Episode 22: The Currency of Time

The most precious thing we have is time. What will you do with yours?

Transcript

We are often reminded of the concept of time… at least here in the United States… at two particular times during the year. We recently ‘sprang forward’ to honor the antiquated practice of Daylight Savings Time. That means, we technically lost the hour that we gained last fall… when the clocks jumped ahead on March 12th at 2:00 in the morning. The reality is that we didn’t gain or lose anything… but it certainly feels like that in our bodies. It’s common to hear people lament about the extra hour they lost in sleep, because they’d gotten used to things being a certain way… to TIME being a certain way… and now they’ve been forced to change.

It has been said that we value least, the thing we believe to be the most abundant. There is perhaps no better example than how so many of us choose to view and treat the concept of time. It’s especially clear when we are younger… because we believe that it’s the one thing that we have the most of. So we make decisions without regard for things like time… and it’s often not until we’re much older that reflect on the magnitude of those decisions.

When that reflection happens, it often comes with regret. And instead of pivoting into new and more efficient ways to value our time… we might get mired in that regret and waste even more time. It can be challenging to extricate yourself from such a spiral, but it is possible. The first thing you have to remember is that the time… no matter how much of it you used in a less than ideal situation… is already gone. And it might not be a good idea to waste even more of it lamenting about a thing that is firmly a part of your past. You can take real steps to move forward and consciously value the time you actually have, instead of wasting more of it by fretting about what you no longer have.

There are five ways in which many of us commonly waste time over the long term:

1.     Relationships that don’t serve us

2.     Employment situations that are detrimental to our health and wellness

3.     Fear of the unknown

4.     Concern about how we appear to others

5.     Delaying our gratification for the sake of another

Although this list does not apply in every situation, it can be associated with millions of humans who regret spending time on something that either led to a detrimental quality of life… or did not matter at all. And while we can never get that time back, it’s possible to move forward in a way that allows you to shed that cloak of regret, and consciously choose to stop wasting time.

STEP ONE: Start where you are.

This is one of the toughest steps simply because it’s the first. It can be tough to stop all the chatter in your mind, step away from those feelings of regret, and firmly stand in the space where you now find yourself. It sometimes takes declaring OUT LOUD that this is the place where you are, and there’s nothing you can do about the places you’ve been up to this point. It is what it is.

Let’s use the example of a relationship that doesn’t serve you. It doesn’t have to be a romantic relationship, although those can truly be the toughest to assess objectively. When we’re in detrimental relationships, we can often spend most of that time just hoping that the bad stuff passes so that we can bask in the temporary sparks of goodness. Because the reality is that – extremes aside – most relationships aren’t all bad all of the time. They may even start out good and eventually spiral into something detrimental. And it’s often that positive beginning that has so many people holding on… and wasting time… hoping that things will take a turn and be good again.

Meanwhile, time is passing… and the space between your positive past and your negative present is getting wider by the moment. It might feel impossible to stand still and take a good hard look at where you are in this moment in time. But if you are ever to break the cycle of wasting time, it has to be done.

So start where you are. It might not look pretty, but it will help you understand what is happening right now, and help you move onto the next step to reclaim what is left of your time.

STEP TWO: Make a decision

This step might be just as tough as the first one. Because even if you take the time to assess where you are, you might still get hit with that wave of regret and find yourself unable to move past those feelings. 

And please know that making a decision can go either way. Some people make the decision to stay right where they are. They say: I already put in so much time, that I don’t want to walk away from this relationship… even if it’s mostly detrimental. This can be true of relationships of a personal nature… and even of a professional nature. There are countless humans who stay at jobs that are literally killing them because they’ve already invested (notice that I said invested… because who is going to admit that they actually wasted) X amount of time at said job, and they might as well simply stick it out and retire. The reasoning usually follows along the lines of: I’ll have all of the time in world when I retire, so I’ll just work for now and worry about it then.

You might think that an opinion would be inserted at this time, instructing a person who is close to retirement to chuck it all and walk away. Nope. It’s important that any decision made about how you choose to invest, spend, or waste your time… come solely and absolutely from you. No one can tell you how to use the time that you’ve been given in this body… in this life. So if you choose to make a decision –whether that decision is to stay where you are or move toward something new – let that decision be yours. Because if it’s not, you may once again find yourself lamenting about the time you spent at the direction of someone else… doing something that is not authentic to what you truly need in this life.

