How Did it Get So Late So Soon?

How to Make Peace with Time

“Everything changed the day she figured out there was exactly enough time for the important things in her life.”
― Brian Andreas

There once was a woman who lived in Virginia. She felt constricted by the need to feel safe and secure. Her job and the projects she completed at that job (on time and on budget) were her security blankets. Her worth was tied to her work achievements and a steady paycheck.

But this did not make her feel happy.

Then one day, after recognizing that life is short (both her parents had died at relatively young ages), and after 18 months of planning, she quit her secure job and moved to a foreign country. She had no position lined up there and no real plan for what her life would look or how it would feel. She just knew she wanted to feel free.

Overseas, and out of her element and routine, she began to appreciate time and life in a new way. It was exhilarating. At first, she felt freed by her new life, but after some months, she felt that familiar urge to do, accomplish, and achieve. She missed the structure and routine of her past life. Without it, she felt aimless and untethered; the passing weeks and months became a reminder that time and her life were slipping away.

Not having accomplished much to speak of in her first six months (no job or job prospects and no clarity on what she wanted to do next), she asked herself, “Am I wasting my life?” She spent a big chunk of her first year abroad exploring and being, which were things she had not been taught to do or appreciate. The calendar became a constant reminder of the passage of time and how she might be frittering it away.

So she began to create projects and timelines and produce things. First, it was a weekly podcast, then a coaching program, and then her second book. These accomplishments delighted her temporarily, but she found herself at the mercy of her goals and the deadlines by which she set to complete them. She worked feverishly to achieve, and she was successful.

But in returning to her go go go nature, she had inadvertently over-corrected her situation. And she lost that spark she’d sought in moving abroad and which she had found in her initial months there.

Once again, something felt off about her new routine and life. Was she merely recreating what she’d had in Virginia (minus the steady paycheck)?

Then autumn of her second year abroad rolled around. The influence of the shorter, darker days compelled her to slow down, to take a breather. She let go of deadlines, time frames, and the new routines she had made for herself. And she got back to that feeling of freedom she’d experience during her first months abroad.

In this stillness, she got in touch with what she wanted to do and how she wanted to do it, looking to the journey as the reward and not the end goal or result. She began to focus less on time frames and outcomes and more on living in the moment.

And her energy changed. She came alive once again. She felt satisfied and safe despite the uncertainty that still lay ahead for her.

Then, suddenly it was December 12, 2019 and she thought, “How did it get so late so soon?” as Dr. Seuss had once questioned.

The end of a year was upon her. But not only that, the end of a decade was too!

Soon it would be the year 2020! She felt alarmed. Then, noticing the discomfort her anxiety created, she took a deep breath and allowed her new sense of being to wash over her.

“Time is on my side!” she mused, smiling with delight for what her future would hold.

What is your relationship with time? Are you racing against it? Are you trying to get too much done in too little time?

December and the activities of the holidays can create stress and convince us that we don’t have enough time, and that time is not on our side. But it is.

Click here to listen to Make Time Your Friend (chapter 15 from Live a Bold Life) and see for yourself!

Happy December! Happy Holidays! Happy Times!