I thought of an interesting post for today as a result of having three conversations, with three different people, who expressed the same challenge in their lives. “I DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH TIME…” As a result of these discussions, I began to think about the concept of time and how this is the only component of our lives in which everyone in the world is on the same playing field. People are born with different amounts of money, opportunities, physical appearances, friends, etc., but the one area that is exactly the same for each individual, regardless of where they live or who they associate with, is that we all have 86,400 seconds in each day and it is our CHOICE on how we spend them. Some of the common complaints that I hear from people who respond to various blog posts is that they do not have time for…

• Family
• Social life
• Exercise
• Themselves
• Reading
• Intimacy
• Sleep
• Eating healthy
• Etc.

Well, I think that the first question that we need to ask ourselves is “What is most important?” because our dilemma has nothing to do with time, but everything to do with how we prioritize our time. Remember, we are all on an even playing field when it comes to time so why do some people struggle with not having enough time for their family, while other people are challenged when it comes to getting enough sleep, and other people cannot find time in the day to exercise? There is actually a universal answer to this question, but the only way to derive the solution is if you choose to be honest with yourself and admit that we make time for the things that we want to make time to do; or in other words, we assign a higher value to certain activities than to others. With this being said,

How much time do you spend on Facebook, watching television, talking on the telephone, etc.?

I think that it is important that you realize that I do not have the “right” answer to this question. I do not have any expectations and I am certainly not judging you based on your response. But my intention is for you to be honest with yourself in order to determine if you are truly prioritizing in a way that will enable you to live a life that is congruent with your BRANDENTITY.

I have used a strategy for the past 4-5 years that has enabled me to become more effective and never feel the need to verbalize the six most overused words… “I DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH TIME…” The strategy is fairly simple, something that I am not claiming to have developed, but my hope is that as a result of reading this blog post, you are now looking at your world through a slightly different perspective, operating from a honest frame of mind, and prepared to take action so that tomorrow can be drastically different than today. The strategy is called My Wishes versus My Priorities, and the table below is an example of how I structure this approach into my life.

I encourage you to take however much time is necessary to perform a self analysis of your wishes and priorities. I firmly believe that results are born from a sense of awareness, and as long as you are honest with yourself, this list will provide you with a tool that will hold you accountable for turning your wishes into priorities. For example, let’s assume that you wish you had the time to exercise for an hour each day, but one of your priorities is to speak with your closest friends on the phone for an hour each day as well. It is obviously not possible to complete both activities, which will impede on your ability to become BRANDENTIFIED because an area of your life is currently not being fulfilled. A potential solution would be to compromise these activities and perform thirty minutes of each, which happens to be better than nothing, or to form a synergy amongst these hobbies by purchasing a headset so that you can talk on the phone and exercise simultaneously. This enables you to take an item from the wish side of the chart and convert it to a priority without affecting any other areas of your life. Another example might also have to do with the wish of exercise, but your priority to spend time with your children. The solution is simple because you can begin to perform physical activities together and once again move a wish to the right side of the chart. The point that I am stressing upon is that all of your wishes can become priorities if you “want it bad enough.” We do not need to compromise areas in our life and instead we can start to synergize. I welcome any of you who struggle with this concept to send me a question via the ASK JARED section of the site and I will provide you with my advice on how to convert wishes to priorities in your current situation.

But in the meantime, get started….

This is an interesting activity to participate in because I believe that it enables you to create criteria to live by on a daily basis. It provides you with a game plan and allows you to see what areas must be addressed for the purposes of prioritizing. I will not think any less of you if your priorities are Facebook, Dancing with the Stars, or American Idol, but I think it is important that you begin to own both your wishes and your priorities in order to avoid saying the six most overused words in our language, “I DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH TIME …”

What do you plan on making time for?

What does this mean to you? Please leave a comment.

Some pictures from Flickr.

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We are fourteen days away from 2010, and for some reason, (and I know that I am not the only person who feels this way), my intuition is telling me that something profound is going to take place this upcoming year. There are many groups of people who I am involved with for the purposes of masterminding and brainstorming, and the quantity and quality of ideas has reached new levels in the past few weeks. But with this being said, there is still something unsettling about this occurrence because every idea that was proposed is for next year. There was nothing even close to pertaining to ending this year STRONG and doing something that has never been done before. The reason I bring this to your attention is because I believe that almost everyone considers December to be a “write-off” month. We are consumed by holiday parties, New Year’s, vacations, gifts, and the one area which does not usually get the attention that it needs and deserves, is OURSELVES. Although I do not have research or science to back up this statement, I am going to share my philosophy, because I believe there are more things that are put off until next month during December than at any other time during the year. All of a sudden we get busy, and as a result of our “busyness,” we begin to postpone exercise, business deals, intimacy, and time for ourselves.

On December 1, 2009, I published a blog post entitled, The New Year Starts Right Now, and my rationale was to open your minds to taking ACTION today on any resolutions that would have been set for 2010. The reason I discussed this concept is because history is the best indicator for the future and resolutions do NOT work. We often propose these goals to ourselves in the beginning of December and do not take action for weeks. We lose impulse, we lose excitement, and we lose the drive to make a change.

