Spending Time

Have you ever thought about the phrase “spending time”?

Some of our everyday expressions are really quite profound if we take a moment to notice them.

We talk about spending money, saving money, wasting money or investing money. We use the same expressions for time. We save time, waste time, use time, spend time. We may think that money is limited. It isn’t really limited, but that’s another article.

Time Is Money?

Our time, however, IS limited. At least in this lifetime. And we don’t know how much of it we have in our lifetime. It is more precious than money. We tend to notice this most when someone we know dies unexpectedly. For me, it highlights that my time is precious, that I really don’t want to waste it.


I have a bird sitting on my favorite clock to remind me that time flies.

So why do I sit and watch television in the evening when I’m tired? Those hours will never be available again. There is so much I want to do in my life, and when I watch a movie because I don’t have the energy to get up and do something else, what have I accomplished?

Shoulda Coulda Woulda

I am not getting down on myself. Just noticing. I could meditate. I could listen to one of the recorded seminars I’ve purchased and downloaded. I could stretch and do some crunches.

The late Linda Webb-Kahkaba wrote a song called The Shoulda Coulda Woulda Blues in which she dreamed that she was at the Pearly Gates, and St. Peter says to her, "Your couch potato resume needs to be seen to be believed. But as for living out your dream, you didn't have a clue."

Luckily, last night, a friend called me just as I was starting to watch a back episode of a TV show. I had already watched a movie. And when I got up to hang up the phone, I realized that what I really needed was to wind down and go to sleep. So I did. Now maybe sleep isn't considered better, but it's what I needed.

It’s those little moments of honoring what the body or the inner wisdom whispers to us that matter.

The Power of Now

Now it’s time to write. Now it’s time to sit and listen to the birds sing. Noticing a bit if thirst, now it’s time to drink some tea. Now it’s time to work. Now it’s time to be social.

What a precious gift this is. How expansive and full of possibility to allow the space to listen and feel what is appropriate for the moment.

I think I’ll do this more often. Because I don't want to have the Shoulda Coulda Woulda Blues at the end of my life.

How About You?

How do you spend, waste, or invest your time?

Does Life Have To Be So Hard?

So often, we walk around with the background belief that life is hard. Work is hard. Relationship is hard. Raising children is hard. Getting ahead financially is hard.

But what if none of that needs to be true?

Change the Channel, Change Your Life

What if we could have a background mental environment that life is beautiful. And fun. And sweet. And full of love?

Imagine that you have plenty of money. And time. And love.
How would that change the way you walk through the world?


What if you knew with absolute certainty that you have a guardian angel looking out for you so you don’t need to worry about anything today?

How would that change how you talk to people, how you do the tasks you do?

What could it hurt to give it a try for a day?
You might notice a wonderful difference.

Try This at Home

Try living one whole day as if nothing and no one is against you.







Good and more Good is mine now. It gathers in me, multiplies more Good and more Good. It presses in around me, blossoming in ever expanding Good, pouring forth this Good from my Being to the world, blessing my world and everyone I touch/see/know.
  -- Adapted from Ernest Holmes

Wheel Alignment as Mental Alignment

Wheel Alignment/ Mental Alignment

Do you ever feel like you are not quite on the right road? Or that your a little out of sync with the events in your life? Or has an emotional earthquake shifted your mental status?

Well, like a wheel alignment keeps your car steering accurately, or sheering up a tilted wall can right it, meditation can align your mind to make the ride smoother in your life.

And you don't need to sit for hours a day. In fact, you don't necessarily need to sit to meditate. There are moving meditations, like Yoga. When done mindfully, yoga is a great way to align your mind and body to ease into or out of your day. Or Chi Gong, which I've been enjoying lately. 

The Chi Gong routine I do takes 40 minutes each morning and 20 minutes each night before sleep. It sounded like an awful lot of time before I started, but I find that if I do my practice in the morning, it makes the day go so much more smoothly that it's a great investment of my time. 

And for those evenings when I worked too late or watched TV too late, it makes a big difference in the quality of sleep I get. So on the nights when I think ,"I don't have time for Chi gong tonight. I need to get to sleep." I may spend as much time laying trying to sleep as it would have taken to do the evening routine.

Even just a few deep breaths as a break when you have been sitting at the computer for a couple of hours can be a mini-stress-relief vacation, and make you more productive when you re-focus on work.

And one thing that I've learned the hard way... when I am at the computer, I am learning to listen to the first sign of hunger instead of my usual "I just want to finish this one thing." Because if you're like me, that one thing can easily turn into an hour or more. That's another form of mindfulness. And it is a very good investment.