Latest / Pathological Positivity / Everyone Has a Clock—But No One Has Time – Episode #701
Transcript
- This is Live On Purpose Radio episode 701. Everyone has a clock, but no one has time. Now is the only time to create and live the life you love. I'm doctor Paul Jenkins, the positivity psychologist. My job is to connect you to powerful positive psychology principles that immediately upgrade your relationships, business, and mental health. Are you ready? Let's jump in. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Live On Purpose Radio. This is doctor Paul, the shrink who expands your life with another episode of Live On Purpose Radio. Let's talk about time today. What if the problem isn't that you don't have enough time, but the time is running you? I just returned a couple of days ago from the beautiful Maasai Mara in the country of Kenya, which is in Africa. And life moves to a very different rhythm there. With no clocks or calendars in sight, people still get done what matters the most without the stress that's so common in our fast paced culture. Let's dig into how we may be manufacturing more pressure than necessary and why worry is the misuse of imagination. I... I'm feeling it. You know, I came back from Kenya just a couple of days ago, and this is my second visit. My daughter is the one that turned me on to this. This was a fifth visit for Lindy, my daughter, and she was actually one of our trip leads. We took 18 people with us to this particular excursion, and we were working with the Maasai people who have a very different rhythm to their life. Now these people build their homes out of sticks and mud, and it's plastered together, mixed up with cow dung to create a mixture that they use for the plaster of their homes. It's surprisingly durable. And this is what we might consider a very primitive lifestyle. What I observed there was a different feel, a different rhythm to life. And in one of our wrap up meetings with the team that we took, one young man stated, you know, everybody's got clocks, but nobody has time. And that's where this episode was born. You own a clock, don't let it own you. In our culture, clocks and calendars seem to dominate our lives. So somebody asks us if we can do something, and we immediately go to our calendar. I did this. A couple of years ago, I was involved in a training where I became very interested in the part two that was available. I didn't even know there was a part two when I jumped in. But I discovered during the part one that there is a part two. Well, I'm interested. And I found out that it was going to be happening during a week when I had twelve twelve to 15 clients already scheduled. I had a keynote that I was delivering for a group of business leaders, a little lunch keynote that I was scheduled to give, and I had been subpoenaed as an expert witness in a child custody case where I was custody case where I was the key witness. I actually did the child custody evaluation for this particular family, and the court hearing was scheduled during that week. And not only that, it was my son's eighteenth birthday. So as I looked at my calendar, I had the reaction that many of us do. I can't go. I don't have the time. My coach at the time really helped me to reframe this. When she asked, Paul, if this were your mother's funeral, would you attend? And she got me with that question. And thankfully, my mom is still alive and well. I got to visit with her this morning for a few minutes. She just turned 83. And happy birthday, mom. But if she had passed away and if that week were the week of her funeral, I would have moved everything else and gone to honor her life and to be with my family. Now this opened up my eyes to something. My calendar works for me, not the other way around. My calendar is not the boss I am. And this is true of our watches and our clocks too. It's so interesting to me. Anytime somebody says I don't have time, it's always a lie. And I know I'm stating that very strongly, but just consider this. Everybody has time. In fact, we all have exactly the same amount of time. And the way we measure it, it's twenty four hours, seven days a week. Three hundred and sixty five days a year. Everybody has the same amount. The differing factor is how we choose to spend it. And by the way, you can't save time. I don't know where you'd keep it. You can only spend it. So as you decide how you're going to spend it, the activities that you choose to use your time on. If it's somebody asks you, Hey, can you go to lunch with me on Thursday? And you say, I'm sorry, I don't have the time. That's a lie. What you're really saying is there are other things that I value more than going to lunch with you on Thursday. But that sounds really rude, so we use time as an excuse. We tend to blame our clocks and our calendars for the choices that we make about how we prioritize the use of our time. So going back to my story, I decided with the help of my coach that I was committed to attend part two of that training. Well, if I'm committed, I simply handle the considerations because I had already committed my time to some other things. 12 to 15 clients, a lunch keynote, my son's eighteenth birthday, a court appearance. And so those are the considerations I get to handle if I'm really committed. Now if you're interested, that's one thing. But if you're committed, it will show up on your calendar because your calendar works for you. And it'll show up on your bank account too because usually you have to invest in what you're truly committed to. So I handled the considerations. And I won't bother you with the whole story about how I handled each of those. But, the hit... Let me share one example, though, because I was subpoenaed to court. Have you ever received a subpoena? It's interesting how they're worded. It says... In this case, it said the state of Utah sends you greetings and commands you to appear. Okay. It's a very strong invitation. Right? Subpoenas require a response. And if you do not properly respond to a subpoena, the sheriff can show up and take you down to the county bed and breakfast. You get locked up. It's against the law to defy the orders of subpoena. So anyway, how do you how do you handle that consideration? Well, I called the attorney who subpoenaed me. Somebody from the attorney general's office, I think. And, and they said, well, you have to come. You've been subpoenaed. I said, I know. And yet, I'm not available at that time. I have another commitment that I'll be attending. And, so the the attorney said, well, you're gonna have to take that up with the court. And I said, okay. So next I called the court, and I got the judge on the phone. What... Actually, it was the clerk for the judge. And I said, I'm really sorry. I am not available at the time of that hearing. And the clerk said, no problem. We'll reschedule and send a notice to all the attorneys. And I'm like, well, that was easy. See, we get it in our heads sometimes. Well, I can't. It's not that we can't. It's that we get to handle the considerations. You know, one of the things that I noticed as I was in Africa just last week, we fabricate a lot of things in our culture. They they don't so much in the Maasai