How Warping Time Can Help You Reach Your Full Potential

What if time really is just a jump to the left … and then a step to the right?

For those of you who are neither in your 50s nor have ever seen the 70s cult classic film “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and don’t know the Time Warp dance I’m referring to, buckle up. I’m about to share with you my latest revelation about time, our current dance with it and its warp-ability.

Don’t worry—it shouldn’t take too long.

We humans are certainly an interesting lot when it comes to a lot of things. But when it comes to time, many of us are at great odds with it. It’s even worse than that. We’re not only in denial about our limited time here, but according to science, we also use the time we do have usurping 80 percent of our 12,000 to 60,000 daily thoughts on negative things, 95 percent of which are repeated from the day before.

You do the math. How martyr-dumb of us is that?

Given what odd ducks we are about time, I’ve spent a ton of my own developing the right hacks to help us get a Handel on it. I have clients write their dreams/highest ideals for each of the 12 areas of life and time is, of course, one of them. In their dream for it, I have my clients figure out exactly who and how they want to be about time. I have them put in the right promises about it, and then I have them put their life in actual time (and a calendar!)—all the while having them get conscious of all their negative thoughts, beliefs and theories about time in order for them to see what they’ve actually been busy spending their time unconsciously proving.

What negative thoughts, beliefs and theories, you ask?

Oh my, where to begin. From I’m not a morning person to I need seven to eight hours of sleep to there isn’t enough time in the day to work takes up too much of my time to I have to put others before me to t he kids/computer/Netflix sucked me in, etc.

We’re what I call “weather reporters” about time, reporting on it like it’s happening to us. We can be good with it, great with it, bad with it, used to be good with it (aka before kids), victims of it, procrastinators, brats and liars about it, and so on. And no matter how much work I’ve done on myself and you regarding time, I find that most of us could still use more marriage counseling sessions with it (not to mention, a much larger, sexier vocabulary around it), as our relationship to time, at the moment, is far from hot, romantic, inspired or creative.

Myself included.

Guess what areas of my life I happen to be the most magical with about time? The areas I don’t really care about, like my art. I mean, of course I care about my art but not to the level I care about, let’s say, oh, I don’t know, the company I co-founded!

WTF (Finances!), right?

So when I started thinking about the concept of time warp and wondering what must my own thoughts, theories and beliefs are, given that my company’s results were great but not out-of-the-box insane, I went digging where I have you dig—into my own subconscious. I figured I’d discover some hidden disappointment or sadness. Except, I didn’t. What I discovered instead was even more alarming to me: Time was exactly what I thought it was—and what’s that?

A noun.

A thing that is linear, constant and consistent. Like gravity. And like gravity, it exists and is measurable: There are 24 hours in a day, 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, etc. Seemingly leaving you and I no choice but to act accordingly, and either be good with time the noun, bad with it, ignore it, nonchalant about it and so on.

But then I realized something else, it’s simply not true.

After all, people throughout history have had a completely different relationship to time than it simply being a constant—from Nelson Mandela, who, in one lifetime, ended apartheid, came out of jail and became president to Steve Jobs, who, at 20, dropped acid, said he’d be bigger than Gandhi and, in his short lifetime (56 years), just might have been (you decide!) to many more humans (both heroic and horrific) who were maniacal in their mission, warped time, and accomplished lifetimes’ worth of feats.

HOW?

They obviously had a way different relationship to and perception of time than most of us. They pointed far and wide, said out-of-the-box crazy sh*t, believed what they said and acted accordingly. Time was in no way just a noun, a constant or an impediment to them like it was for me in certain areas. It was their toy, their verb to play with at will. And, clearly, they were playing with different odds than many of us. Here I was, betting within 5 percent of what I wanted for Handel Group. Tell the co-founder what she won. Answer: Exactly what she was thinking, saying and believing.

Whoops.

Sure, Handel Group was keeping 95 to 100 percent of my target. The problem was, my target was 100 percent consistent with my own linear logic regarding time and creating a 15 to 20 percent yearly increase but not a 100 percent increase.

In other words, I was the problem, not time.

You see, if time were really just like gravity, then the only thing you and I could do is to surrender to it versus have to step up and get down and dirty with it, play with it, invent it, cause it, have magic around it and, yes, warp it.

Except, isn’t time our own invention?

A construct created to deal (or not deal) with our own demise? Why, then, can’t we turn time—like Handel Group did with “to human” and “love”—into a verb? A verb we can, in turn, mess with in the best and riskiest of ways and make more things happen because we, its inventors, invented new vocabulary, created new theories, and lived and died to prove those new theories true!

We can. I am.

The minute (pun intended) I started screaming an out-of-the-box, wild and seemingly (to me!) illogical target for Handel to reach and fully believed that there was no such thing as time the noun, I could game the linear system that I manufactured in the first place. The power was back where it belongs, in my hands, and I could think, speak, act and, yes, dance accordingly. Care to dance with me?

Remember: It’s just a jump to the left and a step to the right (as in accurate).

This post originally appeared on HandelGroup.com.

Photo credit: MStudioImages, Getty Images