The Quiet Truth About Time and Who You're Becoming

What really matters to you? Take a look at your calendar.

“Tired of lying in the sunshine, staying home to watch the rain. And you are young and life is long, and there is time to kill today. And then one day you find, ten years have got behind you. No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.” - Time, Pink Floyd

The Quite Truth About Time

I recently returned home after nearly a month in my home country, Colombia. The time spent there was (as always), transformative and eye-opening. After a month spent connected to nature, natural ways of living, and in proximity to indigenous communities - I am actually in a moment of internal whiplash coming back to the US.

A day there might be comprised of:

• Hiking to waterfalls

• Picking mangos off trees (or dodging them as they threaten to fall off a tree and decapitate you from 30 feet in the air)

• Learning about the old ways of living from wise people

• “Organic, local, non-GMO, blah blah blah” healthy food, but without all the labels (and ridiculous prices) you find at Whole Foods. That’s just how normal food is over there (in certain settings, Colombia is not a perfect place).

• Limited screen time and focus on work - just enough to get by and enjoy myself

• Quiet spaces meant for resting

• Lying down shortly after sunset and rising with the sun in the morning

A day back in the US might be comprised of:

• Driving on a 6 lane highway for 40 minutes to see someone

• Parking lots, shopping plazas, and more highways

• Starbucks, Whole Foods, Walmart

• Sitting 90% of the day

• Constant screen time and connectivity

• Overstimulation

Yes. My experiences in Colombia and the US varied greatly both in terms of the physical characteristics of the spaces but also in terms of the local cultures. It made me question a lot of things about the different ways it is possible for human beings to live their lives.

This post is not mean to suggest that we tear down all Walmarts in Florida and replace them with artificial waterfalls (that would be cool though). Restructuring the physical spaces around us takes a lot of time, energy, and political power. It’s a long-term game.

What I want to talk about today is something we have more immediate control over - our priorities (AKA what matters to us now).

Whether or not we really see it, our priorities are clear as day. However, many will stop to think when asked the question “What are your priorities? What really matters to you?”

They might say: “That’s a great question, let me think about it. Let me journal about it. Let me write a Substack post about it.”

In fact, this whole process of “reflecting” on our priorities is totally unnecessary. It’s right in front of our faces - it’s the quiet truth of how we spend our time. You may say that your priorities are health, personal growth, and connection, but your calendar and daily choices will tell the real story. As my teacher has said before: if you want to know what your priorities are, ask yourself: How am I actually spending my time? What am I doing, hour-by-hour, every day?

That is your answer to the question of what really matters to you. It isn’t the aspirational, intellectual answer you want to give after “reflecting,” it’s the truth of what your priorities are now.

A Metaphor for Modern Life

Illustration By Leon Zernitsky

Time is like food. You consume it every day of your life. What you consume adds up. Sometimes in energizing ways, sometimes in harmful ways.

I recently reflected (ironic, I know) about time in my life. How sometimes time seems to speed up and other times it seems to drag on forever. Strange, but an analogy was born.

I broke it down like this:

• A twinkie = addictive, sugary junk-time (social media scrolling, binge-watching media, video games, and other quick-hit dopamine distractions). Time moves quickly.

• Plain bread = doing nothing or doing things from a space of apathy (zoning out, or even moving through life without any real engagement in it, doing things “just to do them”). Time moves slowly.

• A fulfilling meal = meaningful, nourishing activities (deep conversation, creative work, healthy movement, spiritual practice, and more). Time may move quickly or slowly, but it in any case it feels rich and full of meaning.

We should aim to eat as many fulfilling meals as possible. Twinkies might taste good, but they won’t nourish you. In fact, they are rotting your insides slowly over time. A loaf of plain bread will keep you from starving, but you end up bloated, dull, and unsatisfied. One slowly kills you, the other just keeps your alive, but nothing more.

And such is the life for many of us in the West. We move between things we have no energy for but feel we “have to” do and sugary crap that’s meant to soothe us and make us feel better (which we need because the rest of our day was spent in a gray, flavorless goop).

Plain white bread all day, and then a twinkie/chocolate/bag of chips because we “deserve it” for eating all that plain white bread.

