Life After Your Career: Redefining Success

Evanescence – 2018

Nevada

On Taming Time

To contemplate the passage of time and how you perceive it, is a subject of wonder since the beginning of time.

Early humans pondered the coming and going of the sun and moon while keeping warm by a campfire near their cave. In the twenty-first century, we ponder and wonder about the same rhythms of life as we mark time on a digital clock.

The rotation of the earth on its axis that creates day and night is the same now as it was in antiquity

The rotational march of the earth around the sun that creates the seasons and marks the years, is the same now as it was then.

So it is, that the objective march of time, was and is the same for all of us. 

But there are three things that differentiates you and I as individuals:

• How we choose to use the precious time of our lives.
• How those choices reflect how we value our time…and our desired lifestyle.
• How we perceive the speed at which time passes. 

These three factors are very much related. They influence greatly how we feel as we live our lives.

It’s a good thing to really contemplate our relationship to time, especially how we choose to use it and the consequences of those choices. It will become apparent that to a great degree, the key to managing time is to lead and manage ourselves deliberately, with purpose. In so doing, time can be a tool that serves our goals.

Equanimity Is a Personal Choice

A related consideration is that the practice of tranquility and a disposition to equanimity supports a wholesome personal and professional life. It’s called “practice” for a good reason. 

It’s essential to have an awareness that to have it and maintain it, you have to nurture it. You have to protect it from the demands of others, life’s unexpected events and circumstances in general. You have to be alert that these as well as your own choices, can erode these great qualities.

This practice will serve you well, particularly as you experience the end of your career and lifestyle beyond. 

Your transition will mark a time when the way in which you choose to use your time will change significantly. It will change from your professional or business role, in which you reacted mostly to the needs and wants of others, to having the ability to be more proactive with how you use your time.

Your Disposition Modulates Your Thoughts and Actions

You’ll likely find that there will be, to some degree, a vacuum of time in your daily life. There will probably be all sorts of requests that people will make of you. Consequently, it will serve you well to recalibrate how to satisfy your needs and desires with requests from others.

This may prove to be difficult, as your previous role involved the laudable lifetime habit of responding to circumstances or the needs of others.

The ways and means to adjust are legion. However you do so, recognize that your choices can provide you with the means to use your time as a tool to achieve wholesome balance.

Yes or No

You may underestimate the power you have to simply say “yes” or politely, “no” in response to requests from people you know. 

What’s overlooked even more, is the significant influence that your own impulses may have on your choices. An impulsive choice is not deliberate decision making. Rather, it’s a reaction to self-generated distractions that are devoid of thoughtful direction and purpose.

Focus and favor your allocation of time on that which you know is essential to accomplish. This may be to provide assistance to someone either to fulfill their request or as a result of your  initiative. Either way, to be of service will help satisfy your ongoing need to fulfill your purpose. At the same time, it’s important your satisfy your desires for fun and entertainment. 

Well earned, well deserved!

Equanimity as a Habit

Living a life of tranquility and equanimity sets its tone and quality. It supports the experience of a fuller life.

“There is more to life than increasing its speed.”

 Professor Albert Einstein 

Habits are formed as a result of deliberate practice directed to a particular purpose. Motivation will fuel your efforts to develop those habits. Once you develop them, their execution will more readily occur.

Deliberate choices made with a disposition of equanimity directed to your purpose creates a fuller life experience. The reality then, is that you’ll live a more effective quality of life. This is vastly different from judging your life by how many things you have done in a given period of time. 

For many of you, the likely result is the perception that the speed of passage of time is slowed down. And that perception can become your reality.

What is even more important is to have the conviction that you used that time deliberately for a clear purpose. In so doing, you will experience the feeling of fulfillment of great achievements. These will have been made possible by a disposition to tranquility and equanimity that manifest lasting value.

Date Updated: January 10, 2025

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 The Practice Transition Course for Physicians. _TM     

Serenity - 2017

USA