Never Be Afraid to Fail
August 18, 2019
The Art of Leadership Excellence
August 19, 2019

Money can buy you many things in this world, yet if all of the billionaires in the universe pooled their considerable financial might, they could not purchase one single second of time. Its total immunity from the influence of human kind is what causes people to become deeply frustrated by time. You just can’t beat time, although time can give you a good whipping whenever it deems appropriate.

It’s slightly bizarre that no amount of money can buy you any time, but time utilised wisely, can generate any amount of money you care to imagine! To my mind, anything that can create infinite amounts of money, yet cannot be acquired by money, perfectly fits the description: priceless.

Time is making its inescapable presence felt every moment, of every day that you live. The telling question is: ‘what are you doing with time?’ One of the few things that we know for certain about time is that once it has expired, it can never be recovered, no matter how desperately it is sought. It cannot be bought, sold, borrowed, stolen, extended or reduced; it simply is. We can only use it well to add tangible value to our own existence or waste it to our personal detriment.

Your use of time is a clear declaration of intent that is observed by everyone who deals with you.

What did you do today? If your answer was ‘nothing much,’ then you wasted a day that will never return to you. You wasted an opportunity to discover clearer insights about the aspects of your life that may be hindering your forward progress. What did you learn yesterday, or the day before that? If you have no idea; then that is all that you can draw on when tomorrow arrives, with everything it has in store for you – good or bad.

People who habitually waste time often don’t realise that they’ve wasted a precious asset until the true cost becomes apparent.

Time is not neutral. It is either adding power to you or stripping folly from you. A life full of regret is often signposted by realizations that time allocated, was not best spent. ‘If I could live my life over…’ Sadly, we cannot. We get one shot at this finite treasure called life and all life is completely subject to time. What separates a passing moment, from an enduring monument? – Time.

What device is used over again to prove beyond doubt which individuals are honest, motivated, resolute or successful, from those who clearly are not? – Time. To suggest that time is important is to understate the glaringly obvious. You will never be able to subdue time but if you fail to make proper use of time, it may well cause all that you hoped for to vanish before your very eyes. Time utterly deserves your complete respect. It certainly deserves your best attention and will get it: whether you offer it voluntarily or otherwise.

A stellar career will remain nothing but a pipedream of you never show due regard for time.

What bearing does time have on your career? Think about it for a moment. A career is merely a reference for how you spent time in a working capacity. A short career is only short because time said so. A long career is only long because time said so. What divides these extremely polarized locations? What you did with the available time.

Did you know that time determines what is permissible, from what is not? Another term used to describe time is: season. We recognise seasons as periods of time marked by specific weather conditions. Humans also live in seasons. We begin with infancy, we develop into childhood, we go on to adolescence, before reaching adulthood. A season of adulthood is followed by middle age, after which we are termed: elderly.

When children behave like children it’s called normal. When adults behave like children, it’s called: disgraceful. If a small child has little knowledge, their lack of years protects them from any criticism. If an adult displays a manifest lack of insight, their age accuses them of waste and far from protecting them: exposes their wilful lack of maturity.

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Your working life has seasons. There is a season where settling in is the main priority and another where moving through the ranks ought to be high on the agenda and perhaps, (where necessary) a season when it is time to go to pastures new. A failure to properly read your seasons could result in you leaving a job too soon, remaining in a job too long or missing a life-changing opportunity altogether. Time goes about its business so quietly, so subtly and so efficiently, that many people fail to register what is up to at any given moment.

What season are you in now? What is time trying to establish in you, or remove from your life at this very moment? A failure to properly answer these questions may result in you letting go when you should hold on or clinging on long after it was judicious to do so. You need to know what time it is! And you need to know right now.

If you use time to the very best of your abilities, it will reward you with opportunities to consider fond memories. Any failure to show due respect, will result in time confining you to recollections that you’d much sooner forget.

Paying attention to the free data provided by time will ensure that you are always in the right place – at the right time.

Companies also operate in seasons (some even report their trade figures quarterly). Seasons of prosperity are nearly always followed by belt-tightening periods of austerity. Knowing one from the other is vital to your working success.

The wages, perks, bonuses and terms available during one season, rarely survive unscathed through the other. There are some clearly capable people sitting at home: harping on about their worth (in terms of what they were once paid) – and refusing to get out of bed for any less. They have failed to recognise the changing seasons and will spend an awful lot of time in bed!

A lifetime gets wasted one day at a time and it remains your responsibility to ensure that such a fate never befalls you.

Time is precious. It is empowering, sobering, enlightening and testing – all at once. Nobody can afford to let it pass through their life without improving them first. Do you want to why you ought to be a good listener? If it takes too long to teach you things, the wise will simply walk away; leaving you to reside in abject ignorance. Why? Because people with genuine knowledge, did not acquire it by wasting time. Learn something new every day.

Seek out deeper experiences every day. Something you add to your living repertoire today may just make the vital difference tomorrow. What stands between today and tomorrow? – Only time. Time arbitrates to determine whether your heartfelt desires should be permanently established or eternally overlooked. You may be forced to wait on time but you can in no wise, compel time to wait on you. Show due regard for the time you are given and time will in turn, afford you a truly gratifying existence.

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©2009 Errol Michael Henry/EMH Global Media LTD, All Rights Reserved. Replicating any part of this article is strictly prohibited.

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