is a beautiful thing, 

[00:14:20] Heather: But 

[00:14:21] Heather: I say sometimes when it's done ethically I'm very attracted to people who do ethical marketing when they're like, you want to feel amazing in your body. Here's the secret consistency. 

[00:14:33] Heather: You want to feel amazing and your body is going to take you a lot longer than eight weeks or blah, blah, blah. And I tell people that all the time. I'm like, if you are determined to change, like there's something that like kind of a light bulb went on. Unfortunately I think sometimes we have to get a little smack in the, in the face for us to, to wake up, but I see that a lot and there have been so many times in my life where I will ask myself. 

[00:15:01] Heather: Okay, I don't want to experience this anymore. How did I get here? What was I avoided to, to get here? So if you're experiencing a lot of shame because you're like, I'm lost. I don't know what to do. It's okay. We're just starting at the finish line one baby step at a time. So I love the journal prompt. 

[00:15:26] Heather: Wouldn't it be nice if  

[00:15:27] Megan: nice if? 

[00:15:30] Megan: favorite. I use it all the time. And 

[00:15:39] Heather: and there's no like, what do you want? I feel like what do you want is very confronting and you can go, wouldn't it be nice if someone made me three meals today or wouldn't it be nice if the sun was shining? Wouldn't it be nice if. 

[00:15:53] Megan: if I never had to do laundry again. 

[00:15:54] Heather: I never had to do laundry again, like write it all out. And so I will do this. 

[00:16:00] Heather: Like even when I'm planning for next year, I'll just be like, I'll just dump it out. 

[00:16:05] Heather: Sometimes I do this with my team as well. And I'm like, wouldn't it be nice if me, like, wouldn't it be nice if I didn't have to do this anymore? I'm like, I didn't know you didn't want to do that. Let's figure it out. So like 

[00:16:16] Heather: I use this with my husband, I use this with my children, like all the time. 

[00:16:20] Heather: Yes. Some people have resistance to it at first, but it's a rinse and repeat process. Once you have the list, there's your data. There's your evidence. It's not a to do list.  

[00:16:30] Megan: There's no like personal connection. 

[00:16:32] Megan: There's no I in there. It's just, wouldn't it be nice if I love that. 

[00:16:38] Heather: And so some of it might be simple. Wouldn't it be nice if I had, some people are like, I had Fridays off. I'm like, great. Now you're going to go and take a Friday off and then you'll be like, Oh no, what do I do with this? Right? But like, it's all, it's a breadcrumb. 

[00:16:53] Heather: The next thing I do is I look at the list and then I ask myself, what is the actual feeling that I'm after? 

[00:16:59] Heather: So magic wand, I've accomplished that thing. So wouldn't it be nice if I had Fridays off? What do you think the feeling is going to be that you have achieved once you do that Great, write that down. 

[00:17:12] Heather: Next to every single item. Wouldn't it be nice if I never had to do laundry again? What that? What do you think you're seeking? 

[00:17:21] Heather: Like, what is the feeling that you're after? for some people, it might be support. For some people, it might be space. For some people, it might be this word of clean, organized, whatever it  

[00:17:33] Megan: it is. 

[00:17:33] Megan: It might even be less resentful, right? Maybe that's become a task that you have harboring resentment about. 

[00:17:38] Heather: So just write down whatever comes out for you. Now you kind of have a guide and then this is where you co create with your emotions and you start to say, great, let's look at this. Wouldn't it be nice if I never had to do laundry again? What is one little baby step that I can take? Maybe step one is teaching my teenagers how to do their own laundry. Yes, it may make you emotionally uncomfortable, hence the name of my podcast. And you're going to go, they're not going to do it right. They're dah, dah, dah. They're going to screw up my, they're going to use too much soap there. Yes. And then what are they going to do when they leave the house and they, you know, might have partners in the future. 

[00:18:19] Heather: What are they like? These are life skills. So it may take you a month to quote unquote, train them to do their own laundry. This is where you, now you're learning boundaries. Now you're learning other life skills and you, I can hear people already, Heather, I tried that. I don't have time for that. 

