The Time is Now

Joachim De Posada

By Joachim De Posada

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The time is now

Have you noticed that there are different sized lobsters?  Yes, the same can be said of human beings but the difference is that human beings get their size through genes, lobsters play a part on how big they get. When a lobster wants to get bigger, it goes down deep down in the sea and finds a good rock, hides behind it and proceeds to take its shell off. It is logical that when the shell is off, the lobster becomes very vulnerable to everything that can harm it or even kill it. In other words, in order to get bigger or better, it has to risk everything, only then will it be able to grow.

As the lobster eats more than before, it starts to grow and the outer surface hardens and it becomes its new shell before it finally goes up to the surface. In the lobster’s particular case, and I bet the lobster doesn’t know it, getting bigger will attract fishermen constantly in the look out since its meat is a highly desirable food for humans.

The lesson I want to convey is that we need to sometimes act like a lobster. We need to hide, reflect and in many instances re-invent ourselves especially when what we are doing is not obtaining the results we want or need to achieve. But we need to do it now.

This need to “lobstarize” and forgive me for inventing the word, sometimes comes when we are feeling desperate, when nothing we do is helping, when it seems that the forces of the universe are all acting against us. This moment often is a dark moment for us and we start recognizing that what is happening “out there” in the world is no longer satisfying us on the inside.

I remember leaving my private practice, on the outside it looked ok, my partner and I had enough patients, really everything we wanted, but inside, I simply didn’t feel right. I had money, patients, a great partner but the wrong wife and I was understanding clearly that I wasn’t in the right track and that I needed to make a change. 

At the beginning I tried what a lot of other people try to do, change the outside world, or change the behavior of others, make the whole scenario happier but it actually didn’t work, it didn’t make it better. Yeah, tried to change my wife but it was impossible. Personality disorders take a long time to cure.

Only when I focused on the inside, on my inner core, did I come to the realization that all change starts from within, intrinsically, instead of extrinsically.  I had to change myself. I had to act and act fast, so my first step was to get out of an unhappy marriage.

Another factor I faced was the time issue. When was I going to change, how fast was change happening around me, how was I handling the timing?

Now more than ever, people are realizing that change, or I should say, the rate of change is speeding up quite a lot, and interestingly, for everyone and I mean everyone, it will seem like it is speeding up faster as the years go by.

It is obvious that as you get older, the days, weeks, months, and years seem to pass much faster than they did before. It seems that we were all preparing for the year 2,000 and wow, it is now 2012. How did 12 years go by so fast? It feels like we just celebrated new years and wow, half the year is gone. There is a mathematical reason we all feel this way.

To tell a four year old child to wait for a marshmallow for 15 minutes is equivalent to telling an adult to wait two hours for a cup of coffee. Those 15 minutes are a bigger percentage in the life of a four year old than in the life of an adult, so the child feels like he is waiting a very long time and for the adult 15 minutes goes by really quick, unless you are going through torture, getting a tooth pulled out or enduring  a colonoscopy.

A mistake people make is to use time as a definer, as a paradigm to live your life.

The word “someday” I find it to be such a negative word. When you hear someone say “someday” it will probably mean, “never”. So many of my speaker or consulting colleagues have said to me that “someday” they will write their book, and years have gone by, and no book yet.

One dear colleague in WOSO where I have a daily motivational capsule, (you know who you are) has said to me that someday he will write his book, five years have gone by and still hasn’t written it.

On the other hand, another colleague from WOSO said to me, “I will write my book within the next year for sure” and now her book “Emprendeser” you can buy in amazon.com and other places.

Have someone said to you, “when I retire I will do such and such”? or “when the kids leave home I will pursue my degree”? or “when I have more time I will start going to the gym”?

Will never happen.

Define yourself through your situation, through your present, in the “now” instead of in the future “I will do it when” or “I am not doing it because...” Or in the past, “never had the opportunity”, “the time wasn’t right”, “I blew my chance”.

There is only one “now”, there is only the present, this moment, right now, from which everything else comes, our past, our present and our future.

Things are tough everywhere, although some people feel that they are getting better. Some don’t see it and they believe things are getting worse. In either case, now is not the time to rest on your laurels. Now is not the time to say “someday or I will do it when”.

It is time to clearly define what you want to do and then do it.

So, bring up to your conscious mind the dreams you have had, things you have always wanted to do or places you have always wanted to visit.

Now is the time for your dream, this is the time for you to make a plan on how you will achieve it.

The right formula: What is your exact goal,is it clearly defined? Is it realistic or at least close to reality?  How will it be measured, in other words, how will someone else see that you achieved it? What is your plan to do it? Divide the project into smaller tasks and right now take your electronic or paper planner and write down the very first activity, task or meeting you need to have in order to start your quest to achieve your dream.

Take action and persevere until you achieve it or you realize that you simply don’t have the genetics, the resources or what you need in order to achieve that specific goal.

If that is the case, choose another one.

You are on your way!

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