Many of us have a poor relationship with time. We seem to always never have enough time; time to play, to work, to spend time with our family or time for ourselves. So we start to see time as the enemy – it’s not our fault that we can’t do all of these things, if we had enough time, we would… there’s just never enough time.
There is no denying that time is a precious commodity. So it’s understable why we end up thinking this way. We have only a set amount in our own lifetime. The word is literally called lifetime! Everything in life is timed in one way or another and our urgency to meaningfully spend this limited time is not unwarranted.
Time is Not the Enemy, Our View of it is
But when we view time as the enemy, it only makes things worse.
We start to build a negative mindset around anything that is time-pressured. Unfortunately, everything in life is timed in one way or another.
We subconsciously enter a time-hating and time-fearing cycle where we see ourselves always competing against time. Things become less enjoyable and moments fly by us in an instant because we’re continually thinking about the clock ticking by, rather than the moment that is ticking by.
Time is not the enemy; our view of it is.
Before we came onto this earth, before we began what we know as our life, before we started to realise time was a measurement, before we started to schedule things… time was just simply ticking by. However we choose to view it, negatively or positively, time will simply continue to tick by.
Time is Our Partnership to Existing
Try to view time as a partner.
A partnership between our existence and a measurement of space to allow us to achieve all of the things we want to do in our lifetime.
If there isn’t enough time to do something, accept that time is giving us an opportunity to do another thing. Although there is a finite amount of time, realistically, there will be enough time if we choose to spend it wisely.
When we get caught up in chasing time or feeling like we don’t have enough time, we often make the mistake of trying to always be one step ahead. We plan, we think of the future, we reminisce about the past, we anticipate one thing after another, we do all of these things but we still feel like we run out of time. The missing element here is to appreciate time, take note of the present moment and to positively associate our experiences with time.
Whether we like it or not, time will always be there. The clock will never stop ticking but it depends how we want to look at it: an enemy that we’re always fighting against or do we use it to experience the fullness and joy of what life has to offer?