[00:18:38] Heather: You get to keep what you defend. 

[00:18:41] Heather: if you are going to defend that you don't have time, 

[00:18:45] Heather: then you get to keep what you defend. So you get to keep your overwhelm, but you have to get radically honest with yourself. Is the reason why I don't want to offload, and I'm just using the laundry as an example, because it actually allows me to still create a little bit of connection or control with my children. 

[00:19:05] Heather: I don't want to let it go because then I have to feel something. If I actually do have more space in my life, I'm scared that I don't know what I'm going to fill it with. 

[00:19:16] Megan: Or maybe it's guilt of like, well, I should be doing it. So, yeah. 

[00:19:21] Heather: There's so much there. And my point is we start pouring into our cups more of how we want to feel. And so I'm going to give you a practical example. Post diagnosis, I started this process and wouldn't it be nice if, and I put, I could go to a cafe by myself. And I was still breastfeeding at the time. My youngest 

[00:19:43] Heather: now  

[00:19:44] Megan: think every mother has that dream. Wouldn't it be nice if I could just go run an errand alone with a warm cup of coffee, right? 

[00:19:50] Megan: And I can remember like dreaming about, I just want to stroll target at Christmas by myself 

[00:19:54] Heather: Yes. And 

[00:19:56] Megan: of coffee. 

[00:19:56] Heather: I did this. I went to the cafe. Okay. I brought the journal. This was way before Instagram was what it was today. So I wasn't thinking I need to take a picture and post it, make my life look perfect. I sat there and again, I opened my journal and I started crying and I cried and cried and cried and people were walking in. 

[00:20:20] Heather: This is a, this was a local cafe to me and I was seeing all these people that I knew and they're like, are you okay? And I was like, It's the first time I've like left the house without my infant. And I thought this is not in alignment with how I wanted to feel. I wanted to feel spacious. And I realized in that moment, if I wanted to feel spacious, I had to feel what was already in my cup and what was already in my cup, what was already inside of me was so much guilt. 

[00:20:53] Heather: And that if I wanted to make space for more space, I had to feel the guilt while I kept pouring into that cup. And so I kept chipping away. I kept asking myself, like, what do alive looking people do? What a happy people do. I remember seeing people walking down the street and I'm like, in my mind, I'm like, that's boring. 

[00:21:15] Heather: Why would people walk? They should be running. This is like, you know, you go, people are like, I can't sit down. I can't. And I was, I was one of those people. And I was like, this is so boring. Why would people walk? And I'm like, just. Just start Heather, just do it for 10 minutes. And I remember going on that walk and putting it on the calendar because it was in alignment with how I wanted to feel. 

[00:21:36] Heather: And all I felt was. emotional discomfort. I couldn't even name what I was feeling and I just kept chipping away, chipping away. And I started to feel lighter and lighter and lighter. And so this is the energy management piece that if 

[00:21:54] Heather: I am headed in one Current, like if I'm going in one direction and I'm creating this current in my life of overwhelming chaos and exhaustion and control panic and anxiety, and I want to change that. 

[00:22:10] Heather: I have to slowly try to. Go in the opposite direction to create a different conversation, a different current. And it, it gets a little bit bigger before it kind of starts to slow down. But that was, that was my journey of realizing that there has to be another way, because clearly what I'm doing is not working.  

[00:22:33] Megan: I can't thank you enough for sharing that because I think there's so, in the world we live in right now of, you know, Amazon Prime, instant gratification You sharing that you finally created this space for yourself and yet it you cried your way through it And it wasn't a oh, so I just started going to a cafe once a week for 10 minutes and everything felt better Instantly, right? 

[00:22:57] Megan: I think  

[00:22:58] Heather: trust people that say that when they're like, Oh, this is the three easy steps. And I'm 

[00:23:03] Megan: Just self care take a bath and you will you know, wash the world away and everything will be great The, I feel that the, longer our time has been of, of being disconnected from how we want to feel and, and, and the life that we want to live. And I'm not talking the actions, but the inside, right? The longer it may take to get to it. 

