Time is the only thing in life that is constant apart from change and yet they are irrevocably entwined. As each second ticks by our time on this planet gets shorter. None of us know when the clock is going to stop for us but I suspect if we did there would be a lot more people living their lives very differently.
What Do You Trade Your Time For?
Image if you were told that you have just a few days left to live. How would this change the way you use your time?
Would you fall in a heap and waste these days cursing your rotten luck and how unfair life is and being pissed off at the world? Or, would you simply just say “screw it” and spend every moment you had doing exactly what you wanted to do?
The reality is that relationships can come and go, money can come and go, friendships can come and go, and even your thoughts and feelings come and go, but once you have used up even a second of your precious time, it is gone forever!
You have 24 hours a day. No more, no less. The question is not how can you get more done in less time, or how can you get rid of your workload that is making you feel stressed and overwhelmed. The question is, are you living your life according to YOUR deepest values and desire,s or are you settling for a life of quiet desperation?
If you are trading your time for a difficult life then wouldn’t it make more sense to trade it in a different way? After all, that’s all we are ever doing, trading our time for something that we believe is of value to us, even if that value is pain and suffering.
Believe me I know what it’s like to be time poor as I once had a full time sales job while building a business on the side. I worked 12 to 14 hour days, 7 days a week just to keep up. This went on for 4 years. However, what I was trading my time for here was a plan.
The plan was to create a business that I could get paid a full time income while working from home and living anywhere in the world I choose. The plan worked. Did it happen exactly as I planned? Not even close. But the fact that I had a plan and never gave up on it was the secret to my success.
Now I only have to work one hour a day making more money in a month than most people do in a year. The point I am making here is that in order for you to feel like you are not wasting your time, you must have a vision of a better life… Otherwise, why bother?
The alternative is to just go through the motions of living each day while internally your spirit is getting sucked dry because there is seemingly no light at the end of the tunnel you find yourself in.
The Joy Of Being ‘In-Time’
When you spend time doing something for a purpose, or doing something you love or enjoy, then it requires so much less effort than if you hate what you are doing. Our body gets energy from things we are passionate about and drained by doing things that we force ourselves to do.
Have you ever noticed how quickly time passes by when you are happy and how slowly it goes when you aren’t? It’s not that there is any difference to the way time is ticking over, it’s just that the quality of your time determines how it feels.
It’s during those moments that you forget about time and are fully immersed in the joy of what you are doing that your mind and body comes fully alive. You senses get heightened, your mind gets clear and focused, and you have all the energy you need to enjoy what you are doing.
It’s simple really, the clock is ticking and none of us really know how much time we have left. The only question is how are you going to use the limited time you have left? Will it be wishing your life away as you pray for your work day to end so you can escape it again for a few more hours?
Or, will you wake up tomorrow and decide, “How do I really want to use my time today?” And then follow your heart without hesitation. The choice as always is totally up to you.
The Real Secret To Time Management
If you want to know the real secret to time management – it’s simply to enjoy as many of your moments as you can. If you have to ‘manage’ your time then you’re already playing a losing game because time doesn’t care what you do with it.
Do everything you can to get your life into a place where time doesn’t matter at all. I can recall when I first threw away my watch and decided that I would not let time rule my life anymore.
That included having to be anywhere at a certain ‘time’, no alarms to wake me up and certainly no rush to get anywhere. Instead I decided that now was the perfect time and that whenever I got up, or arrived somewhere was the right time for me.
I can’t tell you how freeing this was and how much fun I had. I still live this way to this date. But here’s the best part, I have since discovered that we all have an internal clock that helps to keep us functioning in a timely fashion.
All it takes to live by your internal clock is to acknowledge that it exists and then start to trust that it will always be there for you. It may take awhile before you can totally trust in it because you have to let go of the need to rely on external devices for it to become fully functional again.
However, it is well worth taking the time to re-discover this hidden treasure because you’ll never need an alarm clock, person, or device again to tell you how to manage your time.
