We all have those experiences in life that fundamentally change us, and I just had one of them.
In the last few weeks I’ve had the most magical adventure.
Even after being home for a week I’m still getting back into it, and I’m also trying my best not to…
It’s so easy for us to put our heads down and keep ploughing forward, when I’m holding onto where I’ve been.
Playing In Time
I’m very lucky that magical adventures are the norm for me, but this was special.
After a few days skiing in Vail I drove the car I keep out west to Las Vegas to meet up with my brother, which was an adventure in itself, but was only the beginning for us.
Because he lives in Australia, it’s been a decade since we’ve spent real time together, and just hanging out was special.
But what made our time even more special was what he had come here to do…
Leaving Las Vegas we headed to Virginia to train the mind.
Put Away Your Watch
Last time I was in Virginia I was training Remote Viewing. This time we were training altered states of consciousness and the out of body experience.
Again, I’ll put my “normal” disclaimer that of course this is wild out there stuff, but it’s also perhaps the most fascinating thing I’ve explored.
While I’ll share more about advanced mental conditioning and out of body training another time, for now I’ll simply say that it is an experience that takes you beyond time.
On the first day we were asked to give up our watches and phones, and to generally spend the week oblivious to time.
Now, because I’m always at least a little on, I kept my devices and some important calls, but for the most part we were offline.
Holed up in a copper-shielded, blacked-out alcove, we were fully immersed, deeply training the mind all day every day, for 6 days straight.
Most of that week we were beyond space and time, which is what brought me back to it so profoundly.
10 Years In…
Yesterday a client was talking about how quickly time flies.
He’s been in his job for a decade but it feels to him like no time at all. As he put it, “A few more of those and I’ll be in my 70s!”
Where does life go, we wondered…
Together we’re focused on a multi-decade goal of building his business, but in this context we were simply talking about more enjoying his days.
The Quality Of Your Time
We can’t make any more time, but we can certainly better experience the time we have.
This is the first coin that I made for my clients.
Back then I used Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man and his quote “Life Well Spent Is Long” with only a limited understanding of why those ideas mattered so much to me.
But over the years I came to see what my brain has been trying to get through my thick skull.
In the old days I was almost entirely focused on the future. Believing that when I got what I wanted I would be happy, fulfilled, whatever… I saw the present more as a means to my desired end.
When you’re focused on goals this can be a natural way of thinking, but it also leads us away from what is “real.”
Powerful Learnings In Time
The different dynamics around this adventure reminded me of some powerful learnings on time:
- Being with my brother I saw how much my striving towards the future took me away from the past
- Back in Vail, where I lived for 3 ski seasons, I was reminded how much more I could have cherished the experience at the time, rather than fixating so much on the future I was building
- Training in Virginia I experienced time as illusory and saw that we have all the time we need
See, for much of my life I felt out of time. Like I needed to get something done. Or get somewhere. Or achieve something.
Even after years of training myself to be more present, including hours a day of hypnosis and meditation, I still found it hard to live it.
My adventure shifted this for me.
Now Is Always The Time
There are many ways to look at our lives in relation to time.
We can focus on the past. The future. We can train ourselves to be all zen-like and live in the present.
Yet, what matters most is that we make conscious choices about how we think about time.
Whether we’re thinking in the past, present, or future, the only time we are experiencing is now.
And every moment we get to choose how we live the time of our lives.