Actually eat like this for a week and see how you feel.

But what if you cut out the twinkies and replaced them with nutritious meals? That would change how you feel in your body and in your life dramatically. I don’t mean to suggest we can cut out all of the “plain white bread” from our lives. If you can, you are in an extremely privileged situation. Most of the people on earth truly have to do some amount of things they don’t want to do to make ends meet.

But if we look sincerely into our lives, most people in most situations will be able to find spaces where they are eating twinkies (or more white bread than they need to be eating) that can be replaced with a nutritious meal.

That being said, you only know what you know. It can be hard to break out of cycles we’ve been living in for years. What if 90% or more of our diets are plain white bread and twinkies? How do we even know that something is wrong, given that’s all we know? And how do we know what a nutritious meal looks like?

Realizing I Needed a Reset

My trip initiated a process of re-seeing myself. After connecting with the people and the land in Colombia, my eyes were opened to other ways of living. Slower, but more intentional and fulfilling, ways of living a life.

Up until now, my days have largely been defined by work, stressing about work, driving around, scrambling to fit in time to take care of my body through individual exercise, and scheduling in time to see people and be social. The days felt both long and short. I felt like I was consuming a lot of white bread all day. My exercise felt like something I had to do to keep myself from atrophying. Seeing people felt like something I had to do to keep myself from suffering the effects of loneliness.

My life was slowly becoming a cycle of lots of white bread. Some twinkies thrown in, but fortunately I’ve largely kicked those habits. The key thing was that I was missing a plentiful dose of fulfilling meals.

After coming back from the trip I realized that I need to change the energy with which I engage with my daily life. This is not just a mindset shift, it’s a shift in what my days actually look like - how I spend my time.

I am just starting this transition, so I thought it was a good time to write this post. It will both clarify my thinking about how to undergo this, and also allow us all to be exposed to one another’s perspectives (getting exposed to other people’s perspectives is how we can break out of the trap of “only knowing what we know”).

What Do You Want to Nurture?

This is the part where you can ask yourself the aspirational question:

“What will I choose to nurture with my time, energy, and money in this new phase of life?”

We are not just talking about values. We are talking about how these values take physical form in daily life. So I sat down and asked myself this question. That’s how I came up with the 5 Elements of Felipe’s Life, which I will share in a moment.

I encourage you to ask yourself this aspirational question.

It is not “what do I currently prioritize?” Because the answer to that is simply what you’re already doing. The question is: “what will I prioritize now that I have more awareness around how I’m currently living my life?”

Once you’ve come up with some answers, it’s probably a good idea to ask yourself why those are good things to prioritize. Why they are good. Ask yourself again. And a 3rd time perhaps.

Felipe’s 5 Elements of Life (As of Today!)

Five Elements by Pancha Tatava

Through this process, I created a basic structure for how I want to live my life - these are the places I want to invest my time, energy, and money.

This is just a starting point - it is not a perfect or permanent model. In a day, week, month, or year, I may say “crap I completely forgot X!” And then I will include it. Flexibility is important :)

Here are my buckets and (some of) the rationale behind them. I will try to be brief here as this post is not so much about hyper-analyzing myself, but more about outlining some core questions and methods we might pursue to get better answers to those questions.

• Spirit

  • This is everything to do with my spiritual growth. “The unexamined life is not worth living” and so on. Spiritual growth is the process of surrendering to the truth. It is a quest for the truth of our individual and collective lives and then living in accordance with that truth. I want my spiritual growth to be the foundation upon which the rest of my life is built.

• Health

  • The health of my body. Our bodies are the vessels we move through this life with. Healthy, strong vessel leads to a certain experience of life. Sick, crumbling vessel leads to a different experience.

• Community

  • Because of how the modern world is structured, the default way most people live is very alone (this includes people who basically only interact with their partners and work colleagues). True community building requires work and active effort in this time and place we find ourselves in. We evolved to move through this life communally. When we live communally, we reap great rewards. When we do not, we suffer immensely. See my post on the epidemic of loneliness for more on this topic.

• Finance

  • We live in a capitalist society. Like it or not, we need money to live and move through this world. We must earn money (energy) to support ourselves and our communities. This could be an entire post, but money is only one form of energy - there are many others.

