Mental Model: You Have Time

We all tell ourselves the same story: there's never enough time. But what if that assumption doesn't have to be true?

Since starting my meditation journey, I've been questioning it.

The Trap of Time Scarcity

We rush through life, believing we’re running out of time, and imagining a day when we won’t have anything left to do.

I'm sorry to say, with that perspective, peace will never come, because there's always more to be done.

You try to cram everything in, which only creates more stress, more anxiety, until the system you built to manage it all eventually collapses. And you're left swimming in a sea of unfinished goals, dreams and projects.

What started as a goal or a dream eventually becomes squandered because of a scattered mind and too much to do.

Maybe the problem isn’t that we don’t have enough time, but that we’re looking at time the wrong way.

What If You Started Again?

I’m 40 now. And like a lot of people hitting this stage of life, I sometimes feel like time is starting to slip away.

Social media only amplifies that feeling, because everywhere you look you see other people’s perceived success and start thinking you’re not where you should be by this age.

That pressure creates stress and urgency, pushing you to just get things done, chasing some finish line that never really arrives. And in the process, happiness often gets lost.

But what if you flipped that perspective? Imagine splitting your life into two halves.

The first half is everything you’ve achieved up until now.

Then take the mindset that you’re starting fresh, that this is Day One of your second life.

The Leverage of Experience

From 40 onward, you’ve got another full stretch of time ahead of you, but now with all the knowledge, skills, and experience you’ve already built.

That makes every action you take from here so much more powerful than what you did in the first half.

Because in those first 10 to 15 years of life, you didn’t really have much control over anything at all.

Which means this second half actually gives you more leverage, more time, and more agency than the first.

So if you stay consistent and commit to mastering what matters, the second half of life doesn’t just have the potential to equal the first. It can completely surpass it.

Not only in achievement, but in fulfilment.

Since I started looking at my life in this way, a weight has lifted - I no longer feel like I'm running out of time.

I feel abundant in the time I have.

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