Occasionally I meet somebody who says that s/he has enough money. I almost never meet anybody who says that s/he has enough time.
We all have the same 24 hours in the day. Some of us take on more responsibilities than others, and some of us waste more time than others. But virtually everybody who is goal-oriented, excited about living, and has a variety of interests inevitably winds up running out of time too often.
Nobody has yet been able to convince me that running out of time is not a part of the human condition. I’ve learned to accept that there are things that I want to do but won’t have time to accomplish. Part of my acceptance is an attempt at being mindful about the fact that I really don’t have the time to do some things, and being mindful about not using that fact as an excuse.
We all make choices, and those choices determine how we use our time. When we are experiencing insufficient time to do something, we are really saying that we have made the choice to commit our 24 hours of the day to something else – perhaps something related to our family or our or our friends or a job or a hobby or the mental health imperative of relaxing.
Let’s accept the fact that we can’t do everything that we want to do with the time that’s available to us, and then let’s fill our time with making positive choices of the type that help us to love, to learn, to advance in our career, and to develop into the person that we want to become.
Recognize that what we can’t do because of a lack of time is a product of choice. It’s too bad that we don’t have time to do more, but let’s take pride in the range of activities that fulfill our lives and inevitably limit us from doing more.
And guess what? If you don’t use lack of time as an excuse, and you get an opportunity that you really want to pursue, you will probably find the time.