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Episode 491 – the magic of time 

• Welcome friends to another episode of QFY, the podcast that takes you on a journey to your highest potential
• With simple strategies and easy-to-implement practices this podcast focuses on helping you make small changes that prepare you for the bigger ones you are currently struggling to make
• My listeners have shared with me that QFY helps them make better decisions in their daily lives and if you are listening right now and enjoy this podcast, I would be delighted if you shared it with ONE friend
  • if you are benefiting – so will someone else
  • and you never know how much someone may need one of the messages I share in this moment of their lives
• so I would appreciate if you pass on the message
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• I publish episodes Mon, Wed, Friday
• I want to support your journey and be there for you with the right tools and inspiration to keep you moving forward
• So far I have only recorded my own experiences and the strategies that work for me
• But I am planning on starting interviews soon and share the stories of others with you
  • Their Quest for their best self
• As I built my network of incredible human beings in my life, I realized everyone has a story to share
• And I want to bring their stories to you so you hear more than just mine
• So we can learn what works for others and how they are making changes in their life that propel them towards their dreams
• So stay tuned for that
• This will be a new challenge for me
  • Learning to interview others

Lets get to today’s episode

Episode 491

• When I enrolled in Freshmen English during my first semester of college here in the US, I was introduced to a new world
• I had always loved reading
• As a kid I was under my covers with a flashlight reading anything I could find
  • Books from my grandparent’s attic, often written in old German lettering, hard to decipher
  • Fairytales that my grandparents had gifted to me because I loved them
  • And sometimes adults novels
    • Which included WWII literature my mother was devouring
  • Later in school I was introduced to the great German writers, Rilke, Grass, Heine, Hesse, etc.
• But when I came to the US – another part of the world opened itself to me
• Another continent
• Central and South America
• And I was swept away by magic realism
• Writers like Julio Cortazar, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Jorge Luis Borges captured me so much that I read everything I could and took every Latin American Literature class I could get my hands on throughout my college time
• Magic realism won my heart because it turns the often mundane and difficult reality and gives it wings
• It introduces magic into reality
• It blurs the boundaries of what we know to be real
• I was raised on fairytales
• and maybe that is why I was and still am so fascinated by this genre of literature that was, in fact, first described by a German in 1925
• in magic realism, The magic is a natural part of the world
• but not in a fantasy kind of way
• rather, in such a subtle way that the reader almost accepts it as a given
• Magic Realism to me is an opportunity to dream
• To let your mind wander beyond the defined and the rational
• To see what else might be possible if you just play a little with your imagination
• The fascinating part of many of these stories is that they are fairly simple
• Describing normal people in their normal lifes
• Magic realism gives

Ordinary events a touch of the extraordinary.

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• A women, unhappy in her marriage, for example begins to associate her life with a tree that’s growing outside her window
  • As in one of my favorite short stories by Maria Luisa Bombal called The Tree
• Magic realism can be challenging to read because there are magical element not only in the plot, but also in the writing
• Writers often play with words and numbers and colors and, and how they are shown on a page
• Jorge Luis Borges was a magician at this, and that makes him often difficult to understand
• But often these writers had wonderful insights and I especially love the play with time
• Time in magic realism is more fluid – it doesn’t always move forward in a straight line as we often see it
• While we perceive time in a past, present and future sense, I have had moments where I experienced time as something more fluid
• I have recently begun to notice this since I spent my weekends out in nature, often without my phone, hardly any people and without the amenities of modern life
  • I sleep in a tent or the car
  • The river or the lake is my shower
  • The moon is my night light
  • And the mountain in the distance is my GPS
• There is hardly any past or future – there is only the present moment
  • My steep hike up a hill surrounded by the wonders of nature
  • Maybe a colorful bird flying in front of me, capturing my attention
  • I am watching my steps up to make sure I don’t trip
  • And I listen to the bird, look at his colors,
  • I am absorbed with everything I am seeing, doing and sensing
  • Time works through me as I work with it
• And every time I come back from such a weekend it takes me a day to adjust back into this 9-5 world I live in
  • Where time is more structure
  • Where time runs my schedule
  • Where I start a task because the clock says I should, and then end it because the clock tells me
  • Where I am constantly looking at time to decide whats next – today, tomorrow, in 5 years
• my weekends in nature are eternal
  • I create time – time doesn’t run me
  • And I know so because of the imprints it leaves inside of me that I cannot forget
    • Feelings, smells, thoughts, inspirations
  • The time I created stays with me – it carries me through my days, weeks, months
• My modern life, on the other hand is like a machine that produces the same output every day
  • Mo-Fri I am part of the machine
  • The morning and afternoon commute
  • My routine of meals, meetings, gym and chores
• Done today, forgotten tomorrow
• Not lasting
• Major events are the only thing that come, they stick around for a little, and then they move into the past
• But everything else either lingers or is forgotten
• Listen to this quote by Borges about his idea of time:

Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire. The world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings

• We often look at time as something outside of us
• The calendar, the clock, the events in our day
• Everything happens to us
• Time comes, and time goes
• Yet time – and I experience this – is within me
• It’s eternal
• When I look at a lake, or the sky or the seemingly endless horizon, I don’t have a sense of time
• Or better – I don’t sense any boundaries of time
• Its only the modern world with its Start and End times that creates these boundaries
• What Borges tells me here confirms this
• We are our experience of time
• Time resides within us
• We determine time, not the other way around
• An age number may denote how old we are, but we decide what we do with this age
  • We control the river – or how our life flows
  • We manage the tiger – or what we do with our life
  • We are in charge of the fire – or what consumes us
• The river, the tiger and the fire are part of this world – real parts
  • Challenges,
  • Dangers
  • genetic predispositions
• But we decide what we do with what we have been given
• We live in this reality called world
• Things happen around us
• But we decide what we do with them
• My weekend life has been such a contrast this year to my weekday life that I have noticed this more and more
• Out in the wilderness I am the creator of my life
• I look for a place to sleep, for food and water and for a path to explore
• During the week all of it is created for me
  • I merge onto the freeway and the flow of traffic absorbs me

• But the more I create, the closer I am to my purpose because I am taking control of time
• I have a similar feeling when I put content out into the world
  • My thoughts on paper
  • My voice into a mic
  • My story in front of audiences
• Or when I make jewelry – which I haven’t done in a while
• When I express myself
• When I immerse myself into life
• When I create something that is bigger than the next appointment
  • That doesn’t care about when my next appointment is
• Then I create
• Then I am the river, the tiger and the fire
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• In the spirit of the ancient truth that it’s not what happens to us that matters but what we do with it.
• Time flows by, but its up to us to seize it
• What does this mean?
• For me it means first and foremost to become a creator of life, not just a consumer
  • Contributing to the world with my strengths in some way
• This includes making my own decisions rather than waiting for the decisions to be made for me
  • I own my schedule, my routines, my habits
  • They should help me be my best self
  • Not hold me back from being that
• The past is past
• The future is not yet lived
• The present then is the only time we have – this very moment
• Its only in the present that we can make the changes in order to reach our fullest potential
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• When I stand on top of a mountain – looking into the distance
• After a strenuous climb or hike
  • I dream of my potential
  • I imagine the person I could be
• When I am stuck in traffic yet again – I don’t see much at all
  • I only want to make it through
  • Get to work or home and get on with my to-do’s
• I believe its when we let go of our grip on time once in a while
• Stop following the plan and make the plan instead
• Its then that we notice that time is fluid
• And that it flows through us
• And that we can change our reality by creating a different one

Maybe that’s what we need to do more often my friends

Find those moments in your life that give you the feeling that time is all yours

Figure out which activities give you this feeling and start exploring

Do more of those things I you can and do them regularly

Don’t just look at the river, the tiger and the fire

Become it

Create your own life

This to me is making the best of my time

Much love