So many of us have heard the saying, “Stop wasting your time.” It could come from a friend, family member, significant other, even a voice in our head. Yet, in this day & age where people are making money playing video games, vlogging, dancing, amongst many other things. Is anything a waste of time or just a concept we say to conform to a previous way of life?

Time

We know that time is precious to the point that it is arguably one of the most precious things in life other than life itself. Since there is no way to get it back or reverse it, but the concept of time, in my opinion, isn’t as scarce as we believe. We need 8+ hours of sleep out of a 24 hour day which means 16 hours is left to do whatever else we want to do.

However, many of us spend 8 of those 16 working a traditional job or more when it’s the busy season. Thus leaving 8 for us to have a social life, practice self-care, explore, along with an abundance of other things. Yet, many of us feel like that’s not enough time to have a life, which brings the notion of wasting time into the mix.

What if I told you there was a way to diminish that feeling, maybe even remove it for good. It’s not complicated or requires a crazy amount of effort, merely a shift in mentality.

The shift

When we aren’t passionate about our job, hide from our emotions and try our best to distract ourselves, we allow the notion of wasting time to exist. Our mind tells us we should be doing more, being more and working more. Eventually, this will allow for more time to live our dream life. I’m sorry to say that life never comes because we will always be chasing getting more time.

That said if we allow ourselves to enjoy our jobs, confront emotions and believe in our capabilities. There is no more “wasting time” because everything we do aids in growing as a friend, family member, significant other, business person or simply as a human being.

We can do this by finding the positives and accepting the negatives. Finding the positives can mean looking at the task in front of us as an opportunity to be a better human or coming out of an intense argument and leaving with new things to do. Similarly, accepting the negatives means bad things happen, but they don’t define or break us. Instead, they are a piece of a grand puzzle that we are creating day by day.

As we do this, we begin to understand that life isn’t a cakewalk. Nor full of essential and non-essential uses of time but rather a journey to being a better human each day.

That said, I ask you do you need to stop wasting time or begin to be more open to the possibilities you are creating in time.