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Short on Time? Learn How To Make Friends With Time

Will you have enough time to accomplish all your career goals? Will you have time for interest for things outside of career? These were questions that I pondered in my earlier years.

Could I share with you how I found my answers to these questions?

My ideas of career were shaped by the Victorian mentality which were still pervasive in my youth. You worked hard, stayed at the same job and when you retired you got a gold watch and that was it.

The first inkling I had that this was not so was as an employer. I was always having to hire personnel to work in my office. I found that forever was about five years and a long time was about three years. Some only lasted weeks or months.

Transcending Time and Becoming More Productive

In 1975 I had an eye-opening experience. I learned the TM technique. I was dubious about the time commitment it required. I was a very busy practicing medical specialist and I was already too busy. Where would I ever find twenty minutes twice a day to sit quietly and meditate? Yet I was so curious about the benefits that I decided to try it, if only for a few days.

Six months later, as I began to use my intelligence more creatively, I made some changes in my work schedule and immediately started doing 20% more work each day in less time that it had taken formerly. That means that every day I made 20% more income in less time.

Enough Time for Hobbies

That increase in creativity took another direction as well. I had always liked to carve on wood with a pocket knife but had never done anything significant other that win a model airplane contest. I found my interest and my skills beginning to explode in the area of woodworking. Several years later I found myself making 18th century museum reproductions without any apprenticeship or study other than what was available in books.

I can’t tell you how much satisfaction my interest outside of my career brought me. After using my deductive and analytic powers all day, it was pure bliss to let the creative aspect of my nature loose in the wood shop in the evenings.

Looking back at all this from my current perspective I realize that what hems us in is boundaries. I am busy with my career, I have no time for outside interests. This is a boundary. I have to stay in the same career until I retire or die. This is a boundary. Well, if we create boundaries, we can uncreate them. I have learned that at our center we are unbounded. We represent all possibilities. That is how some can accomplish so much.

Letting Go of Boundaries

As I began to let go of boundaries, I found a wonderful field of health care that I had overlooked. It used natural means to recreate balance in the body and mind and was not only effective but free of harmful side effects. So I embarked on a second career in my chosen field of health care.

The more I learned about this the more I wanted to share it with others. I always had a fondness for learning and the academic life so at age 47 I left the private practice of medicine and became a university professor, researcher and director of an alternative medicine clinic for the faculty and staff. Several years later I became a teacher of the TM technique and started on another teaching career.

Eventually I left the university to teach in the field and then was asked to start an alternative medical school. As I approached retirement age I decided to return to my native city and just teach the TM technique and do my woodworking. After a year of this I decided to turn my passionate hobby of woodworking into a small business. Now whenever I am not busy with one thing I love doing I am doing the other.

Your True Nature is Free of Boundaries

My point with all of this is that there is great value to getting to know the unbounded nature of the inner self. Without the technique for quieting the mind, I was completely unaware of my inner nature. Had you told me at age 26, the year I finished my academic training, that I would have so many careers and do so many different things, I would have laughed at you.

So, if you feel that you don’t have enough time for what you want to do, if you feel trapped in a career path that is no longer in your best interest, then I suggest you get a technique for becoming unbounded. TM is that technique which worked for me. The important thing is that you find one that works for you. Otherwise you will be absolutely correct. You will not escape from your self-created boundaries and time will run out.

{ 2 comments… add one }
  • Lewis Cleland January 31, 2012, 6:02 pm

    You have hit it right on the head. Do you still teach TM? If not how can I find an Instructor? Thank you

  • Edwards Smith January 31, 2012, 10:56 pm

    Dear Lewis:

    Thanks for the encouragement. I still teach the TM technique but I live in Vermont. The best way to find a teacher is to go to http://www.tm.org and follow the links. You will be referred to the nearest teacher. You will be glad that you have pursued this thought. I have done many things and had many careers in my life but this was the smartest thing I ever did.

    Edwards Smith

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