Time is your friend not the enemy!

So many people are constantly cursing time. Time is the enemy. I’m always running out of time. Those kids have too much time on their hands. What a waste of my time… the list goes on…

Time is a very powerful force in our reality. Essentially, it stops everything from happening all at once. It gives us spaces between events. It gives us purpose to build up motion, momentum. Without time, the process of our life would be immeasurable. Age would not matter and events would cease to exist: much like us.

Even looking a time as merely linear, (although there are schools of thought which would argue for it being more complex than that) the simplicity of time, gives us a boundary.

Imagine this scenario; you are the only thing in the universe. There is you, just floating around, then, suddenly a line is drawn; it is the ground. Suddenly, there is definition. There is something separate from yourself. You are now bound by gravity and are brought to the ground, and there is sky. Now take this example and apply it to time.

Time is like the line that is drawn. It acts as a grounding force, and as definition. Rather than events being all jumbled or occurring simultaneously, this would make any thought of your own, incomprehensible. How could you separate events let alone your consciousness from everyone else? Just like in the example above, what is the difference between yourself and the universe, or nothing, without anything else there to define you?

This line, a timeline, gives your consciousness, your existence a way of understanding itself. A way of separating itself from others, from the jumble of thoughts and parallels in a connected space. So really, rather than cursing time we should be praising it. And appreciating the wonder of it.

Even if you do appreciate time, this is not to say when the bus does run late you won’t get annoyed, or if being sick feels like an eternity of pain. Sometimes it feels like the good times are over in a flash, and sometimes that pay cheque does come early. Like anything in life, it has its good and bad moments. But, beyond what time delivers us, how can we make it work to our advantage?

Well, I’m no professional theorist (or not in the literary sense) however, I know that thoughts affect things. And what you think about, you create. Let us take a side step here to put some factors of life into context. There are few ways you can categorise your things in your life. On a SIMPLE level: who, what, where, when, why and how.’ Let us break it down in a simplified manner.

When, is obviously the factor of time. As we’re discussing. Although time overrides us in a general sense, we may chose to be somewhere at a certain point, or go to the show now, or in a hour, or whenever you like. Many factors affect when this event could take place. I shall return to this point later.

Without going into too much detail, Who, what, where is the context, the situation involved in that time. Who, could be myself, yourself, the cat in the room, the lovely lady on the magazine or the old man across the street. The millions of people affect our life directly or indirectly. What, is the goings on. The context. The parts. The ice-cream is what I’m about to eat. The chair I’m going to sit on. A professional I desire to be, say a doctor. Where, the place of any event. The football field, the corner shop I buy the ice-cream. These are the main things we have control over in our lives, and are at the front of our awareness.

The driving force behind acquiring or wanting these factors, or the Why, are the motivator; the reasons we go through time seeking out such things. Why I chose what ice-cream to by, why I chose where to buy it. Why I wanted it when I did. And beyond that, why, is also the key to the lessons we learn, and how we make sense of it all and to give it meaning.

How is our way of doing things. It gives us a way of planning to make things happen a certain way. And how, although we have some control over, is ultimately what you leave up to the universe.

So bringing this back to time, why did I just go through all of that. As I said, time affects things. And all of the types of things mentioned above. Our choices often involve the who, what and when. And there are many reasons why we want such things. It may be a simple thing, like wanting an ice-cream, now, from this place. But beyond something that is easily attainable and clearly obvious which direction you should take to acquire it, so many people use time as an excuse to not get what they want. Or, they see it as an obstacle. In the end, it is all an excuse.

How many people do you hear go, I wish I had the time to do such and such but I’m just too busy. And very rarely do people disagree. They simply go along with this notion. Yes time is a governing factor but it doesn’t have to be your master. You can make time work for you, yes you heard me!

Ok, so you want to go on a holiday to Bali for a week. The excuse list is as such: oh I can’t have time off work, I have to work more hours to be able to afford it etc etc… list another million excuses here. The universe and time reward commitment to an idea. Over time, the force behind this commitment grows stronger, until something has to come of it. The first and most simple step is this:

1. Make a date, a time, and write it down

Ok, this sounds so simple, but you’re never going to get to that holiday if you don’t try to set a date. So the holiday isn’t next week – I’m not being totally unrealistic. But giving yourself a point in time, a deadline, gives you something to work towards.

