The Behavior of Change

Life is short, you have more time than you think.

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“You have to choose in order to decide”

That’s something that I’ve realized recently which is kind of a mind fuck. Life is short, but you have more time than you need. What does that mean? It means that you don’t have to rush. It means that you can take your time. It means that while we know our time on this earth is finite, it doesn’t necessitate rushing through life to get everything done, lest we miss out on the most important moments.

This idea has been kind of a revelation to me in recent years. For the first 30+ years of my life, and my 20s to early 30s in particular, I’ve viewed time as the ultimate enemy. And with time always seeming to pass by without stopping, I predicated myself on squeezing the most out of each moment, each day, and each week. Going slow, taking a break, was a waste from my perspective. The old saying “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” was something that replayed often in my mind. It didn’t make sense to take my time. Not when we all knew the same thing. That one day we’d run out of time and be dead.

In recent years though I started to realize how this self-imposed pressure to always be busy and to eek out as much work as possible, was actually to my detriment. In my personal life, it meant overlooking important things that people I loved were trying to tell me. From a physical perspective, it meant multiple injuries. And from my professional life, it meant never being able to accomplish any of the big things I dreamed of, because I was too quick to move on before ever finishing.

I also realized how this rush to complete task after task often meant incorrectly completing a task the first time, which caused me to go back and have to redo it. Wasting more time than if I had just taken my time and paid attention on the first attempt.

On the one hand, time is always running out, and it creates this immense amount of pressure to get everything done before it’s too late. But on the other hand, if all we do is rush through life, then we miss out on life itself.

But perhaps the biggest revelation has been as I’ve been looking back over the last 6 years of my life. Over those 6 years I never gave myself a break. I never even contemplated completely checking out, or completely disconnecting. If I did for say a month, 2 months, 3 months, or maybe even a year, I would’ve wasted so much time that I could have been busy working. That I could have been busy accomplishing my goals.

Well, the reality is that I never took any long period of disconnection over the last 6 years. I’ve risen early, and gone to bed the same. I’ve worked hard during the time I was awake, and focused on all the things I wanted to accomplish. I mostly put aside the beautiful and fun parts of life, because I viewed them as a distraction. But as I sit here 6 years later I wonder how much of a difference it really would’ve made. If I had actually taken the extra time. Slowed down. Picked my head up and looked around. How much different would the position I find myself in right now be? My guess, not much. In fact, I’m convinced that I would be even further ahead.

I listened to poet David Whyte recently on the Tim Ferriss show. He said that most people are 4 - 5 years behind their true self. I think over the last 6 that’s where I’ve been. So, this idea of living the slow life to take in more, and catching up to myself, is something I plan on using now and in the future. 

Website Idea

A website dedicated to showing repeating headlines throughout history to show people that were just living the same shit over and over again. I just saw this headline “Meghan Trainor Says Lifting Weights Helped Her Shed Pounds and Boost Energy Levels” and it made me think of it. How many times have I seen this headline before just replaced with someone else’s name? How is this news……. Please someone smack me. 😩  

Parting thought

The next time you start thinking about what you don’t want to do, try thinking about what it is that you do want to do, and do that. But don’t do nothing.