And so, I’m wondering how it’s gone for you to have paid attention to how you used your time last week – what choices you made, moment to moment, what you decided to do with this gift of a resource.  For me, I didn’t feel my usual sense of “time poverty” this week, and have enjoyed being more mindful of the small and large choices that presented themselves as I paid attention to how I was about to use my time.  At my office, in the time between sessions, I often catch up on some reading, and I noticed that, this week, I was much more mindful about what I really wanted to read.  It was a much more satisfying experience than when I automatically spend time with something that doesn’t really enrich and nourish me.  How about you?  Again, this experiment isn’t intended to create or generate more “should’s” or “have to’s”.  It’s about recognizing the gift of time and also noticing how much of it we may waste without intending to do so. 

There’s a hypnotic suggestion I’m sure I’ve shared with you before, that goes something like this:  “I have all the time I need in the time I have.”  That suggestion alone can bring a sense of tremendous relief when you are faced with a busy day, a big project, or a list of things to do that feels a mile long.  I’d like to invite you to play with this self-hypnotic suggestion, and to play with time.  You might use any of the following possibilities, if you’d enjoy adding something to the basic suggestion:  “I have all the time I need in the time I have to get done whatever must be done.”  “I have all the time I need in the time I have to enjoy myself thoroughly.”  The possibilities are limitless.  The key phrase is to know that you have all the time you need in the time you have and then play with the premise from there.

Because of the subjective nature of time, we have more power in how we experience it than we may realize.  For example, when you put your hand on a hot stove and a moment feels like an eternity, or when you’re enjoying something you don’t want to have end and an hour flies by as if it were only a few minutes, you have a chance to experience how time isn’t about the actual seconds, minutes, or hours.  It’s about your internal relationship to what’s happening during that time.  That’s one of the reasons I like the “I have all the time I need in the time I have” suggestion so much.  It creates an internal orientation toward time abundance rather than time poverty.  For me, any shift toward abundance is a shift into spaciousness, a greater sense of openness and room to move around.

And so, I hope you’ll enjoy continuing your investigation of your relationship with time this week, adding to whatever you discovered last week.  As always, have fun with the experiment.  Because our relationship with time is just that –a relationship – it’s always open to change, deepening, maturing, discovery.