[00:23:26] Megan: Once we start that journey, this, there isn't an overnight, just do this one thing and you'll suddenly know how you want to spend your time and you will feel ease and you will feel light. You know, I still feel like I'm, I'm a work in progress with that. And when I had, you know, my, my breaking point 12 ish years ago, I probably cried more in the first five years when I just realized this isn't sustainable anymore. 

[00:23:50] Megan: Even though I was in motion, like I probably cried more in those five years and I have my entire life combined, but I think that was part of the making space, getting rid of, making space to, to be able to, like you said, I love that you brought up just going for a walk. I used to think walking was stupid as well. 

[00:24:06] Megan: I'm like, run, don't walk. I walk more than I run now and I love it. And I never in a million years thought I'd be a person that said I like walking. And I hadn't put that connection until you just shared that now. I don't think I, years ago, was not in energy alignment. To truly enjoy that. 

[00:24:25] Heather: yeah, cause you see, you see it on the news. Instagram all the time. Someone's like entering perimetopause or menopause woman in your forties. Okay. These are the three things you need to do every day. And if you're not doing those things, instant shame, right? You're  

[00:24:41] Heather: like,  

[00:24:41] Megan: now you've got one more to do list item that now just feels even, you know, great, now I gotta add all of that in, you know. And Yeah, 

[00:24:48] Heather: yeah. So I respect the people that are like lean in. 

[00:24:51] Heather: Cause I attract a lot of people who are like, okay, I'm done. My life is not sustainable. I'm like, okay, what got you here is not going to get you to the next level. So you are most likely an overachiever. You are most likely operating at a lack of sustainability. 

[00:25:07] Heather: And I will never, ever, ever forget when I was in recovery, you know, they're like, you're in remission, you're good now. And I'm like, I feel like I'm in a hundred year old body. Like I have to get back and they just kind of dropped me there. They're like, good luck. And I went to the gym, had a personal trainer and he's like, slow down, stop. 

[00:25:27] Heather: Like, I need you to operate at a 70%. I was like,  

[00:25:30] Megan: Why? 

[00:25:31] Megan: Why? Who does 

[00:25:32] Megan: that? Like, that's not successful, right? 

[00:25:34] Megan: That's not  

[00:25:34] Heather: I'm like, I need to die in the gym. And he's like, yeah. And you're not going to, you're not going to, your body can't handle it. You're not going to stick through. And so that was such a life lesson for me. So I'm like, if I'm operating consistently at a 70%, that is success because it's like the tortoise and the hare. 

[00:25:53] Heather: And we are just not taught that 

[00:25:55] Megan: And it's your definition of 70%, which is probably what a sustainable 100 percent is, right? It's just the  

[00:26:02] Heather: That's  

[00:26:02] Megan: percent was a 130, which doesn't work. Oh man, I could just, Oh, I could talk to you forever. Heather. I've had a lot of aha moments just in our conversation that I know I need to take a step back and think about in my own life. 

[00:26:17] Megan: I'm definitely encourage. everybody listening to go through the, wouldn't it be nice if I've kind of got the chills here. Cause when this episode is airing, it's going to be right, kind of at the start of a new year. Like this is another great reflection exercise. I think to challenge all of us for the year. 

[00:26:34] Megan: So if, if folks want to connect with you, learn more about what you do, how they can continue to work with you, where is the best place for them to do that?  

[00:26:44] Heather: Yeah. 

[00:26:45] Heather: So go to the podcast, Emotionally Uncomfortable. I talk a lot about this. I'm huge on parenting. I'm all about sustainable living, whether it's at home or in your work. And if you go to my name, Heather Chauvinx, C H A U V I N dot com forward slash time. I dive a little bit deeper into this energetic time management process. 

[00:27:07] Heather: I'll give you a video and a PDF you can follow. So you can start chipping away. 

[00:27:12] Megan: And we'll have all the links to that in the show notes and, and friends, you can see why I wanted to have Heather on. I always take a much more pragmatic approach to how I'm thinking about time, but the marriage of this energy concept in with now, how do we physically make that work? 

[00:27:30] Megan: Like I, I'm really excited to learn so much more about this. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you for giving us your precious time today. I really appreciate it.