Why Time Is On Your Side

Time is a funny thing. We waste time, we take time, we kill time, we lose track of time and we never have enough time.

Time flies when we’re having fun, but when we’re bored, it simply won’t go quick enough.

Time can also be precious, it has the ability to heal, it can be on our side and eventually it’s the perfect time. As Stephen Hawking once said “only time – whatever that may be – will tell”.

But what I notice is that we don't give ourselves enough time when we’re going through change. Most of us are impatient, giving ourselves a hard time when change doesn’t happen quick enough. We want results quicker than is often possible, and would rather give up on an idea or goal completely than wait a little while longer.

Whether we have embarked on a new diet, new relationship or new job, we don't give ourselves the time for our mind or body to adjust and adapt to the newness of whatever venture we have jumped in to. We judge ourselves harshly when life doesn’t give us the immediate benefits we wanted.

We give up and we quit, concluding that the change didn’t work. The goal wasn’t reachable. The idea was stupid and would never have worked.

But some things just take time. And the only mistake we made was that we hadn’t given ourselves enough of it.

Any person who has succeeded with a long-term goal knows this.

Sustainable success and achievement in anything takes a long time, along with some planning, dedication, perseverance and a fair whack of hard work. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was a thriving business, a fit body or a new way of thinking.

I see people who are leaving relatively new businesses because they didn't reach their expected profits in the first year. When, given time, this would likely happen if they stuck it out for a little while longer.

I see people who gave a new exercising regime a good couple of weeks before they quit it because they didn't shed the weight as quickly as they hoped. When all they needed was a couple more weeks for a habit to be formed that that started giving them the results they were looking for.

I see people prematurely leave a damaged relationship that could have possibly been rekindled with a little effort and time. And then those who are desperate for love, but the first date doesn't get a second chance because love didn’t happen at first sight. Time wasn't given to give love a chance.

But we allow ourselves the time to develop into who we are. It took us years to look the way we do, feel the way we do and think about the world the way we do. Time helped form us.

We have slowly developed into the adult we have become, so any change that is imposed on us or a change that we embark on soon, is likely to take some time to solidify into something we are comfortable with. This will never happen overnight.

We need time to let things happen, and then to evaluate them to see what is working, what's not and then amending our plans accordingly.

Time helps us do this.

Time is needed when we are trying to get over something that happened in the past. Time is needed when we’re trying to get through difficult times in the present. Time is needed when we have big plans for the future.

Whatever change we are going through, sometimes it just needs a little more time.