Now you’ve made the first step! What do you do?

1. Make an action, towards this goal, to build momentum

Go up to your boss, and set a date for say 6 months from now. Congratulations! Guess what you have just done!? You have made an action resulting in your goal becoming closer in time. You’ve given yourself time to make other smaller steps, to make this goal come to realisation! Giving yourself a limit or a deadline in time, acts as an anchor. It grounds your goal, to a point in time, so it gives you reason to make small steps towards this point on the horizon. Soon enough you will be sailing away on that cruise ship like you wanted. But not so fast, just remember, once you’ve made initial action

1. You must continue to make small steps along the way to reach your desired goal

Book the cruise ship. Work an extra hour a week to save up some spending money. Get your passport ready. Pack your suitcase, organise for your kids or pets to be looked after, get to the port and sail away. Now when you break it down, is it really that hard?

People get so lost in thinking about how complicated a scenario is as a whole, and forget to break it down into parts. Why leave everything to the last minute and be so stressed out? Time ALLOWS you stop everything from needing to be done all at once – if you have that option, why not take it?

Plan early, break it down into little segments. And this doesn’t just apply to the big things. It applies to all areas of life. Don’t wake up and go ‘I have so much cleaning to do!’ write a list. Decide what needs to be done now. Decide what can wait. The worst you can do is to do nothing. So don’t panic and then procrastinate. Make the most of a precious gift that has been given to you!

I will leave you with this notion for now, and give you time to practice this: later I will discuss perhaps some of the more abstract notions of time, and how intention, can affect outcomes, in ways you couldn’t imagine!

Plant trees with your kids. Lots of them!

When I was young and going through primary school I lived on a farm in North Eastern Victoria. We kept sheep and cattle and the odd crop of oats or lucerne. Half way through my time there my step father (owner of the farm) with the (monetary) support of a local environmental group decided to plant native saplings along each fence of each paddock. I hated this job, digging, planting, digging, constant watering, more digging. We spent weeks on end doing this and after planting I used to miss my other farm chores.

15 years later I revisited the farm. We had split the property into several smaller pieces and sold it off. As I drove up the long unsealed driveway the work I did so long ago was now a huge part of the farm. Tall thick foliage lined the wire fences separating each section of land, the now large trees were home to many bird species as well as providing shade to livestock. Looking at the distance I could see the other tree lines lining the horizon.

That experience taught me that everything you do makes a difference, be it positive or negative. The only factor is time. We’re all aware how our environment is degrading, do something about it, even if it doesn’t seem worth it. Plant more trees in your garden – natives are very water friendly. Compost your leftovers, trade in your car for an economical one. You don’t even have to step outside your comfort zone to help out, but if you want to there are plenty of groups that donate their time and money to give back to something that supports your amazing life!

Look to the Future, Not the Past!

Why are people concentrating so much on history? Especially in presentations.

Change is imminent, have the ability to learn from the past and quickly move on to adapt for the future.

Being from the military I am all too familiar with its obsession with history, namely in presentations and briefs. Almost ¼ of the time spent in most corporate presentations is where they have been and who is involved. This is outdated ‘ego feeding’ and is in need of a change.

Having said this history is somewhat important, we learn from mistakes and are becoming increasingly efficient at it. The time has come to learn quickly and incorporate the changes, not to dwell on them. If your company’s history delivers a point for change, use it in the body of the presentation, not the introduction. Example.

In 2006 shipping had a major problem with [loyalty/timings/marketing etc]. We identified this and are employing the following process for combating it.

If delivering a presentation to clients, perhaps you need to include proof of what your company has done. If this is the case, keep it sharp and focused on how you delivered the solution.

Tim’s Car Yard needed [xyz] to operate more efficiently. We allowed them to thrive by [abc].

This delivers a sharp, concise point which includes the history.

Carefully think about your target audience, how much attention would you give to a presenter’s whole speech if he or she droned on about his or her accomplishments for the first 15 minutes?