STEP THREE: Have a plan to follow through

It’s not good enough to just make a decision about what you’re going to do with your remaining time. You have to actually make a plan to follow through. And while this may seem pretty straightforward in something like a relationship that doesn’t serve you or a job that you have, it can be a  lot tougher when you’re dealing with truly unknown variables.

Millions of people waste time in a space of indecision and paralysis, simply because they afraid of facing the unknown. When there are too many ‘what ifs’ and variables of that nature, the response may simply be to freeze in the hopes that time will freeze with you while you try to figure it out. This of course is not true. Time will continue to pass, even as you avoid making a decision one way or the other about how to proceed in any given situation.

The reality is that you can still make a plan, even when you’re not clear on what is most likely to happen in any given circumstance. Heads of state and leaders of industry do it all the time. And as millions of us have witnessed: sometimes it’s a good decision… and sometimes it absolutely is not. The point is that someone made a decision, and hopefully had a plan to follow through. None of us can know everything, and even if we plan down to the last detail… things can still go sideways. There are no guarantees.

The only guarantee you have is that time will continue to pass. So it’s up to you to decide what to do, and to make the best plan (and maybe a few hundred backup plans) about how to spend that time. One of the best ways to do that is to START WHERE YOU ARE. 

You see what just happened. 

Everything is connected.

Moving on…

STEP FOUR: Don’t look back

This is a tough one as well, because once we make that decision and that plan, we think that everything is going to fall into place and we’ll be able to do all the things that we set out to do. This, of course, is rarely the case. The stars rarely align and everything rarely goes according to plan. More often than not, things go sideways. And it gets VERY TEMPTING to look back at what we had…. even if it wasn’t the best place that we came from… and fall right back into that cycle of regret and wasting time.

So when that happens, pause and take a deep breath. Then go back to step one: START WHERE YOU ARE. You’ll find that you’ll need to repeat these steps again and again… and not always necessarily in the same order. Such is the nature of life. If we have learned nothing else, we’ve learned that the lives we lead are not exactly linear, especially if we’ve kept in mind any sort of goal or destination. 

In life, we do the best we can with the information we have. And as we progress and learn more, the hope is that we apply that knowledge and either pivot or continue to evolve in a way that helps us reach our highest and our healthiest potential. You cannot know the outcome. And no matter how much you plan, you cannot predict that things will go the way you want them to. So no matter what happens, show yourself grace. Give yourself the space to try, the space to fail, and the space get up and try again. And again. And again.

STEP FIVE: Take your time

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: this woman just did a whole ass podcast on valuing time, and now she’s telling me to take more of it to save some of it? Yes. Yes I am. 

Because something else can happen when you make a plan and it goes sideways and you find yourself back at square one. You might feel the need to RUSH because you feel like you’re losing time. This is especially true if we’ve spent time doing something in a public way – where we feel that we can be judged because we are concerned about the opinions of others. 

Let’s say you’ve made this big deal about quitting a relationship or your job or something… and things went sideways in a very public way. Let’s say in the beginning you had a ton of public support - (this is especially true for those of you who live your lives out loud on social media) – but as things went sideways, that support started to wane. And now you’ve found yourself in the very uncomfortable place of having to admit that things didn’t work out the way you planned.

That can be a very uncomfortable place to occupy. And maybe, because of this discomfort, you attempt to either rush back to the place you used to be… or rush to pivot in a new direction in the hopes that either no one will notice or they’ll get over it.

Both decisions can lead to… what did we talk about? Regret. And there’s a very good chance that regret can be avoided if you take the time to move in the best way that is beneficial for YOU. Not for those who’s opinions you’ve wasted time valuing… for whatever reason. Take the time you need to make the moves you want. Because trying to do things simply based on the opinions of others is a phenomenal waste of the one thing you are working so hard to reclaim: your time.

So pause.

Start where you are.

Make a decision based on where you are.

Make a plan based on that decision.

And don’t look back… UNLESS and ONLY if it is to take into consideration the lessons that you learned – so that you don’t repeat the same mistakes and end up wasting … what? More time.

Time is one of those things whose value is not known or appreciated until it has either been taken from us, or we find ourselves nearly out of it. As we age, we come to realize that no amount of anything we think we value: money, fame, power… ever made up for a second of time. We come to understand that time is the most valuable commodity… and if it is squandered, it may never be recovered.

Guard your time. Protect your peace. Become fierce and convicted about how you spend it, and with whom you spend it. Know that it is the most precious thing you have access to. Honor it… and in doing so… honor yourself.