I want to make one thing clear because this blog post has nothing to do with the New Year, and instead, has everything to do with living your life to its fullest potential; in which seconds, minutes, and hours are consistently recognized, as we realize that anything is possible when we choose to live in the now. I have discussed the concept of starting with the end in mind, which is a strategy that will benefit you when it comes to the manifestation of your resolutions, but what you must realize is that miracles will only take place when you are exhibiting present time consciousness and are immersed in each moment. When we are ALWAYS looking ahead to the next thing that we “have to do…” we fail to notice many of the wonders which are taking place today. If you truly want to have the 2010 that all of us believe it will be, then you MUST, and I repeat MUST, end your 2009 in way that you have never done before.

This needs to become part of your way of thinking because at 11:58pm on December 31, 2009, there is still a chance that miracles could take place in your world because miracles happen in seconds. Maybe you desire to find someone to share your life with, and as result of present time consciousness over the next few weeks, you find this individual. Maybe you yearn for a career transition in order to enable you to be in alignment with your purpose, and over the next two weeks, you connect with someone who can make this a reality. Maybe you desire to eliminate your depressed way of looking at the world because you realize that it is impeding your quality of life, and over the next few weeks, a revelation takes place and your perspective is shifted.

I can already predict what the skeptics are thinking because these examples might come across as something that would be considered fantasy, fictional, and unrealistic. I am sure that there will be people who disregard this blog post and do not allow it to become part of their existence over these next two weeks. But what I must proclaim once again is that this message has nothing to do with the New Year, nothing to do with the next two weeks, but rather everything to do with how you live you life on a daily basis. When we “write-off” time, as if it were an expense on our income statement for tax purposes, we lose seconds that will never come back.  This is the intent of this message because what I am here to tell you is that regardless of whether you have this awakening right now, and start living the next two weeks like never before, TIME is something that is more precious than any monetary unit you will come across over the course of your life. My suggestion for you is to allow this message to echo in your mind, and when you begin living in “tomorrows” moment, ask yourself this question in order to become conscious in the NOW:

What miracles am I missing this second?

What does this mean to you? Please leave a comment.

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We live in a world that is so focused on “saving a buck” that we are willing to waste precious time in the process. A perfect example of this, one that I guarantee everyone will be able to relate to, is filling your car with gas. As a country, we spend more time searching for a gas station that is offering a 5 cent discount then we focus on spending time developing ourselves. During a seminar where I spoke, I asked a gentleman sitting in the crowd, “How long are you willing to drive in order to find the “cheapest” gas?” His response was alarming, but probably consistent with the mainstream thought process because he said about ten minutes (five minutes each way). Realize that the difference between a gas station that is pumping gas for $3.00 per gallon and a gas station that is offering gas at $2.95 a gallon is about 80 cents for a 16 gallon tank. This means that ten minutes of your time is worth 80 cents, and if we were to compound this number in order to see your personal hourly wage, the amount would be an astonishing $4.80, substantially beneath minimum wage.

Now many of you might be thinking to yourselves that you would never even consider spending ten minutes of your time searching for gas, but this was simply an example, and I guarantee if you took the time to completely analyze your day, there are a few hours where you are paying yourself only $4.80. This might consist of the time that you spend in a supermarket trying to use every single coupon, or maybe the time that you spend arguing with your cell phone provider because of an unknown charge on your bill, or maybe this could consist of going to a grand opening of a store that is completely inconvenient to your geographic location, simply to get 10% off.

I do not necessarily think that we make these poor decisions because we are “cheap,” but I firmly believe that the underlying dilemma many people face is putting a value on their time, or in other words, their self worth. Let’s pretend I told you that I was going to pay for you to go to Fiji for one week and provide you with a $10,000 American Express Gift Card that would expire at the end of the week. I guarantee that 100% of you, myself included, would make sure there was absolutely no money left on the card at the end of the trip and you would have done everything your heart desired. Now, let’s relate this concept to time because in life we only have a finite number of seconds to live, and when it’s over, it’s over. We cannot preserve the seconds that we did not live to our fullest extent, and my belief is that far too many of us do not take advantage of life and what living is all about. We avoid risk in order to stay within our comfort zone; we fear change because we must face the unknown; and we would rather play it safe then jeopardize our current state. Well, let’s assume that you have one life to live, similarly to how you had one week to spend all of the money on the American Express Gift card. Would you live your life the same way that you would spend your money and hold nothing back? Why do we put a greater value on money then time because money will come and go in our lives, but time is something that is lost forever? Only you can answer these questions, but I encourage you to answer them honestly because the clearer you become with why you do, what you do, the closer you will get to establish your BRANDENTITY.

So, the next time you begin going on an adventure for the “cheapest” gas station, I encourage you to question yourself about the value you place on your time, and if 5 cents per gallon does not seem to compare with the price you associate with time that will be lost forever, then stop the search, just fill up the tank, and begin to realize that your time is far more valuable than “saving a buck!”

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Acknowledgements for the Picture from Flickr