Timing & Synchronicity

What do you need right now?

Often, timing is everything. Being at the right place at the right time can make a world of difference.

Have you ever…

• Taken a great photo while on vacation?
• Had a random conversation that turned out to be really helpful?
• Happened across a product that saved you hours of time?

As hard as we try, we can’t control everything in our lives. Sometimes great things happen merely by “chance” (“fate”, whatever you want to call it).

There’s another aspect of timing in life that we can control. This timing might be called: Working within the forces of life — and it’s entirely within our control.

Working within the forces of our life requires us to view life as an interdependent system — some things depend on others.

We need to see life as an economy.

Economy relates to production and consumption. Think of your life right now as an economic system:

• What’s your main product?
• What are you consuming?

Whatever we’re producing requires resources — time, energy, money, relationships, etc. So it follows that what we consume should support whatever we’re producing. In other words, we need some balance in our lives.

We live in a binge culture that encourages overindulgence in work, entertainment, food, exercise, rest, etc. Not that anyone or anything directly encourages me to watch too much TV, but Netflix, Hulu, & Amazon Prime Video don’t help…overabundance and endless choices sometimes complicate life.

A simple way to determine what you need right now is to look at the specific areas of life where you’re stretched thin or overdoing it. Do the resources you consume support your end-product? (Assuming you’re happy with what you’re producing).

If you’re working a lot, are you getting enough rest, eating properly, and exercising enough to support your work efforts? Are you nurturing the relationships (with coworkers & family) needed to succeed or do you take them for granted?

On the flip-side, too much Netflix and R&R can lead to a mini existential crisis.

A good check-in is to ask yourself how you’re doing with your faith/philosophy, family, & friends. We can easily neglect these things at the expense of other “more important” things.

We need synchronization with ourselves — sounds silly but we need to make sure our inputs support our outputs. It’s simple economics. We like to live at the extremes of life — either doing too much or not enough.

I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer— Martin Luther

Theologian Martin Luther famously said that he felt like he couldn’t accomplish his life’s work without significant time in prayer. For him, prayer was key in his life. Why would he neglect something so important to his work? Yet, we can easily neglect important things when we fail to view life as an economic system. When life becomes about one thing we risk loosing our balance.