Have You Tried to Pass the Time Today?
By: Auriane Alix
Tags: Self-awareness, Self Improvement, Self, Time, Life

Have You Tried to Pass the Time Today?

What about yesterday? Here’s what that means.

Photo by RODOLFO BARRETO on Unsplash

Imagine you’re watching a movie. Comfortably seated on your couch, perhaps with ice cream or a huge cup of iced tea. You press play and start to relax as the first images appear on the screen. After a few minutes, you suddenly press the fast forward button.

Instead of 2 hours, the movie ends after 20 minutes. You haven’t understood the story, and you haven’t enjoyed your moment. You have no reason to do this, right? Looks like we’re doing it anyway, not with a movie, but with our lives.

I see you looking at the clock

When was the last time you did something and were amazed at what time it was once you were finished?

When was the last time you didn’t see time go by?

At some point in my life, I realized that I couldn’t remember the last time it happened. When, on top of that, I found out that everything I was doing was almost solely to pass the time, I thought that there was a problem somewhere.

I kept working because I didn’t know what else to do. I was scrolling through social media in an endless quest for nothing because I needed a break from work and didn’t know what else to do. I was constantly checking my e-mails waiting for a distraction to come. I waited for meal times not because I was very hungry, but because it was a break from having to fill my time.

In short, I would look at the clock and think about how to fill the time gaps before one event or another. All this unconsciously.

It is only now that I am no longer doing all of this that I realize the magnitude of the problem. And that I realize how much my life has changed, and how much I prefer it now.

Now that I’m not bored anymore.

Do you recognize yourself in some of the patterns I mentioned earlier? If so, here’s what it could mean.

Enjoy your time instead of trying to get rid of it

If you are constantly or often trying to pass the time, this implies that you don’t want to be in the moment you’re in now That this moment does not suit you. You are not interested in it.

Source: waitbutwhy.com

This is an average human life. Each dot represents a month. Remember how fast a month can go by? This image slaps me in the face every time I see it. Because it makes something visible. Something that everyone knows but few people grasp.

Our time is limited.

So, what will you do with your tiny handful of months? Take them and throw them out the window?

Constantly trying to pass the time is a strong sign that something is wrong with the way you spend your time. It’s annoying, but it’s not a big deal. All you need to do is refocus your life.

Refocus your life around the things that put you in a state of flow.

Now that you’ve found the elephant in the room, all you have to do is analyze the situation.

Identify the things you don’t like about your life; Describe in writing a perfect ordinary day; Get out of your box, and find new things to do. Start a project, learn something new, get out more, meet more people, hang out more with your friends. Get out of your routine, so much so that you can’t remember what it was like before.

By doing so, you’re going to turn the whole thing upside down. It will allow you to break the routine, break your habits. You will then be free to choose only the things you like and put them together, leaving aside those that make you look at the clock.

One last thought…

Our time is limited. Not taking it and, worse, trying to get it through faster, is a huge waste.

The opposite of trying to make time go by is not seeing it go by. And there is only one moment when you can no longer see time passing: when you do something in alignment with yourself.

Break that pattern that doesn’t suit you, and rebuild a life you love. You’ll know when you’ve reached your goal: you’ll feel like you can no longer touch the ground.