Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: Is refined, impact sharpens and leaders move from success that performs to powerful legacy.
[00:00:24] Speaker A: Hello and welcome.
I'm your host, Alara Sage.
Today I want to talk about what is arguably the most valuable commodity in the human experience.
Time.
Unlike other resources, we have no way of ultimately knowing how much time we have.
We don't know what day we will leave the earth. We only know how many hours we have in any given day, how many days within a week, how many weeks within a month, how many months within a year.
But our bank of time is unknown and we don't really have any way of creating more of it.
You cannot directly affect how long you have to live.
Sure, we can be healthy and do things to support our health and our wealth or vitality, but every day there are people who die in car crashes or other accidents that have nothing to do with their physical health.
So it's a commodity like no other.
And what I really want to do is I want to break it down into seeing money just like you do see, excuse me, seeing time just like you do see money in order to extract, so to speak, the most of your experience with it.
So what I mean is, with money, we can spend money, we can hold money, and we can receive earn money.
And time is the same.
We all understand the concept of spending time, and it's a concept that is spoken about often. How do you spend your time? Your time is valuable.
Are you spending your time on the things that truly matter?
And are you spending that time wisely?
Are you delegating or giving chores and jobs and things that you don't need to be spending your time with to other people to support your highest investment of your energy and your time?
Oftentimes, leaders and founders can find themselves doing things that they could be delegating.
And this often is underlying fear of it not getting done correctly, believing that they are the only ones that can do whatever it is control resistance to letting go.
And this is a ill investment of time.
So in spending your time, the question becomes the inquiry, am I spending my time most wisely?
If I were to think of time as another resource like money, would I be content to be investing it as myself to tasks that I know others can do successfully and well, where there might be other areas of the company or my business or my life that I can't delegate, that I have to directly address.
But if I'm spending all of my time in tasks that I can delegate, I have no remaining time to invest in those parts that require me.
So, considering, how are you using Your time.
And one of the most powerful tools exercises you can do here is cut your time radically into a smaller amount. Right again. Just if you were thinking of money, if you only had a hundred dollars to improve your life or your business, what would you do with that hundred dollars?
$100 isn't very much. You would have to be very, very precise.
So a great way of clarifying your field around spending time is to cut what you perceive to be potential time down dramatically. What if you only had a year to live and you can play this exercise with a different variety? You could say you had five years to live and spend time, ironically enough, with the exercise of what would you do differently with your time if you only had five years to live and then cut that down again?
You can cut it down to three or you cut down to one. Get slim, cut the fat, tighten the belt, trim the excess.
What would you do with very little time?
This exercise is very powerful because you will quickly see where you might be wasting time or you might be spending it where it's not really taking, creating the action that it could be if you shifted how you spent your time.
So contemplate that.
Spend some time with that exercise.
Now, the next way to look at this is how do you hold time if you were a bank and you're holding money, the way that we hold time is by being present to the here and now.
Some people have a level of awareness to this. Some people are somewhat capable of being in the here and now. But the truth is, is that most humans aren't very good at the skill of holding, investing time, being present to what is.
There's so much value in presence in being here now.
And I talk about it often because I would say, or I do say, actually it is one of the primary skills that leaders truly should have.
I would say it's a requirement.
So I could go on and on and on about the importance of presence.
But we're here to talk about time. So let me clarify this a little bit more to this specific topic and you're welcome to listen to the podcast in regular I'm regularly speaking to the topic of presence to learn more about the value of presence. But here in the context of time, to be in the here and now. And when you are in the here and now, you are available to what is now? What does it mean to not be present? It means that you're up in your head, you're lost in thought. And usually those thoughts are one of two things. Actually, they're only one of two Things, they. They're either in the future or they're in the past. When we're speaking to not being present.
Because thoughts of the present moment are being present. If you are thinking only of this moment here, now. You're being present to this moment. But if you are thinking about the quote, unquote future.
Or thinking about the past. You are not in the present moment.
And now. You are not actually available to your most valuable commodity.
It's like a bank that you're not holding the money it's leaking.
Or, you know, a bucket that has a leak.
It's slowly draining out the resource onto the ground.
Now, you know, water dropping out of a bucket. Could potentially sprout a beautiful rose randomly.
But the likelihood is that it just gets wasted.
So the importance here of understanding that when you are not present in the moment, in the here and now. You are wasting one of your most dare, arguably the most valuable asset commodity that you have.
If you consider that.
Does it make you want to be more present?
We have lots of reasons why we don't want to be present.
