Latest / Wanzology / Is There Really Such A Thing As Wasted Time
Transcript
- Is There Really Such A Thing As Wasted Time What you know, what you know, what you know about dat … Hey! What's happening? Welcome to another episode of WANZOLOGY, I am your host, The Wanz, and I have a very, very interesting proposition for y'all. First, lemme get these things out the way, I hope that you and yours are doing well, I hope that you are right sized and on the right side of the grass and if you're listening to this, half of that is true. So there, you're halfway there. This week I was thinking, is there any such thing as wasted time? As you know, time is a construct made by humans in order to organize their lives. So when people say, “Quit wasting my time.”, or, No, I didn't go, it would've been a waste of time.”, or something like that, what does that really mean? Wasting time. Is it possible to waste time? I think not. I think not because of an advertisement that I saw a couple summers ago. It was a sweatshirt, and printed on the sweatshirt was this phrase, “Either I win or I learn. I never lose.”, “Either I win or I learn. I never lose.”, and I thought that was extremely prophetic. I thought it was amazingly forward looking because, no matter what you experience, two things are going to happen, either you're going to learn something or what, what? Either you're gonna win or you're gonna learn something. You're not gonna lose. How would you like to leave your place in the morning knowing that there was no way you were going to lose during that day? There was no way that a bad thing was going to happen to you because you've already won or learned? What would that be like? I think that we humans don't give ourselves enough credit for what we put ourselves through and if you're going through hard times right now, I'm really sorry, but they're gonna end. And if you're going through really good times right now and nothing's wrong, you haven't got care in the world, awesome. Be careful because both those situations are temporary. Everything in a human's life is temporary, everything. So you may be riding high now. God only knows what's gonna happen to y'all, right? I love that series of lines from, uh, Grandmaster Flashes. The message came out in 1979 and man, the last verse is still cold as Arctic Winter: “A child is born with no state of mind, blind to the ways of mankind. God is smiling on you, but he's frowning too Because only God knows what you'll go through.” That's true. No matter how you slice it, that is true. So in your travels during the day, is there a situation that you were in? Might have been yesterday, maybe it was the day before, but it just felt like you were wasting time? Your time was being wasted. Not that you were intentionally wasting the time you were in a situation, a circumstance, if you will, that was not what you hoped it would be or what you planned. Was it a waste of your time? Were you wasting your time? Is there such a thing? Let's go back and apply that phrase, okay, “Either I win or I learn. I never lose.” So if you never lose, does that mean that you never waste time? Because there's a lesson in it one way or another. I'm a firm believer in every minute of every day is a possibility for myself (one word) to learn. If I'm paying attention, I can learn so many things in the course of a day. How about you? Can you always be learning? A student of your own life? I bet you could, but why would you? Well, that's easy. Knowledge is power, and the more you know, the more you can do. That's been my experience. Maybe your results will vary, but I can pretty much guarantee you, you didn't get to where you are, just by your good looks or your money or luck, you earned it. And if you're not where you wanna be, why not? What lesson did you miss? Where did you lose an opportunity or something? Either you won or you learned you never lost. I think the only way that you actually could lose is that if you don't have the result that you in your mind, thought you deserved to have and that is crazy! You're making stuff up in your head! Your head has nothing to do with reality, really, you're getting all the stimulus in from who knows where, hither and yawn, whatever, right? You're getting all these sights and sounds and smells and touches and all that stuff. Based on all that stuff, you make decisions and sometimes those decisions are not correct. And even if they are correct, they may not be the decision that you wanted to make at any particular time. Life is very circumstantial. The circumstance that you're in right now, it definitely won't be the same circumstance you're in tomorrow or in an hour from now. So when is it that you decided you actually lost something? Think about it. And if you find something, then you have to ask yourself, “Is that something I intended to happen? And if it didn't happen, why didn't it happen?”, there is your opportunity to learn. Either you win or you learn. Let's put it in toddler sense toddlers. I love babies that are learning how to walk. They teach us two things: number one, what just happened doesn't matter, and number two, what's gonna happen is all that matters. That's what toddlers teach us. When a baby is learning how to walk, they're unsure, they're out of balance. How do I actually move one leg and then the other, and how do I bend my ankle and how do I do all these things, there's mechanics involved, right? And they don't always get it right, and sometimes they fall backwards and sit on their little diaper and sometimes they fall forward and they fall into things, accidents, right? They're learning just like we all are. So for a toddler, if you were let go by one of your parents or an adult and you're walking to another one, and your arms are kind of not in front of you, not behind you, not beside you, they're just kind of out there and you're just trying to put one foot next, not really in front of