Rewrite Your Life Script Using the River of Time
What is your relationship with time?
When i ask that question, I mean, are you somebody that looks at time as:
- A unit of measurement?
- A nuisance that you need to get past or get over
- An opportunity
For the sake of exploration, let’s talk about time as a utility and the value you get out of it. The famous greek philosopher Heraclitus said, “You can’t step in the same river twice.”
Now this is very profound for you and your life and here is why…
Suppose there’s a river running just outside your house and you walk outside and you step in the river at 11:30 a.m. Then you take your foot out of the water. Without moving, you wait five minutes and you stick your foot back in at 11:35 a.m. Consider this:
Did you just step in the same river?
The answer is no and here is why…
Heraclitus said, “the river is different but the man is different.”
The river is different because the sediment and the creatures in it are not in the same position they were five minutes ago. More importantly, you are different. Some of you may be asking, if I’m standing in the same spot, how can I be different? I have the same clothes on, and Istick the same foot in the same river. How am I different?
First your body regenerates cells constantly. 330 billion cells are replaced daily, so your cellular makeup is different.
What else has changed well in those five minutes? Your thoughts. You’ve had a few thoughts in those five minutes. And since our lives get affected by the sum total of our thoughts, you now have a new set of thoughts.
Also, your position’s different. How? The Coreolis Effect. Even though you were standing on the same ground, your position has changed in space time because of the spin of the earth.
If you subscribe to the theory that environment affects you both physically and mentally, then technically, your environment has changed.
So what does this all mean?
Think about your daily routine. You get up at the same time. You eat a certain set of foods. You have a set time to go to work and come home. You have a finite set of people in your life. So each day seems like the river. Think about the 24 hours in your day as the river of time. Each day looks the same for the most part.
But with a few changes you can set up your life where tomorrow at the same time, you’re river of time will change. How?
- Reading new books
- Changing your environment
- Networking
- Changing your diet
- Changing the route you take to work
- The beliefs you have
Change just one of these, and your river of time will change. Because tomorrow, at the same time, you aren’t the same person. And neither is anybody in your realm of influence. And if we have changed, by the law of environmental influence, we have the power to change others.
No matter what your time horizon is: seconds, minutes, hours days, weeks, months, years, by changing one thing in our routine, we change our river of time and our effect on our environment.
Think of this as an A/B test. Hold all other things in your river of time the same. Change one thing. And watch how your days and weeks change in your river of time.