Most of them have to do with discomfort in the moment. Feeling things, experiencing things we don't want to feel or experience. And so subconsciously, we disconnect.
It's not something that you're consciously doing at a regular time.
You're subconsciously doing it. And all of a sudden you'll find yourself in the future, in the past, somewhere else.
But power, stability, your attention exists in the here now.
You know, in quantum physics. There is only the here and now.
And you are the observer. And you, as the observer in the here and now. Alter what happens.
And this is being proven now outside of quantum physics in reality, quote, unquote.
So if you want to really alter or have power within your life.
Being present to the time that is in the here and now is how you do that in. In the context of physics.
Because as you are present to the here and now. You alter what is happening.
And if you're curious about what I'm saying about quantum physics. You can, if you don't already know, you can Google the double split experiment.
And it goes over what I'm saying here.
Meanwhile, while you are not in the present moment. And you are lost in thought. And you're in the future, quote, unquote, or you're in the.
You are not as powerful in your ability to alter the here and now. Because your focus, your self as the observer is not here.
So if what I'm saying to you kind of sounds a little bit obtuse, or vague.
I invite you to go research that experiment. I'm not going to talk about the experiment here, but this is physics. It's nothing that is wild or crazy.
Science is slowly catching up to all of this.
So perhaps you could say your highest commodity is your presence.
Because it is the availability to the time that is in the here and now. Your highest commodity.
And through your presence, you are in your most power to influence your physical reality, your life, your business, anything and everything that is in the here and now.
Pretty potent if you ask me.
So are you being present to your life, to the here, now and here? In this contemplation, you can begin to become more aware of the times that you're not.
Because learning to be present is a skill that although we are born with it, we very quickly lose in human society.
And you have to quote, unquote, like re strengthen that muscle.
It requires consistency.
And the first step of that consistency is noticing when you're not fully present in the moment, you can always use a nice deep breath to bring yourself back into the body. Because the great thing about breathing and the body is that it is always in the here and now. As soon as you feel your body, as soon as you take a nice deep breath, you anchor yourself into the moment.
So fortify your bank that holds the greatest commodity that you have by being present to the moment.
Now, the next one is one that is even more challenging, and pretty much nobody does.
So if we think of spending time, everybody spends time. Whether you are spending it consciously or unconsciously, spending it deliberately, or just wasting it.
Some people can be present to the moment, specifically when they're doing things they really love, or perhaps something that's very important to them.
But the other side of resource is receiving.
How do you receive time?
As we already talked about, you can't increase the time in your bank. At least we can't. Yet maybe down the road, humans will be able to hack our own existence and extend our timeline. Who knows? Right now that's not possible.
So what are the ways that we receive time? And this is very literal, but I want you to feel it.
One way you can receive time is by letting something unfold without forcing the pace that is receiving the timeline of something.
Now, this doesn't mean that you're waiting for something to happen, doesn't mean that you're just giving in to the experience.
It means that you're taking action on your desires or your creation or whatever it is.
And simultaneously, this is the the key of creating your reality by the way you are not attached to the timeline through which it unfolds.
That is one way to receive time.
Another way is to truly extract value, clarity, insight or energy from the moment. So we talked about being present in the moment.
And simultaneously in being present in the moment. There is an extraordinary amount of value when you are truly present in the moment. You often see experience here, things that are between the lines, between the words, or that have a deeper meaning that could have very well been overlooked.
So you're not simply being present to the moment. You're receiving what the moment is showing you, speaking to you, receiving, reflecting to you.
This, this right here, this nugget, this is very, very valuable because there is always so much wisdom in any given moment, even the moments that seem nothing to do with wisdom.
If you are actually present to and available to the wisdom that is currently expressing itself, you will see it, feel it, hear it, understand what I'm speaking to.
And this is something that is invaluable.
This is how we begin to access deeper knowing, deeper information.
This is how as a leader, you can be 2, 3, 5, 10, 20 steps ahead of others.
Because there's an intuitive, a gut instinct, a deep knowing that really loves it when you give it space by being present to and inviting that insight, inviting something that isn't being spoken out loud. What is that? What is the wisdom that isn't being formed into words but is sitting here heavy like the elephant in the room?
Receiving time is also resting without guilt.
Because receiving is receiving.
And this might be a little abstract, but there really is no difference between receiving money, receiving time, receiving love, receiving attention. It's all receiving.
There are always these three exchanges that we're constantly in. We're either spending, giving, receiving, or holding.
