Time, is an interesting thing. We cannot touch it, feel it, smell it, or taste it, but it is there, in the back of our minds. Moment to moment we hear the faint sound, a tick tock that drives our lives in positive and negative ways. We are its slave as well as its master.  We both love it, and hate it.  You can say our relationship with Time is life’s biggest dichotomy.

Can you hear it? Tick tock tick tock, with every second that goes by there is another opportunity to hear something, to feel something, to remember something or to do something.

As time rushes by it can be something amazing or something devastating, depending on what you allow to consume your tick tocks.

Is it worry about the future… or is it looking toward the future?

Is it filled with confusion… or does each tick tock fill with clarity?

Do you feel older… or does age become meaningless?

As the time goes by to do you dread its passing… or do you revel in its glory?

How do you feel from tick to tock?

What do you do from tick to tock?

Many people don’t feel they have enough time because they are overwhelmed with the sense that time is going by to quickly… especially when they are trying to get something accomplished and feel squeezed for time.

When you think back to yesterday, it feels as if it went by in a flash.  If you think about today, it too will seem like it is going by in a flash.

The more squeezed you are for time, the quicker it seems to go by! 

Tick tock, tick tock can you hear it… there it is again.

It is already March 2007, where has the time gone? Hours flow into days, days flow into weeks, weeks into months.

Many people ask me how to manage their time more effectively. The first thing I say is slow it down to a manageable level in your mind!

If you have a sense that time is going by too quickly for you, then it will be very difficult to manage. It’s like trying to change the sparkplugs on a car that is already moving.  The very thing that makes the engine go cannot be modified while it is moving…  

Tick tock, tick tock… tick tock… listen to it differently now.

Your mind has an amazing ability to help you or destroy you.  If you don’t manage and run it on your own it will more than likely default to destroy mode. If you let it run off unsupervised your life will go by so quickly you will be twice the age you are now and you won’t even realize it.  You will say things like – where has the time gone, time goes by faster when your older.

How to slow down your perception of time

You need to slow down your perception of time to feel that there is enough time for everything you want to accomplish.

Slow down your tick tocks by thinking of time in smaller increments.

Instead of thinking what you will do in a full day, think about what you will do in the next 3 hours and nothing past that. Take this further and think about what you will do in the next 30 minutes and nothing past that. To really slow down the perception of time only think about what you are going to do in the next 10 seconds and NOTHING PAST THAT.

When you decide to perceive your day in smaller increments of time, you are effectively slowing down how you “PERCEIVE” your time. Consequently, when you have a different perception, things change automatically.

The way you think of your time changes the way you feel about it.  For example, these two statements have very different thoughts and feelings associated with them.

1)      “What 3 tasks am I going to do in the next 5 minutes?”

2)      “I ONLY HAVE 5 minutes.”

Same amount of time – different way of stating it and you feel very different when you state in one way versus the other.

To get a better sense of control of what goes on in your life slow down by thinking about your time in small increments. The smaller the increment, the slower the time goes by. Can you imagine what life would feel like if you think of it going by 1 second at a time instead of 1 month at a time?

Think about it now. Think about your day second by second. Think about it going by at the same rate and speed that you would hear the second hand of a clock, tick tock … tick tock…. tick tock… Pay attention to the seconds that go by rather than the hours days weeks, months, years.

When you slow down your day mentally this way you remove that rush rush rush, I can’t keep up with everything feeling. You gain a greater sense of control, and that sense of control allows you to manage your time better!

Every day is a new opportunity to create more opportunity. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could think about it as if every second is another second to create another opportunity? How much more inviting is that thought?

Tick… tock… tick… tock… tick… tock… tick … tock… tick… tock…. tick … tock
Ahhh… now doesn’t that feel better?

Till next time!

Warmly,
Stephan Stavrakis

PS: Do you believe you're as amazing as I do?