Hi, I’m Sandra. Welcome to The Happyist. Here we transform through holistic, eudaimonic happiness. Best part? It’s easy and kind of fun.
My wish is that we all go into the New Year with a sense of control. Because, a lot of us feel like we have so little of it. We actually have more than we realize. And it’s time to start asserting some of it.
One of the things we can feel powerless about is time. We don’t have enough of it. It moves too quickly. We always feel rushed. We’re always running late. But what if that wasn’t true?
I believe it was in Gay Hendricks’ book, THE BIG LEAP, that I learned this little trick. Gay got it from Albert Einstein and his theory of time. And it’s sort of magic.
To put it reductively, Albert believed that we are the creators of time. Time exists how we see it, and we can speed it up or slow it down at our whim. And wouldn’t that be nice if it were true, right?
I can’t think of a better way to explain it than the way I heard it. And I did hear it because I no longer read; it’s all audiobooks for me because the only free time I have is when I’m in the shower, on an urban hike or driving.
The story goes, as Gay told it, that an important executive he was working with was running New York-late, stuck on a subway. He was going to be tardy for his meeting and was super stressed out about it…until he remembered what Gay had told him about Albert, and decided to apply that time theory.
The exec told himself that he wasn’t late at all. There was plenty of time to get there. He took a breath, relaxed into the ride, sauntered up to the office and into the conference room where he was the first to arrive. Everyone else came rushing into the room, complaining about all the reasons they were late and what a terrible morning it was and blah blah blah blah blah. But the executive dude was super chill, sipping his cup of coffee. All because of Albert and his belief of how we command time, and not the other way around.
Sounds like a load of bullshit, yes? Well, you are looking at a gal who loves to test bullshit theories. So, I did.
