Time Keeps on Ticking - Part I

I am all about trying to get my clients to run toward their passions. Notice I said "run", not "walk" or "crawl". There's a really big reason for that. Time is a wastin'! For most mid-lifers one of the overwhelming senses you are having is how "fast" time is moving all of a sudden. You say things like "9/11 was a decade ago?" "The kids are going back to school already?" or "Oh my God she is turning 9 this year???" Let's face it, the older we get the faster time seems to travel. We blink and we are 40. We fear what the next blink will bring with it. Well, if that is the case, what are we to take from that? What would someone who is consciously and intentionally trying to design a life of fulfillment, purpose and meaning take from the fact that time is moving very quickly? Here's what I think we have to take from it:

1) "Someday" is right now.

"Someday" is a killer. It kills dreams, hopes, experiences, relationships, businesses, and health. Take a moment to think about the things you put on "someday" in your youth that you now feel you are unable to do. . . . ever. You are lying to yourself if you think the things you are saying "someday" about now are any different.

2) Ultimately, the measure of your happiness and fulfillment is going to be how much of that time you spend doing what you love, and being with who you love.

Write down 5 things you absolutely love doing or would love to do. Now write a separate list of 5 things you believe you "have to do" but really don't "want to do". Take an hour. 60 minutes. Now imagine that one hour, spent three different ways, doing the things on each of your lists. So there are three options:

A) You spend 15 minutes doing the things on the "passion list" and 45 minutes on the "have to" list.

B) You spend 30 minutes doing the things on the "passion list" and 30 minutes on the "have to list".

C) You spend 45 minutes doing things on the "passion list" and 15 minutes on the "have to" list.

Well, which hour is best? It seems so logical and so simple that a fulfilling life is getting yourself to spend more time doing what you love. Yet, for the vast majority of people in this fast moving time in history, they are spending almost NO TIME in passions. Their entire life is living off of the "have to" list. That is a very dangerous place to live.

So here in part I we are defining the elements of fulfilling life. In summary they involve a few components:

1) The element of time

2) The element of passion

3) The element of obligation or "have to"


I don't live in fantasy land. I am well aware that you can't shirk off your "have to's". I hear thousands of collective "gremlins" shouting "but Joe, you don't know how much I have to do!!"

Yes. I do.

But you ask yourself honestly - If you continue to completely ignore your passions and loves in life just to meet your "to do list" will you look back on your life as one you were happy with? I am not asking you to disregard your children or stop paying your bills mind you. In fact, I'd like to think your children might just become one of the "passions" in your life and you may get to the point where you "pay your bills" with money you make from working in your passions!! THAT is the equation that makes a fulfilling and vibrant life.

Slowly, but surely, with a proper approach, you will fill your life minute by minute with passions. Your life will begin to revolve around what and who you love and there will become the moment of perfection - the point of intersection - the point that all truly fullfilling lives reach ultimately when YOUR "HAVE TO LIST" AND YOUR "PASSION LIST" ARE THE SAME!! At that intersection of obligation and passion is where the best hour in our example would be. A complete hour of passion. Extended out metaphorically, a complete life filled with passion. That is where we want to be. See that in your mind. Get that image. Its where you want to go. Feel what that would be like for a moment. Get the emotion that is going to drive you toward this vision. That is an unbelievable feeling isn't it? You get up every day when you choose to. You do what you want to do when you want to do it. Even at "work" you are doing something you would do for free. That's a fulfilling life. In future part of this series I will work on the details of how to get to this place. Until then, hold your focus on this vision of passion in your life from when you wake up to when you go to sleep.

"The ancestor to every action is a thought" - Ralph Waldo Emerson