“Time is relative; it's only worth depends upon what we do as it's passing” ~ Albert Einstien
Dear Reader,
Have you used time as an excuse? Go on be honest, how often do you say one of these:
I don't have time to do X
I ran out of time
There's not enough time in the day
I'll do that if I get enough time
Or some variation of the above. I know I have!
I read a book back in my early days as a coach called The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks that talked about the way we use time as an excuse.
Hendricks explains that we live in Newton's idea of time which is finite and has to be measured out. Time is money. Time is scare. Time drives us.
However, Einstien saw time as relative. It passes depending on our experience of it. "An hour with your beloved feels like a minute, and a minute on a hot stove feels like an hour."
Compare the two scenarios below:
You're in a traffic queue. You're tired. Maybe late for a meeting, maybe keen to get home, maybe the end of a long day. You're there for 15 minutes. It seems like an eternity. Red lights for miles in front of you. Grey rain hitting the windscreen. When will it ever end.
You're in a traffic queue. You're tired. You're loved one is sat in the passenger seat. A tune comes onto the radio you both love. You both sing along, music cranked up. Red lights in front of you remind you of the time you stole your first kiss. Romantic rain hits the windscreen. Please don't let it end.
You get the picture. The same 15 minutes have a totally different experience.
As we are in charge of our own experience it means that we can see time differently.
It also means that we stop making excuses for why we didn't do something and can get to the real reason.
Hendricks invites us to go on a Time Diet - my take on this is that the time diet made me more concious of the choices I'm making on a day to day basis.
So instead of blaming time (something out there that I'm not in control of) I can understand why I'm choosing to do one thing over another.
Recipe for a Time Diet
Notice how often you blame time for something. Just by becoming aware of the fact that you are doing that should change the way you see your choices.
Ask yourself what is the real reason for not doing something:
Did you prioritise something else
Did you prefer to do something else
Did you not want to do the original task
Consider what is stopping you for completing the original task
Remember this is not a blame exercise, it is an exercise in living life in a more intentional way. I've found that when I'm being clear to myself about what I'm willing to do and not willing to do I create the feeling of an abundance of time.
Hit reply to let me know how you get on with this experiment.
And here's a podcast for you where I talk about our addiction to knowing - apparently I made it to the hosts most popular list :)