What if the world saw time differently? My job takes me into many different people's lives. From the mentally ill, the doctors you look up to, even the top 1% but the ones I am surprised most with are the average people. The average person is the one who really makes the world turn. But what makes someone extraordinary like the doctors, millionaires, billionaires, ya know the top people we look up too. And what keeps average people from joining what some call “The Elite.”
After many years of analyzing people, attempting to start important conversations, watching how people treat their peers, I’d like to think I have a good grasp on psychology. But then I start to wonder, do I really? Today I began to miss my old team from the hospital I worked at before The War Zone.
Though I miss a lot of them dearly since I made the transfer, I can honestly say only one of them cared to be extraordinary. This is something I questioned often.
The more I analyzed my past team the more conversations came into play. One in particular comes to mind.
He sat at a computer watching an MMA fight competition one every slow night at the hospital while I took the majority of the calls. We had it quite posh over there. If we were not on a call we had permission to do anything we wanted on the computer. Of course within reason, nothing inappropriate.
I sat down beside him for a bit and he began to talk about “what he wanted to do when he got older.” Mind you, he is in his late twenties or early thirties. He lights up as he explains that he wants to be a chiropractor. He literally talks about this for an hour. All the things they do, the help that they have provided him. You can tell my co-worker is passionate about this even behind his mask, his body language is displaying signs of actual happiness. In a year of knowing this particular co-worker, he never showed any enthusiasm for any other subject except maybe video games.
I hear this and immediately start coming up with ideas on how he can get the money to go to school. I became excited for him. Why? Because I love helping people and solving problems. I love pulling resources to find solutions. The more excited I got the more I realized he went back to his other planet. His body language goes back to emotionless and starts watching the fight again. After a few minutes I get lost in my own analytical mind. He stops me in the middle of my thoughts and says ‘I don’t have the time for it `. With no emotion at all. We went from excited passion to nothingness in a matter of seconds.
Baffled, I sat back in my chair. This fully grown man knows exactly what he wants to do, and has the perfect job to do it. Finally, I asked him “you have a job where you can literally do all of your assignments at work, when will there ever be a better time?”
“I don’t want to do that to my family,” he said. Still baffled, I don’t even have a response. Every second I worked there I was learning something, I was reading books, taking notes, listening to audible. When I left to come over to the War Zone I left smarter. I even thought about transferring back so that I could work on my online business during my working hours.
Why would someone sit and watch mindless movies instead of utilizing that time to do the things to progress them to be who they want to be.
The differences in the way we think, is fascinating don’t ya think? For me, I am focused on wealth creation, negotiating, the reason why people are the way they are, fitness, nutrition, helping others, how I can be better. This list goes on and on, it is never ending. I can literally pick any subject and learn about it. I have far more than a Bachelor's degree from my own self education. My co-workers watch stupid videos on YouTube or stay on facebook scrolling through mindless nothingness. Why? And what makes me different from them?
So back to the initial question I asked. What if everyone saw things differently and viewed time as a resource? And let's take this one step further…. That resource in which we call time, is the only resource we have access to that we will never get back. Every second gone… is just gone. Would this possibly change the way my co-workers spend their down time at work? Could one of them be another Einstein?
A few years ago I was helping my mother in her last days of her struggle with cancer. She wished to die sooner. She would wake up after sleeping for 48 hours straight and got upset when she realized she was still alive. She asked questions like “Did I die yet?” “Am I in Heaven?” My aunt and I would say “no, mom you are still here with us.” She would sigh a long grumble and go back to sleep. It was funny and heartbreaking all at the same time.
Several years before this I was in the same situation with my father. I was at his bedside. He died of heart complications but had the same symptoms as a cancer patient. He struggled for roughly a year before his body couldn’t take it anymore. He was the exact opposite. He wanted to live and he fought a hero's fight. Every second he was alive he was grateful.
How do you view time? And how does that view differ from the people around you? In this example my parents were married to each other for 20+ years, raised three children including adopting me but saw time as something completely different.
When we take into consideration the time span of our lives, it is incredibly short. We use terms such as “killing time” without even thinking of what we are truly telling ourselves. You don’t want to kill time, you want to utilize time. Afterall you will never get it back.
Money is just paper, oil is plentiful, water, metal, coltan…. You can always get more of it somewhere, somehow. That is what we have engineers for, they come up with all those ideas to give us the new updated versions of the Iphone or rubber for the tires on our cars. But time, time is the one thing that you can not engineer. So why waste it?
If everyone thought about it in this way, how many Elon Musks would we have in the world? Can you imagine? Stop and really imagine, what this world would be like if instead of only having the top 1 % and changing the number to the top 50% that utilize their time versus killing it? What could you accomplish? What inventions would be made? And how many people could make a difference?
Next time you are waiting for your ride or in line at the grocery store, stop the thought before it has a chance to creep in. How can you utilize that ten minutes to your advantage? Pick up a book, audible, find something on google to learn. You have the world at your fingertips and time is not on your side.