Change in Perception

“Suc­cess is being at peace with your­self.“
– Anony­mous

“Inner peace can be reached only when we prac­tice for­give­ness. For­give­ness is let­ting go of the past, and is there­fore the means for cor­rect­ing our mis­per­cep­tions.“
– Ger­ald Jampolsky

The earth was once thought to be the cen­ter of the universe.

As we all know today, this is not true. But for mil­lions of years, only a tri­fle few would sus­pect any dif­fer­ent. How­ever, when Galileo proved Coper­ni­cus’ the­ory that the earth was indeed not at the cen­ter of the uni­verse, the door that for­ever changed the world opened. In the same way, our per­cep­tion of time has changed.

Time man­age­ment used to focus on what has been done or what needs to be done — on how one can become more pro­duc­tive. And goals were long con­sid­ered to be essen­tial tools for doing so. Goals were at the cen­ter of one’s uni­verse so to speak, while val­ues were con­sid­ered as periph­eral or secondary.

Today, a shift is slowly tak­ing place where val­ues (and not goals) are con­sid­ered to be at the core of life. In other words, time man­age­ment is — or has shifted to — life man­age­ment. It has gone from quan­tity of time to qual­ity of life; from stress man­age­ment to self man­age­ment.

Those who have not yet shifted their think­ing are peo­ple who have a ten­dency to think that get­ting as much done as pos­si­ble is the way to free up time. The more peo­ple do, how­ever, the more they will attempt to fill up this “free” time by con­stantly doing more.

In essence, who you are and how you feel is much more impor­tant than what you are doing or what you want. Since time is per­ish­able and if you want more of it, you should there­fore increase the qual­ity of your life right now instead of just try­ing to man­age your time.

Con­versely, if you feel you are not get­ting enough time, it is not because you are man­ag­ing it poorly but because you’re liv­ing a life of poor qual­ity. You may be pro­duc­tive and achieve many great things. But if you’re unhappy or feel unful­filled, then you are pro­duc­tively wast­ing time.

And unfor­tu­nately, it’s how most peo­ple con­duct their lives today.

Attach­ment to goals often leads to stress, unhap­pi­ness, dis­ease, pro­cras­ti­na­tion, worko­holism, and, of course, fail­ure. I know that inti­mately since I’ve been there. These things hap­pen more so in our mod­ern world not because peo­ple are poor time man­agers but because the con­ven­tional ways they were taught to man­age their time are wrong. They think that time free­dom boils down to get­ting as much done as possible.

For exam­ple, you may be incred­i­bly effi­cient, be moti­vated by your goals, and attempt to do as much as pos­si­ble. You may even feel a cer­tain degree of sat­is­fac­tion out of the results you are cur­rently pro­duc­ing. How­ever, it doesn’t mat­ter how skilled or effi­cient you are, time man­age­ment can not ensure your hap­pi­ness and its con­ven­tional approach can also lead you to fail­ure in the long run.

Fail­ure? Yes.

You may become suc­cess­ful but still live an unhappy or stress­ful life. Unhap­pi­ness or anx­i­ety may be the fail­ure to grow or to enjoy life, but it is fail­ure nonethe­less. What’s the point of being suc­cess­ful when at the same time you are stressed out and can’t enjoy that which you’ve achieved? What’s the point of work­ing hard to achieve a goal when, once you’ve reached it, you die as a result of over-​​exhaustion?

There­fore, true suc­cess has noth­ing to do with the quan­tity of your time. True suc­cess has every­thing to do with the qual­ity of your life.

About the Author

Last 5 Posts By Michel Fortin

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