And what I call the art of wealth is the game of exchange, the quality of that exchange. What part of the exchange are you in? You can't just be in one, you can't just be in two. You have to play with all three aspects of exchange in order to be wealthy. Just like if we were to look at money, you absolutely have to receive money in order to continue to build your wealth. That is very obvious.
So why aren't you receiving time in the same manner?
There's a lot of reasons that I'm not going to go into right now. I want you to sit with that question. Why can't you receive time in the knowingness that it adds compounds to the value, the maybe not so called the amount of time, but what you experience with time, another way that you can receive time is by letting time work on your behalf.
This is like integration.
This is like the perfect timing. And not perfect as in some ideology, but in recognizing that there is a natural rhythm to time.
So let's pause here and just take a moment, right? Because the sun rises, the sun sets, the sun rises, the sun sets, the sun rises, and sun sets. It's a rhythm of time.
And between that time of the sun rising and the sunset are a natural rhythm that each person has their own rhythm.
What I mean by this is some people benefit with getting out of bed and being active first thing in the morning. Like, I am that person. I like to get out of bed, and first I meditate, but then I exercise early in the morning. I'm an early riser, and I'm early to exercise because my energy is at its peak. And in the morning, that's also my highest creative time. And my energy slowly descends throughout the day. Other people are more like night owls, so they rise slowly. They don't have a lot of energy right off the bat, but as the day progresses, they increase their energy.
And other people go kind of more in waves. They might peak and then valley and then peak and then valley again.
Knowing your unique cycle, knowing the unique cycle of your business, knowing these cycles and aligning things within these cycles is utilizing time at its best.
So taking the example back to myself, when I wake up and I do what I love to do, meditate and then go exercise, I feel great. Starts my morning off, right?
The few times in my entire life that I have attempted to exercise in the afternoon or I can't even do it in the evening, it's like totally off my plate. But let's say afternoon, sometimes I can do it. It's not that it's just not accessible to me, but it's not the same.
The quality, the flavor, the way that I interact with in the exercise in the afternoon is very different than the way that I interact with the exercise first thing in the morning.
It is a better quality in the morning for me.
So I am extracting much more out of the same quote, unquote time frame. One hour of exercise. Let's say one hour of exercise. One hour of exercise in the morning is going to be, mwah. Chef's kiss, perfection of exercise. Because my energy is available, it is prime for me, Whereas one hour in the afternoon, sure, I can make it happen, I can force myself to do it, but it's not the same quality.
So understanding that time has a rhythm, and as you align actions and exercises and things to do with this rhythm, you are letting time work on your behalf.
That's very, very powerful.
So that's another way to receive time.
So questioning here, are you allowing time to give to you or do you fill the space, cram it full?
Do you overwork? Do you over decide?
Do you chase whatever it is that you're seeking? Clarity, resolution, problem solving, instead of letting it arrive to you? Letting it arrive to you.
And again, the more time you spend in presence, the more you understand what I'm saying when I say that letting it arrive to you. If you haven't spent much time in presence, that may feel very obtuse and abstract.
And so note that how often have you allowed a solution, a piece of clarity, to simply come to you without chasing it?
And did you do that consciously or did it just happen?
This will speak to how much you understand the concept of presence, not solely as a concept, but as an experience, an experiential, lived understanding.
I'm going to leave you with some contemplations.
How easy is it for you to step away from a problem and let the answer arrive without force?
Can you take a walk as something internally reorganizes even if you don't understand what that is?
Can you sit in stillness and still feel resourced, not restless?
Can you let a decision ripen instead of prematurely locking it in?
And no matter what your answer is, this isn't a these aren't questions of judgment. This isn't if you got them all right, yay, you are brilliant. And if you got them all wrong, you somehow are lacking or not good enough. It's not what this is about. This is about self awareness.
And self awareness first and foremost requires honesty.
Because, well, we can lie to ourselves all day long and work very well because who else knows? Nobody knows. Nobody knows that you're lying to yourself, but it doesn't benefit you. You don't grow from it.
So to answer those questions honestly and be willing to see them honestly and then be willing to decide if you want to change it, you don't have to.
If you want to continue not receiving time, if you want to continue not investing and holding time, that's your choice.
It doesn't make you less than but what does it bring to you?
What is the value of increasing your relationship to the exchange of time?
Thank you for joining me today.
Much love.
[00:29:29] Speaker B: Thank you for listening to the Poweredge podcast with host Alora Sage.
Connect with us on Instagram at the poweredge or on YouTube @alorasage.
