Time is Our Best Teacher

Time. Some say it is the most valuable currency in the world. Something that can’t be purchased off a shelf and something that can’t be returned if you are unhappy with your decision.

I’ve been thinking about time a lot recently and have questioned whether I am spending it in the right places or if I am just flat our wasting it. What sparked this interest? Tom Hanks.

Weird, right? Out of all people in the world, Tom Hanks.

There’s a video that has been going around social media of Tom Hanks sitting around a table with his peers. He’s talking about time from a macro-level standpoint and zeros in on one point, everything in life passes.

Everything Passes in Time

No matter the situation you're in, positive or negative, it will pass. The same goes for an action you are taking, the thought you are pondering, the emotion you are feeling, the place you are sitting, it will all pass.

As I thought about this more and more I realized that it is just not recognizing that moments in time pass, whether bad or good, but what we take out of that time spent matters the most.

We could look at that conversation we had over coffee as a nice afternoon meeting or we can look at it as a moment where we learned about another person’s business. We could look at the concert we went to as a lovely evening with friends or we could use it as a time to remind us to unplug once in a while. We could look at a failed project as a failure, or we could use it to set up a better project plan for our next opportunity.

We hear it all the time “Enjoy where you are”. While that is 100% correct, there is a greater opportunity to enjoy the lesson that comes along with where we are in the present moment. The moment will pass, but the lesson can live on forever (if we allow it to).

Learning Means Nothing Without Action

It’s one thing to learn a lesson and understand it within our own minds, it is another to act on it. And not just act on it, act on it consistently. Because at the end of the day, consistency is the name of the game and gets us where we want to be.

I’ve never met an athlete in the gym that has won meet after meet purely just because of natural ability. They realize they have the natural ability, have probably lost a few gut-wrenching times, reflected, re-assessed, and went back to work. Consistently.

Time is like a currency, and when we invest in the lesson we learned from a period of time, we will find a positive ROI.

Charles Olivera is one of my favorite UFC fighters and a great example of someone who just kept going, consistently, loss after loss. You couldn’t keep this guy down after a loss if you tied him down with 200lb weight.

Before his title run that started in 2018, Charles had lost 4 of his previous 6 fights and was on the brink of losing his UFC contract due to poor performance.

If you listen to his press conferences and interviews after every loss he never blamed anyone, he just realized what went wrong and where he had to improve. Nobody heard from this guy for months. He just disappeared and went to work. He realized where he went wrong and worked consistently on his game to improve to become a UFC champ 4 years later.

Now, he’s one of the most feared fighters in the game and the poster child for using his time effectively by learning, adapting, and applying the lessons learned.

Because after each loss, he realized it wasn’t just a moment in time that passed, but a lesson that could be learned.

Time is interesting, isn’t it? Wins pass. Losses pass. Friendships pass. Jobs pass. Moments pass. So take in where you’re at and see what you can learn from it. Because guess what, your time reading this blog has passed. What will you do with it?

These are my thoughts on time, take them or leave them. Thanks for reading :)

Vinny