Feel Rushed? Try this

You Are Time - By Solomon • Issue #55 • View online

The following story is in The Big Leap by Dr. Gay Hendricks (Link to my podcast episode with him): A manhattan stockbroker was running late one morning and sprinted to catch the train to Wall Street. He was trying to balance a cup of coffee, a bagel, and his briefcase. Inside the subway he was “jammed in with the other riders on a crowded train.” As time ticked he looked at his watch “but couldn’t raise his arm because he was wedged in so tightly between people. He felt a wave of panic building because he couldn’t see what time it was or access how late he might be for his meeting.”

Have you ever felt similarly pressed for time? Whether it was work to get to, things to do or things to learn, sometimes there are so many things you either have to do, get to do, or want to do. Yet, due to the volume of activities it can feel like you’re squeezed and can’t do them all. It’s definitely doable in that there is enough time in the day, especially if you schedule a time for each activity, but how sustainable is that? More so, how exhausting is that?

Take a moment to consider how you have responded to situations like this in the past.

The manhattan broker applied what Dr. Hendricks calls “Einstein Time.” What did he do? In realizing his current approach of panic, he shifted his mindset, relaxed his body, and “focused on enjoying the moment in-spite his wedged state.” He closed his eyes and put his attention on being just where he was. Rather than anxiously assessing the time, he let the urge pass and arrived to work in a calm manner. To his surprise, he was not late at all and nobody was in the room yet. He sat down patiently waiting and “relished the at-ease feeling in his body.” People began to stream in with complaints about trains, coffee lines, and such that he too experienced. He just smiled.

Often the conception of time we adopt is skewed that, as Dr. Hendricks shares, we either feel there isn’t enough time or that there’s too much of it. This understanding of time is all based on an outmoded, Newtonian paradigm. In fact another name for it is called the clockwork universe characterized by its materialistic vision of isolated inert objects(matter) that interact in a linear cause and effect fashion. “The Newtonian paradigm,” Hendricks writes, “assumes there’s a scarcity of time, which leads to an uncomfortable feeling of time urgency.” In order to accomplish all the things on the to-do list, it could require lots of scheduling, time-management, rushing from one thing to another, and doing what it takes to get them checked off. However, Einstein time is the realization that “you are where time comes from.” Rather than viewing time as linear, it - meaning past and future - is all happening in the present moment. When a person truly embraces this tru