Living in the moment
By: Estelle Gee - October 30th, 2007
Time management - the notion itself is somewhat ludicrous. None of us can actually manage time. In fact, time more often than it not manages us. But author Stephen Rechtschaffen has proposed a new way of looking at time in his book Time Shifting. Instead of emphasizing how we can squeeze more into our already full lives, he suggests we stop doing in order to live more fully.
Rechtschaffen says that we have forgotten how to rest and that our muscle cells must relax in order to work anew. Our bodies and our minds have followed the rhythms of society. As it has accelerated, so have we. The result is illness, depression and feelings of inadequacy.
Instead we should entrain with our own rhythm.
Entrainment is the process by which all natural rhythms fall into synchronization with each other. If we don’t follow our own rhythms “we get lost in the flow of life…if you are too busy to feel, too rushed to truly see and hear, then remembrance is lost and we are lost from ourselves, from our centre, from our world”, says Rechtschaffen.
Entrainment occurs when we are fully involved in creating something that we love, become absorbed in the process and feel that time is “standing still”.
Rechtschaffen’s suggestions for time-shifting are:
• Being in the moment
• Creating time boundaries
• Honouring the mundane
• Creating spontaneous time
• Doing what we like to do
• Creating time retreats.
If we allow ourselves to be enslaved by society’s hurried pace then we will be left with unfulfilled dreams and lost opportunities. Time is too precious to simply ‘manage’. We must cherish it as we would any valuable gift.