culture. They live off of the land. They have a very natural rhythm to everything that happens there. We sometimes manufacture stress just like we manufacture time. When basic needs like water, food, and shelter are the focus, life simplifies. There is nothing more important than establishing safety and nutrition and hydration, and that's what these people work on on a daily basis. That's what some of the projects that we were helping them with with our team in Kenya. In developed cultures, we have our needs met. I mean, the basic ones. Right? But often, we feel more stressed. Now why is this? Just like we manufacture watches, we also manufacture stress. I love the ways Dan Zadra put this. He said, worry is the misuse of imagination. Much of our stress comes from future based thinking. I mean, think about it. If you're worried about something, has it happened already? No. And do you know exactly what's gonna happen? No. But you've got a really great imagination and your imagination kicks in and manufactures for you the what ifs. You know, what if this happens? What if that happens? Then you play it out in your mind and you get to feel stressed now because of the misuse of your imagination. This future based thinking is always imaginary. Wait. Let me say that again. Future based thinking is always imaginary because you don't know what's going to happen. So you're busy imagining it, fabricating your stress. We sometimes try to control the timing and the outcomes. What if we trusted ourselves to handle things as they come instead of worrying about them in advance? And that brings me to another aspect of this that I would just love to share with you. Life in rhythm, not rush. The Maasai rhythm looks like getting up when the sun does and resting when it's dark. They don't pay attention to the clock. It it doesn't even make sense to ask, well, what time are we doing this or that? Well, if we're doing something, it's probably daytime. Right? I mean, that seems obvious. We've invented clocks to make it more convenient to correlate our activities with other humans. When you live in a tight community like the Maasai people do, you have a a method of communication that works every bit as well and in a lot of ways better than the ones that we've devised through the manufacture of artificial time pressure. There's a phrase in Swahili and the Maasai people learn Swahili in school, Swahili in English, in addition to their, tribal language of Ma. And the Swahili phrase is Hakuna Matata. This is familiar to a lot of people because of the lion king where that phrase... There's a song about Hakuna Matata and it means no worries, very literally. This doesn't mean irresponsibility. It means alignment. Being present. Responding instead of acting. Because believe me, the Maasai people have problems. And what I mean, I've stuck into a couple of teenagers, and they were enjoying practicing their English with me. And I said, so what kind of problems do you guys deal with? And they said, what do you mean? And I said, like, what comes up for you that you have to deal with? You have to solve it somehow in order to keep moving forward? And they said, oh, you mean like hyenas? See, because hyenas are a problem. If their herd of goats is being attacked by a hyena, that's a problem. And they get to deal with it right then, in the moment. And they said, also elephants. We have to protect our gardens. And one of the projects we were working with them on was, garden towers. These are amazing. They they can support up to a 120 plants in the space that normally would support about seven to 10 plants and uses a third of the water. This is a game changer. And and the space is an issue because any space where they're gardening has to be protected from the elephants. Elephants wreak all kinds of havoc on a garden. And so they have to be in this tightly protected area. And these are some of the problems these boys were talking to me about. At at some point I asked them, well, what questions do you have for me? And they paused for a minute and they said, do you have a ball? And I had to... I did a little bit of a double take. It's like, wait. What? What do you mean do I have a ball? And they said, like, do you own a ball? Like a soccer ball. And it really brought the perspective home for me. The... They were wondering, are there people on this planet who actually own a ball? They have to make their own. They they make it with old wadded up fabric that they tightly bind with cords. And it forms a fairly effective ball, but it's not the kind of balls that we are used to playing with. What does it mean to have no worries? Hakuna matata. It doesn't mean no problems. It means that we respond instead of acting. So there's a contrast here. Rush, urgency, time pressure, disconnection versus rhythm, presence, trust, intention. What would it look like to live more in rhythm and less in rush? So you don't need to throw away your watch or your calendar. They are very useful tools that we have manufactured. Please keep that in mind. You can reclaim authority over how you use them. I'm very conscious of this right now because I've only been home for a few days. And I've chosen several times to just leave my watch on a shelf somewhere. The way I've structured my practice, I have appointments with people. And so they expect me at a certain time. And I'm happy to roll with that. But I really am rethinking, who's in charge here? Does my watch boss me around, or am I in charge? My watch, my calendar, they work for me, not the other way around. So one small shift, make time. Choose to spend time intentionally on what matters most. I think we can also release any unnecessary worry. Trust your ability to respond. Just a a side note about that. I know psychologically that worry, anxiety is always based in a common question. And the the question is, what if? The question isn't really even the problem, it's the answer. Because subconsciously when we ask what if, what if this happens, what if that happens, what if I don't get the thing, what if I don't accomplish, what if I fail, all those what ifs, the subconscious answer, the default answer is, oh, that would be terrible, horrible, awful, no good, very bad. I cannot handle that. I can't handle it. What would happen if you believed that you could handle anything? What if you were to trust your ability to respond to actually at absolutely anything that comes up for you? And you've got a really good track record. Check it out. You have already handled everything so far your entire life. Why would that ever change? Trust your ability to respond. Maybe the goal here isn't to have more time. I don't think that's even possible. I think that just is what it is. But maybe the goal is instead to live more fully and more intentionally in the time that we already have. Are you ready to join me? Everyone has a clock, but no one seems to have the time. Let's change that up. You've heard it. It's time to apply it. Let's go live on purpose. Did you get what you came for? Give yourself the gift of taking real action on what you realized today. Please share this episode with someone you know would value it, and leave us a rating too. It's time now to live on purpose.