Time Management

So here you are, with obligations and responsibilities, and all is not well. You need to set it right but you don't know how. You want to recall the dreams of your youth, but you no longer dream them. Your youth is gone, and you can no longer plan to marry a billionaire. Or you did marry a billionaire, and having married for money, you now realize you are earning every penny of it. You don't have time to breathe, time to take a bath, or time to have a relaxing lunch.

Just because you are busy, does not mean you are doing anything. Left to its own devices, work expands to fill the time available. Time is our most valuable commodity. It cannot be expanded; we have only so much of it. Whether we are rich or poor, our days still consist of 24 hours. Time is the currency of real value, far more than money. Yet, here you are, always seeming to be out of time, always rushing, always late. You don't have TIME to smell the roses.

Like Playing Musical Chairs

In Fantasy Land, all the characters are aware of the value of Time. It almost seems like they play a game of musical chairs. In musical chairs, all the players walk around a circle, circling a set of chairs. When the music stops, they must get into a chair, or they are kicked out of the game. You never know when the music is going to stop, so all you can do is keep your eyes on the chairs, and listen carefully, so you can get to the chairs in time. There is always one less chair than there are players, so somebody loses in each round. That's what it's like with the things you like to do. There is always one less bit of time than there are things you would like to do with your time, so some activity is always losing out, and getting kicked aside, out of the game.

If, for example, one of your goals is to improve your skills at playing the piano, but you do not have time to practice because you have PTA meetings, soccer practices, book club, and quilting club scheduling up all your free time, then you clearly are choosing a different goal: social networking. You have to decide whether playing the piano is actually your goal, and whether you would give up social networking for it. You will have to prioritize your goals, and decide which is more important. Time is what Life is made of. Additionally, when you set goals, you have to consider all areas of your life: family, friends, career, finance, health, spirit, and personal fulfillment. Your goals must include balance, or your life will feel incomplete. That's why we consider setting goals and achieving balance together, as we contemplate the use of time.

The Impossible Dream

Remember that dream you had, back when you were 11 years old? The journey toward it begins with the first step in its direction. Your goals are the implementation plan to make your dreams come true. How can you know what the goals should be? How can you envision the end result and determine the steps required to get there? What if you don't even know what it takes to get to your dream? What if the dream is just impossible? More importantly, what if you still haven't figured out what it is?

What if your only goal is to get out of debt, lose weight, give your daughter a nice wedding, and take the grandchildren to the beach? What if your goal is to solve a health issue, settle a legal problem, or help a friend? These are critical issues, which need resolution. But are they goals worthy of a dream?

Now, maybe you are reading this at age 45, or age 60. Maybe it is no longer an option for you to realize your childhood dream of becoming a ballerina, a Senator, or a Marine. Perhaps your family obligations will prevent you from realizing your childhood dreams of traveling, becoming a ski bum, joining the circus, or dedicating your life to the church. However you came to be where you are now, the question is what to do next, not where did you go wrong. To have a happy and fulfilling life, free of worry, you must focus on the present and the future, not bemoan mistakes of the past.

Setting goals is the critical step to help you find your time. As the cheshire cat said to Alice in Wonderland, if you don't know where you want to go, it doesn't matter which path you take to get there. Deep in your hearth, though, you know it does matter which path you take. You must take the path that leads to your destiny. You may not reach your destiny, but your inner voice tells you you must at least be headed in its direction. The journey is every bit as important as the destination. So how do you set goals when you can't even dream a dream any more?

Well, I'm about to tell you something that may be a very unpopular notion. I'm going to tell you that the reason you can't reach your goals and don't have any time is unrelated to the facts about your goals and your time. Instead, it is related to your belief system about goals and time. This belief system colors your relationship to time, and distorts your responses and perceptions to what is happening to you.

The Meme Piece

I am about to say something that may trigger you to feel angry, or to suddenly feel tired. You may find that you instantly lose interest in reading this article, or accidentally click off the page. You may have this reaction because your mind may not want to hear what I am about to say. You have a defense mechanism inside which protects your consciousness from knowing certain things about yourself. These mechanisms are stored in your subconscious mind as programming. Your parents told you these things because they themselves were programmed with them, and felt compelled due to the nature of the programming, to pass the messages along to the next generation.

These messages include attitudes and behaviors which will keep you in your "place" in the social order. If you are born to the servant class, they will teach you to be a good servant. If you are born to the master class, they will teach you to maintain your master's position. (Note that I did not say they will teach you to be a good master.) The sets of behaviors and attitudes your parents teach you comprise the stereotypes of your "subculture", or tribe, and they cause you to behave in concert with the ethnic, or neighborhood, or religion, or region, or class, or family, or gang, into which you were born and raised. Once programmed with this set of "truths", or beliefs, or premises, about how the world works, you, as an adult, will have no more awareness that you are acting on what may be a flawed premise, or an imperfect "truth", than a fish has awareness that it is living in the water. You will so totally believe these premises that you will literally be unable to challenge them without an extraordinary effort to identify and overcome your internal programming. When these premises are pointed out to you by someone else, and identified as false, you will so violently reject the information, that you may shoot the messenger.

That's why I'm so reluctant to tell you about this right now. I don't want you to blame me. I didn't make this system up. I'm just the messenger.

These premises, which some in the field of evolutionary psychology have termed "memes," were taught to you as a child, and burrowed deeply into your subconscious mind. They live there, controlling your model of how the world works. You believe them so completely that you have no knowledge that there is anything to believe. You just think they are absolute facts, about which there can be no debate or controversy. These memes are the reason it is so difficult for the people of a Western Christian culture to understand people from an Eastern Muslim culture. Both groups of people care deeply about God and Family, yet they have stored such contradictory beliefs, or memes, about God and Family, that one cannot fathom what the other is thinking.

These memes inside of you are keeping you from identifying what is truly important to you. They are, literally, stealing your Time.

And Time, Benjamin Franklin told us, is what Life is made of.

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