the other, but you kind of got that waddle going where you're swinging from side to side like a, an abominable snowman or something, and you make it all the way to that other person and everybody's happy, “Yay!! Good job! Yeah…”. What happened? What happened all the times before that moment when you were on your feet, you learned, you learned what not to do. I've said it many, many, many, many times, and I'll say it again: “We don't learn how to walk, we just learn how not to fall down as much anymore.”, that's been my experience. There are still times when I, for no good reason, lose my balance and fall down. Oops. Well, what happened before that happened? Oh, well, I was doing this. Okay, let's be a little more careful if we ever do that again, so that we don't fall down. Just like when we were toddlers. Don't grab onto this it's a blanket! When you pull on it, it'll just come off, It won't hold you up! Boom! “Oh, little baby, go, boom!”. What is a waste of time? What is it? I don't really know. I just know what it's not. I don't think wasting time is actually a ‘thing’ I don't believe. Any of our time on this earth is wasted. Something is always going on, and some of us pay attention to all those things, some of us don't. There are people who get all these opportunities, or at least it appears they get all these opportunities and other people don't. Two or three decisions can be the difference between landing your first big deal at work, being able to sign the note on a house or losing your job and ending up in a tent in the bushes on the streets. No one really ever thinks about that until they're there. Then it's the Talking Heads song, “You may ask yourself, how did I get here?”, ell, your best thinking got you there. What did you learn? I love asking people that. They go through a circumstance where they feel like they failed, and I ask them, “What did you learn?”, sometimes they don't know. And then I try to take 'em through the paces. If you've tried and failed before, what did you do different when you were successful,? H ow many tries did you get until you were successful? It doesn't matter what it is, it could be washing the dishes, could be vacuuming, could be pulling out of the driveway. Either you are gonna win or you're gonna learn, you'll never lose. How do you apply that statement to your life? I don't know. You are who you are and you can do whatever you want to, it's your life. All I'm doing is asking to consider the fact that things are happening and you may not see them the same way I do, that's all. That's all this podcast is ever about I have my own way of looking at the simplest of things because they're not that simple. This is no different. I don't believe that there has ever been something in my life called wasted time. Every second that I've been alive has been time ‘used’ for something. I can't pinpoint every second of every minute of every hour in my life, but I do know I've learned a lot and I'm not that bright, but I have learned a lot. I did so by going back over where I did not succeed. That's where the lesson is. Some of you may remember the phrase, “If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.”, is that a waste of time? If you're in a chat with a friend who is bound and determined not to do what they should do because they don't think they can, and you being their friend, are trying to convince them that they have the power, the privilege, and the ability to be successful. Is it a waste of time trying to convince them? Is it a waste of time that you took a left turn, then a right turn? You went straight for a number of blocks, took another left turn, and it was a dead end. So how you got to the dead end, was that a waste of time? What about if you have to be somewhere and you're waiting for your ride, be it a taxi or a Lyft or an Uber. While you're waiting, is that a waste of time? I think not, because in all those situations that I just outlined, there are things happening you may or may not be aware of while you're in the midst of the process you're trying to complete, whether it be waiting for the Uber or whatever. I'll leave you with this. I am very curious about something I call ‘in the meantime’. Meantime, what is meantime? In the meantime means what am I doing while I'm waiting for the answer to whatever it is I'm trying to find or find out? In the meantime. In the morning, someone will say, “Have a nice day.”, well, how do you know you're gonna have a nice day? The day hasn't progressed long enough for you to really know. Now if they say, have a nice day and it's 1:00 PM or after four o'clock in the afternoon, well then you have a little more perspective, but usually, people say that in the morning, “Have a nice day.”, right? Like you really have a lot to do with that. Ah, but therein is the catch, because you do. Things aren't going right? You have the power and the privilege to start over. If you're aware that you have that power and the privilege, if things are going really great, fantastic. Don't waste it. How would you do that? By not giving yourself credit for reaching that point. It didn't just happen, you did stuff. Humans do not compliment themselves enough. They don't give themselves enough credit, starting here with ‘Patient Zero’. We all need to give ourselves credit because none of us, none of us, is truly wasting time. Any time that you are aware of can't be a waste because you're aware of it. Even if it's passed, you realize that it has, and then you recall what happened. All more input into your memory bank, which means you may have learned something, you may have won something, but you did not lose anything. Thank you so much for listening to me this week, I really, really appreciate it!! Has this podcast around. Tra-la-la la-la, yall!! Go on off and do your thing. Y'all take care of yourself and maybe, uh, maybe take care of somebody else, they might need it!! Chow Chow main!!