Better, slower and more meaningful life...

Lately, I've been hearing a lot of people complaining about how little time they have, how stressed they are by all there is to do. Being hyper-scheduled and unable to get off the strange treadmill they have found themselves on, trying to keep everything going.

I've been mulling this very thing for quite a while now, wondering if it's my own view of time that is the problem, or how I organize myself remembering times in my life when I felt there was enough time.

We all know someone in our life that is going through some life-threatening ordeal. When asked about personal regrets most responses are something like this, "if I were to do it all over again I would have done it differently".

When we examine our own lives most of us feel that we are way too stressed for our liking. I mean do we honestly need those emerald and diamond rings that we're scared to wear in public and keep in a safe? Do we need those energy consuming empires that we are trying to build? Or those R42 million mansions in Zimbali?

Lets be honest, we are all trying to build those illusive castles made of sand because somehow we feel that it is the right thing to do, when all we really want is to spend more time with our kids, have sit down dinners at our designer dining rooms, go on beach picnics and enjoy what time we have left with the people we love.

Life is such a fragile commodity. You cannot buy another one, not on eBay, not on any Google sites. Life is here and now and how we live today determines our future.

My own morality is seen in my parents. I pray for every day and every moment I get to share with them. They are my leveler, my ticket to the better life. I consider their choices and I make every afford to learn and grow from their decisions. Somewhere along the way I adjust their paths and they mine and we live symbiotically through our experiences.

Nobody knows how much time we have left. It does not matter how healthy and fit we are. How many hours we spend on that spin bike at the local gym. Sure it is great to be fit and healthy but it in a greater scheme of things it truly amounts to nothing because our days are numbered, it is all written in a secret code in the great book of life.

So if you were faced with some unforeseen news, would you be the one saying "oh if only I could change."

The question I pose today is, can you create more time in your life? Time to plan and organize your life? Can you make more time to give to others? More time to spend on doing what you love.

The answers have everything to do with personal discipline and understanding the importance of time in our lives.

The real question, though, is "What/when is enough?", and hence time to say "no". When we've spent hours consuming, we reach a point where we need to internally check in and tell ourselves we've had enough then we shut down, take a walk, or call up a friend. It's a practice.

We use the same check-in strategy about acquiring more things. When we feel compelled to buy something, we ask ourselves if we already have enough already. Sometimes the answer is yes and sometimes it's no, but asking the question gets us off the "more more more " path that we have been programmed to be on.

Often we discover that enough is plenty.