Time is a funny thing, you just have it and the only thing you can do with it is spend it. You can’t store time, you can’t earn more time nor can you spend less of it. Each day you will spend 86,400 seconds. It is your decision where you spend it on.
Jay Shetty, a motivational speaker and vlogger, has made a nice video on this; challenging you to make choices and spend time wisely. While there are some remarks to be made on the video, the general message is clear and inspiring.
Let’s go over the video based on some of the best quotes.
Time
Time is free but it is priceless. You can’t own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep it, but you can spend it. And once it’s lost, you can never get it back.
This is a very important lesson: time simply is here for us to use. It costs nothing to use it. You can choose not to use it, but then it will be gone. Forever.
Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you can never get more time.
While it often doesn’t feel this way, it is very true. Of course, most of us are blessed with quite a long live, and plenty of time. So it feels like we can freely waste it. But in all reality, it is a scarce commodity.
Control
The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.
Ah, there is the bright side! We are in the driver’s seat. We can choose where to spend our time on.
Imagine you wake up every day with $86,400 in your bank account. And at the end of the night it’s all gone whether you spent it or not. And then the next day you get another $86,400. What would we do with it?
This is such a nice comparison. How would you feel about not spending the money to see it all disappear at the end of the day? Would you choose not to spend it? Of course, the next you will have the money again, but still… Think of all the nice things you could have had! Can you imagine being too lazy to spend it? Or just not in the mood? And yet with time, we take it so easily for granted…
It’s a choice
We think it’s people wasting our time but it’s really us giving them the permission to do that.
It’s always easy to put blame on others, and to sit back and complain about it. While so often we have a say in it. We can change the situation. Take matters into your own hands and change things for the better.
Inside all of us there are two voices – one voice that wants to uplift, to expand, to grow. And then there is the other voice – the voice that holds us back, makes us lazy, makes us complacent, that restricts us from our potential. Inside of us there’s this battle between the two voices. And guess which one wins? The one that we listen to the most.
Again, we always have a choice. It’s a choice to hold back, be lazy or complacent. We can choose not to make everything of life. Of course, none of us have the same potential. We are all different, we all have our own strengths. We all have different things that we love, that motivates us. Things we can never get enough of. But it is our own choice to go for them. To find them. To reach out to them.
Value
Life teaches us to make good use of time and time teaches us the value of life.
Time and value are intertwined. By spending time we can find out what we love – what is valuable to us. And we can acquire this value by spending time. But life is short. We don’t have endless time. We can make the most of our lives. We can make the most of this year. We can make the most of today.
Our workplace
But while Jay is focussing on our private lives mostly, the same holds true for our work lives. In our jobs we also always have limited time. And too much unclear or unnecessary stuff to do. Stuff that we don’t know the value of, or question the value of it.
So why are we doing this? Why don’t we focus on the valuable things? It is so much more satisfying to do things that are really worthwhile.