I am a big advocate for managing your time but you must not allow yourself to be governed by time in every situation. Today, I discuss how you can experience joy in each and every moment when you don't allow time to dictate in every situation.

You can click the play button on the audio below or read the transcript which I have copied beneath it.

How to experience more joy in each and every moment - Transcript

[00:00:00] Hi, it's Carthage here  from Live Your True Story with another quick tip for you.

[00:00:04] This morning, I woke up, I got out of bed. I did my Zazen meditation. I showered and all that stuff.  Then I went downstairs, made a nice big cup of coffee in my travel mug. I like to keep it in my travel mug even when at home because it keeps my coffee warm. And then I sat down to read.

[00:00:23] And as I began to read this strange thought entered my mind and that thought was, I am going to read for one coffee. I am going to read for one coffee.

[00:00:38] Now that seems like a strange thought because normally I would measure how long I'm going to read for in time.  I do read every day, sometimes multiple times a day. Whenever I get a chance I love to read as it's a chance to educate myself, but I find that when I do measure my reading time in actual time, I feel a bit more rushed. The focus becomes about quantity as I try to get as much read as I can in the time that I have.

[00:01:10] What I really want to be doing is, I want to be enjoying reading for the sake of reading and absorbing the educational content that the book presents. For example, today I'm reading a book on spirituality by Dan Millman, and I'm trying to take in the key lessons of that book. And I know that if I read it slower, take my time and enjoy it, I will absorb it better.

[00:01:34] So this morning I didn't care how long the coffee took. I didn't care how long the reading took. I just wanted to enjoy both. So I decided that however long that coffee took was that the length of time that I was going to read for. Nothing complicated about that. And I have to say it, I thoroughly enjoyed it..

[00:01:58] It was really,really nice reading. I feel like I absorbed more of the content and of course I really enjoyed the coffee too. So I started to think about where else in my life I can apply that kind of principle.

[00:02:14] I have been terrible throughout my life at thinking about what's coming next. Instead of focusing on what I'm doing right now. I have not been giving my full time and attention to the tasks I'm working on or to the people I'm spending time with.  I'm talking to one person right now, but I'm thinking about what needs to be said to somebody else later on. And that's also not fair on the person I'm speaking with. It's not fair on the person that I'm doing work for.

[00:02:44] So I want to focus on the here and now because that's all I really have. I just find that when we focus solely on time, it becomes about quantity and getting everything we can get done done. And we start to think in terms of appointments and what's next.

[00:03:02] Whatever you have this evening might never happened because unfortunately something tragic could happen or something positive could happen that leads you to move in a different direction. So the only time you're sure of is here and now. All you know is that you are here right now with the opportunity to make the most of this moment. So make the most of this moment.

[00:03:24] Time management is important, but it's not important in every aspect of life. So here's some examples for you. Could you imagine if you chatted with your friend for however long lunch took? So if lunch lasted half an hour; fair enough. If it lasted an hour and a half, that's an hour and a halfs worth of conversation if you didn't try and squeeze that lunch with your friend into a narrow period of time where you were strictly limited.

[00:03:51] Could you imagine how much better your relationship would be with your partner if you listened for as long as you needed to listen for as  long as they needed you to listen in order for them to be able to describe what happened and how they're feeling about it?

[00:04:10] Can you imagine how much more joy you would get from your relationship with your child if that bedtime story lasted for as long as it needed to last in order for you to read it properly so that they got the maximum joy from listening to that story?

[00:04:25] They are just some simple examples where instead of measuring things with time, you can measure things by how long you actually need to do it and just do it, do it to the best of your ability and allow it to flow naturally.

[00:04:41] I think that if we did that more often, this word would be a little bit better and a little bit richer for it. We would have much better relationships and we would get more joy from each and every moment.

[00:04:53] That's just my thought for today. I leave it to you to think about it.

[00:04:58] Chat you soon