Control Your Life by Controlling Your Time

Let’s face the truth here, we have constructed a 24 hour per day, 365 day per year time system, however, this only seems to serve as a means to control our perception. Imagine the days without time constraints, without schedules, without a calendar, without the pressures of deadlines and without the need to justify our existence at a job. We have become a society obsessed with time, or the illusion of it, and we have been pushed to extremes to balance time, money, and our lives. I have only held one job in my life where my production was the measure of success, and not the amount of time I am required to be tethered to my desk, calendar, and phone. Imagine a world where we could all be measured by how much we produce and contribute to society, instead of how much time we have to dedicate to the marriage of employment. We spend more time chasing the almighty dollar, then we do on our own self development, then we do on the development of our children, then we do on the development of our community, or the development of our marriages and relationships.

Time is the only thing that is equal in all of humanity. So, when you say to someone, especially yourself, that you don’t have time, you’re not telling the truth. You have all the time there is!

We give the best of our energies, physical, mental, and spiritually to our jobs and our families get the leftovers. When we get home after being at work all day, toiling after someone else’s dreams and goals, we no longer have the energy to dedicate to those in our own homes. We cannot muster enough of ourselves to the fostering of our family structures and many of us see our homes become a dysfunctional and unharmonious environment. The sad part of this rat race is that we never really see or figure out what success looks like or feels like in the corporate world; the idea of success, in our current society, is an elusive goal that is very undefined and unachievable. We find that we are measuring ourselves, our goals, and our dreams against an idea of success that is not well defined. If we don’t know where we are going, we are probably not going to like where we are going to end up. We are not meant to just work, eat, consume, and die; we are meant for much more than society has constrained upon us.

It is very unrealistic to think that we could just not go to work and live on love; we all need to work to survive and provide for our families. However, if we are ruled by the calendar, the clock, and the schedule, then why don’t we schedule in time for the things that are really important for us? I have heard so many people tell me that they have no time to exercise, no time to meditate, no time to spend with their families, however, I would challenge that assumption. The bottom line with this argument is that, if something is important to you, then you will find the time; from my point of view, work then is the most important thing to most people. There are plenty of things that fill our day that could be eliminated or decreased in order to pay attention to more important things. In my house, we have eliminated cable television and all platforms that have movies and shows to watch. If you just cut out some of your screen time, you would suddenly find yourself with plenty of time to do other things that you swear cannot fit on your schedule. Since we are subject to the boundaries of our schedule, then I challenge you to put it to good use. You can always make more money, but you cannot get your time back, once time is gone, it is gone forever.

• I challenge you to add activities such as exercise, meditation and family time on your calendar.
• I challenge you to put up boundaries on screen time in your household.
• I challenge you to have a family dinner every night without cellphones, computers or tablets.
• I challenge you to actually have a conversation and interact with a real live human being each day.
• I challenge you to live life on purpose.
• I challenge you to be the change that you would like to see in the world.
• I challenge you to budget your energy and time each day.
• I challenge you to put up boundaries at your workplace, to ensure that you are not just another product of our weary workforce.
• I challenge you to make your family and relationships a priority.

The real challenge then becomes to challenge yourself and not settle for good enough. Your self-development is up to you; others can walk with you, but no one can walk the journey for you. Time can be your friend or your enemy. Time can heal you or hinder you. Time can be your master, or it can by your servant. Remember that this moment we have right now is all that is guaranteed. The past is gone, the future is not here yet, so what is left is this present time, this time that are experiencing right now. I challenge you to take control of your time and use it for your benefit, instead of using it to benefit the monetary monster that has been created. Become the master of your time, don’t let yourself become the servant of time, go through life on purpose instead of by accident. Don’t wait until you find yourself as an old person, wondering what you have done with all the time you were given. Time to take control of your life now!

Stay safe. Stay healthy. Serve others. And do what is right, not what is easy!