I recently read The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks. In the final chapter, Gay talks about taking ownership of time. He says that we are the producers of time. We can create as much time or as little time we want. He cites examples to support his thesis which made a lot of sense to me. I know I have experienced “time flying when I am having fun” and time has certainly dragging on when I am doing something that I don’t really want to do. But to bring awareness to this and actually take ownership of it was mind-blowing so, I put it to the test.I flew out for the holidays on December 23rd. As we drove up to the drop-off location I could not believe my eyes. The lines to check your baggage were the longest I had ever seen. After assessing which line was the shortest, something that only took moments since the line for a ticket agent seemed to wrap around like a line at Disney World, I parked myself and my baggage at the end of the Sky Cap line.
I stood there looking around. I could feel the buzzing energy around me. I could see the stressed out look on everyone’s faces when they got out of their cars and realized how long the lines were. I could hear the chatter: “My flight leaves in an hour, I’m never going to make it”, “What do you mean it’s too late to check my bag?”, “People don’t know they have to check their bags 45 min. prior to the flight boarding”, ‘I can’t believe this, I don’t have time for this!”.
At that moment I decided to change my relationship to time. I said to myself “I have plenty of time to make it to my flight” and I kept repeating that to myself if I noticed that I began getting nervous. I began trying to distract myself from “time”. I chatted a bit with the girl in front of me, I enjoyed the weather – it was a beautiful day, continued to do some people watching and finally pulled out a book and began to read. The line moved, slowly but surely. I kept repeating my mantra in my head. I made it to the front, checked my bag and proceeded to security. Another line…yikes! Ok, no problem. I have plenty of time to get to my flight. Made it through the first line at security, great, I have plenty of time. I took a moment and looked back at the people in line waiting to make it through. I recognized several people who were in front of me at the sky cap line. The very same people I heard chatting before about their lack of time.
Needless to say, I made it to my gate. I even had time to grab something to eat before the plane boarded.
Interesting…What is your relationship to time?
