We all get stuck in the cycle of self-limiting beliefs and procrastination from time to time, putting off that big, scary project as we wait for a moment that feels right. But what about when the moment doesn’t come? It’s not because the moment doesn’t exist; it’s because you haven’t found it yet. Get to know your personal golden hours—the times of day when you feel most energetic, courageous, and creative—so you can leverage your highest energy levels to do your hardest work with ease and flow.
Lost – yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever.
Horace Mann
Earlier this week, I posed a question to everyone in the Sketchbook Entrepreneur Masterclass: “What would you like to do, even though you’re terrified?”
This question tends to surface our biggest dreams and desires, pushing them to the front of our minds, right past our judging/censoring/buzz-killing limiting beliefs.
What comes up can surprise us, leaving us wondering, Where in the world did THAT come from?
Truth is, those dreams and desires have been with us for years, maybe a lifetime. We’ve simply been incredibly adept at ignoring them, suffocating them, and pushing them down, down, down like a trash compactor into the dark depths of our subconscious.
When we liberate those desires and air them out in full sunlight, we can shake with a strange combination of excitement and gripping fear.
That is, when we finally allow ourselves to see our true selves, it can initially be rather unnerving. We are relieved the secrets are revealed and yet are wondering if we have what it takes to act upon them.
I’ll cut to the chase right here: We have what it takes.
Why You Have What It Takes: Accessing Your Best Energy Levels
I am convinced that we can bring any dream within our reach if we understand our brains, how we are wired, and the rhythmic energy levels of thinking and creating that are unique to us.
On each clear day, we enjoy two golden hours—the hour after sunrise and the hour before sunset. During these windows, the sun casts a particular glowing, golden hue that can render the most stalwart cynic into a poetic soul lost for words, fixated in a trance of beauty.
It turns out there are daily golden hours for accessing our best energy levels—for doing our best thinking and our most creative work. These are also hours when our levels of intrinsic motivation can be at their peak. Hours when our courage is bolstered, and we have the fortitude for doing the big, scary things.
I call these windows of high energy levels our Creative Circadian Rhythm (CCR). Identifying what our unique CCR is can make the difference between a beige, unfulfilled life and a daily existence of what author Joseph Campbell would call the rapture of being alive.
I wrote about these magical time windows for accessing your best energy levels in my book, BUOYANT:
“Are you struggling to access your window of possibility, your deep connection to your creativity? If so, see if you can run a few experiments to determine when your optimal Creative Circadian Rhythm is…You might find that a much later window of time is when you hit your stride.
I’m a very different person and writer at 4:00 a.m. than I am at 1:30 p.m. Oddly, it feels as if I’m not even the same person when I attempt creative work outside of my magic hours. When I am in my zone before dawn, I can access a part of my creative brain that is not online to that degree at any other time during the day.
Further, my discipline to do deep and challenging work wanes as the day progresses. I begin each early morning with a topped-off tank of willingness, courage, and determination that propels me forward through times of uncertainty.
If we are willing to tolerate some initial discomfort in finding out where that zone of optimal creating is for us, we can ride the ethereal edges of access to a different world and enjoy a profoundly joyful state of flow.”
Learning When Your Daily Golden Hour Takes Place
Grab your journal right now and ask yourself what you would like to do even though you are terrified. Set a timer for 4 minutes and write quickly without censoring what comes up. Write in bulleted form, if needed. Capture your heart’s desires in all their glory.
Next, think about your daily routine and try to determine your CCR—the golden hours of your best energy levels, clearest thinking, and highest confidence. Typically, our CCR is approximately a 4-6 hour stretch of blissful focus and clarity. Some fortunate folks can enjoy two CCR windows, so explore if that is true of your energy levels.
Once you have determined your CCR, it is important to test it and experiment to see if your best energy levels are in fact when you believe them to be. For example, I used to think my CCR was from 5 am to 10 am or so. When I was writing my book and needed to get pages to my editor, I began getting up earlier to meet the deadlines.
What I discovered shocked me. The quality of my writing and my almost eery access to divine creativity was much higher at 4 am than 5. I continued to explore and experiment and found that my highest energy levels arrived from 3 am to about 9 am. My brain is on fire during these hours, and my tank of willingness to take bold action is off the charts.
(NOTE: I am not advocating that we all should follow my schedule; rather, I am pointing out that it is very important to test our assumptions and find what it true for us.)
Once you have determined and tested your CCR, lock it in and protect it. Do not squander your best energy levels.
Using Your Golden Hours: How to Make the Most Out of Your High Energy Levels
Use these hours to hatch plans and take action on making your dreams a reality. Set strategy. Write, create. Think through how to have that very hard conversation, make notes, and book it. Decide to face the things holding you back. Set new boundaries and declutter your life and business from anything or anyone that drains you.
Do not use these hours to scroll on social media, do administrative tasks, respond to emails, or do household chores. Save those tasks for later when you don’t need your best energy levels.
What we crave is within reach. When we get clear on how to champion and leverage our unique minds and energy levels, we can pull our desires and dreams right toward us.
Boldness requires a belief in possibilities. We can ignite our faith every single day, dipping into the vast reserves of our intuition and best brain power, and craft a life that takes our breath away.
