Time Well Spent

“Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.” — William Penn

Money loves speed. Wealth loves time. Poverty loves indecision.

Ooooch.

Two rather brutal truths.

Why are the simplest ideas always the hardest to live?

The unteachables.

The lessons that only seem to arrive after enough trial and error that we finally laugh at ourselves.

In my last post I highlighted that good things happen slowly, yet we almost always make knee-jerk financial decisions in reaction to opportunities or to avoid a perceived future pain. Money LOVES you to spend it quickly … Then you’ll spend your time chasing more of it, often without noticing you’ve traded meaningful moments for money-making ones.

Honestly, I don’t think we even realise we’re spending time most days. Yet it is questionably the most impulsive spending we do. Almost akin to the electric mountain bike purchase in the shopping cart on my browser.

The idea that the only truly finite resource we ever spend is time has captivated my professional life. It’s why I care so deeply about helping people create a life they enjoy today while also building wisely for tomorrow.

My heart genuinely aches for people who feel they’ve wasted time. Indecision breeds insecurity and, if wealth is really a feeling of wholeness, it creates both time poverty and financial poverty.

But lately I’ve been wrestling with something...In trying to become so intentional about spending our time, perhaps I’m accidentally sucking the joy out of it. Analysing every decision. Weighing every possibility. Turning good feelings into spreadsheets.

We’ve turned time or lifetime into another optimisation project. Another thing to get right. Another scorecard, so am I halting now .. Instead of creating a heavy structure of decision making around how to spend your time, what if the answer was beautifully simple?

Enjoy yourself a little more.

Every time you notice you’re not.

That feels like a far better investment.

What I’ve found most helpful is taking everything a lot less seriously. Not irresponsibly. Lightly.

I often picture the Laughing Buddha smiling at our wonderfully earnest attempts to figure life out.

Perhaps enlightenment isn’t finally getting the answer. Perhaps it’s realising life was never asking the question.

Zen masters have long delighted in cosmic jokes watching students search desperately for answers while life quietly carries on unfolding around them. Life is a river, it flows whether we understand it or not. Time just passes.

So perhaps… Get over it. Better still, appreciate the season you’re in.

I don’t need to know why everything happens.

I don’t need to predict every outcome before taking the next step.

I don’t need to understand why I exist.

I am because I am.

Life is unfolding here.

And awareness is the only place where time is ever truly experienced.

The older I get, and the more I look to the elders around me, full of energy, the far less willing I am to spend my finite attention on things that don’t deserve it (gossiping, complaining, justifying, comparing, trying to impress,other peoples opinions, rationalising).

One delicious by-product of growing older is becoming wonderfully careless. Not caring less about what matters.

Caring less about what doesn’t instead, I’ve become ridiculously fussy about what I entertain.

The thoughts

The feelings.

The company.

The conversations.

The complaints.

The experiences.

Because at the end of the day, the only person truly judging your experience...

is you.

On a green-light day, you’re bloody fabulous.

On a red-light day, you’re apparently failing at life.

Same life. Different thinking. Bless the mind. It tries so hard. Attention is the scarcest commodity we possess. Where we place it becomes the quality of our life. So perhaps true wealth isn’t squeezing every ounce of time from our days.

Perhaps it’s noticing when we’ve wandered away from ourselves.....and gently returning.

To joy, presence, to the people we love, to this beautiful season of life, to the delicious meal in front of you.

Laugh a little more, loosen your grip.I have decided to spend less time trying to use time perfectly and more time not caring how it is being used - just enjoying the life that’s already being lived.

Because time was never asking to be mastered. It was simply asking...

“Are you here?”