Life can’t be lived in the future. Instead
of running ahead of your life, slow down and get back in step.
It’s what you do with your time that frees
up more time and draws life into your world.
Are you doing what you’re doing right now better
than you have ever done it? Be truthful. Or is it just “as good as” or “good
enough”? The “good enough” stuff we do is not good enough for time warrior.
Life
can’t be lived in the future. Instead of running ahead of your life, slow down
and get back in step.
Do you want to succeed at something? Good
work right now will help you do that. Most people want to start by improving
how they “market” their services. Maybe a new website, or a better network of
affiliates. But most of the time that’s not where the answer lies.
The answer is in the work itself.
Let’s slow down, let’s write a better book,
preach a better sermon or build a better mousetrap, because that’s where the
magic is. That’s wher your secret leverage lies.
But how do you master mastery by slowing
down?
How do you master time thay way? Don’t you
fall behind?
No, because slowing down gets you in
harmony.
You’re not out of tune any longer.
Without slowing doen, you get way out ahead
of life itself. I’m only asking you to slow down to the speed of life. You want
to dance with life, not race out ahead of life.
Let’s
Slow down
People who race out ahead of life are
falling down on the dance floor. They are living in their own future, which is
where fear lives. But when you slow down to master this present moment, life
gets fearless.
For example, I was coaching a man I will
call Ben. Ben was excited because a large company had hired him to come in to
give them a 60-mintue talk. Ben couldn’t wait. The talk was on his calendar for
a month from now and he knew exactly what he was going to present. It was a
talk he had given many times before and he knew it would be a big hit.
So now that it was all set and on his
calendar, Ben was onto other things. Ben was spending his days racing around
mentally and physically trying to get other new business. He was answering
every call, checking email thirty times a day and living in a whirlwind of
chaos. Ben was always in his own future, so Ben was always anxiety ridden [as
all anxiety is about the future].
My job as Ben’s coach was simply to slow
him down.
Down to the speed of life itself. Because
life was on Ben’s side; he just couldn’t see it. He saw life as a giant
opponent. Something that needed to be won over.
Down
to the speed of life itself.
Once Ben relaxed and let himself take some
deep breaths, I asked him to go back to the client who had hired him for a
talk.
“What if someone passed a law,” I said to
Ben, “that said you could only have one client for a rest of your life and you
would have to make all your income from this one client, and this your client,
Ben. What would you do?”
Ben was silent. I could see he was
thinking.
I asked Ben to spend the rest of our
coaching session thinking about this one client. To slow everything down, as if
this client were the only thing that existed in his world.
I was teaching Ben to go non-linear… to be
a time warrior. The time warrior slows time to a standstill. Now there is no
time. Ultimate victory. There is only timeless, eternal presence. Or “now.”
Ben and I began to list the many other ways
he would love to serve that company. He wrote a list of people in the
company he wanted to go visit prior to his talk, to gather research on the many
problems and challenges Ben could help them with. Two weeks later Ben had converted
a $3,000 one-time speaking contract into a full year’s program with more than
twenty times that income.
Just by slowing down and applying
laser-like focus. That’s the only difference between the average man and the
warrior. The warrior has focus.
Remember that such focus cannot be frantic.
It has to be relaxed and slowed down.
Notice when you’re out on a boat and
someone points out something on the shoreline for you look at. If you strain
your eyes, trying to force your focus, you won’t see it. Only when you relax
and let the image come to you do you now see it clearly.
Most people think they are not inspired
because their project is not inherently inspiring. Therefore they
procrastinate. Or they just work on it sporadically. They don’t realize that if
they would slow down and do this project one slow step at a time – in a loving
and deeply anergetic way – inspiration might just appear. After the work
starts!
Now is the key
The time warrior steals from the future.
Then she pours her stolen gold – all of it – into the present moment. Like sand
out of a boot into a sand painting. She pours from the future into the present.
She embraces the present and increases her capacity for living. Only then can
the future truly be bright.
The
time warrior steals from the future. Then she pours her stolen gold – all of it
– into the present moment.
When I coach people who have small
businesses, or who are coaches or consultants, or who raise childrenn or lead
other people, I notice that their greatest opportunity for success is right in
front of them in the very next conversation they are about to have.
Yet they fly past that conversation, barely
tagging it like in a schoolyard game, racing to get to their “better” future.
When I recommend that they slow down it goes
against their inner anxiety – the anxiety that runs their lives – as they
strains so hard against their leash. The leash begins to choke them off and
they start to lose oxygen. At night, they don’t sleep, they just eventually
pass out.
No wonder no valid plans for the future can
be made. Those plans are all fear-based [invalid] because they want a “better”
world than the one that presents itself in this next conversstion, this world
of infinite opportunity.
