Time

Happy Friday Friends!

I hope and trust this post finds you all having a great day as a glorious new opportunity begins to dawn in my Sweet Home Alabama! :) 

I doubt I will tell you anything you don't already know this morning. My hope is not to enlighten but rather to remind you, to encourage you and to, perhaps, share a new perspective with you.

I want to share a story with you that Silas Shotwell shared in Homemade in September of 1987.

"Charles Francis Adams, the 19th century political figure and diplomat, kept a diary. One day he entered: "Went fishing with my son today - a day wasted." His son, Brook Adams, also kept a diary, which is still in existence. On that same day, Brook Adams made his entry: "Went fishing with my father - the most wonderful day of my life!" The father thought he was wasting his time while fishing with his son, but his son saw it as an investment of time."

Time. It is the most valuable thing any of us have. Once a second, a minute is gone, it is to never be lived again. The time I have already spent typing to this point is time taken from the one life I have the privilege of living. I will never get what I have already invested back. It is done, it is spent, never to be recaptured again. And the time you have spent reading it is the same. If nothing else, I hope all of us awaken to this fact and begin to live our lives intentionally. Nobody can tell us how we should live our lives, how we should invest our time, each and every one of us must count the cost ourselves.

There are a couple of areas I want to focus our attention on and then I am going to share some thoughts and quotes with you.

1. How are you spending your time on a daily basis? Are you pursuing your hopes, your goals, your dreams? Are you using your time to become the best your are capable of becoming? Are you using your time to love, care for and serve others? Are you being intentional or thoughtless? 

Nobody can tell you how you should spend your time - again, it is the most valuable thing you have and you get to choose how you will spend it. I do want to point out however that we all get the same 24 hours a day. It is interesting how some can take that 24 hours and create a masterpiece - I will let you define in your own minds eye what the masterpiece looks like - and others can seemingly do absolutely nothing. The thing we do have to own is the return we get on our investment...what we get out of this life as a result of how we chose to spend our time.

So are you where you want to be in your life? Does how you spend your minutes, hours and days line up with where you are trying to go, with who you want to be? It is yours, it is the most valuable thing you have, please spend it wisely.

2. Who are you spending your time with? If someone chooses to give another a minute of their time, they are giving up their very life...please think about that. Time truly is the language of love, whether recognized or not. Again I will ask you, who are you spending your time with?

While I can't tell you what your priorities should be, I do want to encourage you to look at the depth, breadth and quality of your relationships. Does what you say your priorities are line up with the time you are investing in them? I can say my Beautiful Bride and Tender Warriors are my greatest priority but does my schedule prove it? Am I spending time with them? It really is true; when people say they don't have the time, they are really identifying their priorities. We all make time for the things and people that are important to us. We have to, we are paying for them with our very lives.

I want to share a few excerpts from an article titled, Essay on the Importance of Time. You can find it at preservearticles.com.

"Time is said to be a wise counselor. Passage of time allows an individual to grow. This growth gives experience. Experience helps decision making. Time reminds you to act and to act wisely. The wisest make the use of the time fruitfully. It is said that the wisest grieve the most at the loss of time.

Those who do not know the importance of time, waste it or rather they spend it doing nothing. There is a proverb which says that killing time is not murder, it is suicide. It means, by wasting time one is not harming others. On the other hand one is harming himself. Ordinary people merely go on thinking how to spend their time. The wise and talented make use of it fruitfully.

Some people always complain that there is not time for them to do anything. That is not correct. If one wisely plans his activities, there will be time for everything happening according to time. A man who is a part of nature cannot complain against time. Time is powerful. It conquers all. Men are only to obey it. Man cannot say that he has nothing of his own. Time which is valuable is all his own."

I also want to share some quotes and then I will wrap this up:

"Time is free, but it's priceless. You can't own it, but you can use it. You can't keep it, but you can spend it. Once you've lost it, you can never get it back." - Harvey Mackay

"There's only one thing more precious than our time and that's who we spend it on." - Leo Christopher

"The greatest gift you can give someone is your time because when you give your time, you are giving a portion of your life you will never get back." - Unknown

"We all make time for what we feel is important in our lives." - Unknown

"The way we spend our time defines who we are." - Jonathan Estrin

"The way you spend your time on a daily basis highlights your priorities." - Unknown

"Change your 24 hours and you will change your life." - Eric Thomas

So, how do we know if we are wasting or investing our time? At the end of his story about Charles Francis Adams and Brook Adams going fishing, Silas Shotwell offers his thoughts. "The only way to tell the difference between wasting and investing is to know one's purpose in life and to judge accordingly."

Please don't hesitate to contact me if there is ever anything I can do for you or your family. I will always help you any way I can. You can reach me at kevin@whatwillyourinfluencebe.com.

Have a great day, a wonderful weekend, please cherish your precious families and please stay healthy and well!

Kev