• Exploration

  • This captures so many other things in life that can be fulfilling for their own sake. Music, art, literature, play (not mindless/distracting play like video games), learning, etc. This is the expression of the child-like curiosity that all humans inherently have within them.

Building a Balanced Diet

I like the diet metaphor because it explains well how to use this methodology to organize your life. I’ve laid out 5 categories I want to spend my time on and now I want to touch on a few disclaimers.

Not every day or every week will be evenly divided. It’s unrealistic to expect that exactly 20% of each day will go to each category. That’s now how life works. Sometimes you need more iron, so you eat more meat (or wherever you get your iron). Sometimes you need more fibre, so you eat broccoli.

It all comes down to sincerely listening to what is needed in the moment. This ties back to surrendering to the truth (aligning with the truth).

Of course, it is important that no category or bucket gets chronically neglected. I do not believe it is sustainable to work 80 hours a week (inherently sacrificing your health and community) for several years. I do not believe it is justified except in situations of extreme and immediate necessity. When I say we can be flexible and listen to the needs of the moment, that may mean that a particular week requires more focus on work, yes, but not at the significant expense of your health.

Seasons of life certainly may require focusing on one or two categories more than others (if you get very sick you may need to focus exclusively on health and throw finance out the window). But you must stay conscious and sincere.

What is truly needed? What am I just telling myself is “necessary” but really isn’t?

You don’t need five gourmet meals every day.

But you also only need to eat the amount of plain bread that is truly necessary.

I am one to argue that it is never good for you to consume a twinkie, ever. It won’t ruin your life if you eat one once per year. But it certainly isn’t good for you, even in small quantities. Each of us will make our own decisions.

Build as balanced of a “time diet” as you possibly can. We can all make significant improvements.

Three Principles That Guide My Time Design

1. Every category matters. Do not starve any part of your being. As discussed above, it’s ok if something needs to take a back seat temporarily, but do not starve it. There is not really a hierarchy here. They are all equally important overall, with a natural rotation in which one is more necessary at a given moment. The only one that basically caps out at a certain point is finance (once you have enough, you have enough. No need to keep running on the money-making treadmill).

2. Emergencies are temporary. Sometimes one area demands your full focus (sickness, work emergency, etc), but let it be as short-lived as possible, otherwise you will suffer even more than whatever the emergency you had to deal with brought up.

3. Stack your meals when possible. Look for activities that nourish multiple parts of you. The more buckets/categories an activity belongs in, the better (usually). Exercising with a group of friends in nature (under my categorization system) would fall into both health + community. Working with a spiritual group that explore creative expression would fall into spirit + exploration + community.

Examples of Activities Within Each Element

I made a list of a few things that might fall into each bucket for me. Your buckets might be different, and the activities within those buckets will be different too. I share out of a desire to be transparent and allow you into my thought process.

Spirit:

• Inner work with my teacher, spiritual groups, therapy, inquiry journaling

Health:

• Daily movement, yoga, meditation, yoga nidra, healthy eating/cooking

Community:

• Men’s group, intentional living house, time with friends, time with my partner, Living Dialogues ;)

Finance:

• Consulting, tutoring, tourism/retreat projects, entrepreneurship learning

Exploration:

• Music (guitar/harmonica/singing), writing, travel, learning about the natural sciences, reading, new skills

These lists could easily start to get kind of complicated and messy because many activities will fall into more than one category. My men’s group, for example, falls into basically all 5 categories. That also tells me that it’s an extremely powerful and high-impact activity.

Once you’ve made your list with activities, continue to add to it as time goes on and you learn more about the kinds of things you can do. And pay special attention to those activities that are in 3+ categories. They are very special.

A Sample Day: Putting It Together

I will offer a sample schedule of what a workday might look like for me given this understanding. You’ll note that every hour, every minute, of my day is informed by my 5 elements. I am living in a way that is nurturing what really matters to me.

This is not meant to be rigid. I will not be following this minute by minute in my real life. The schedule is simply meant to illustrate that it is possible to have a full day of meaningful activity, even with large chunks dedicated to work (you’re really “winning” when your work is something you really like/love).

As I run my own business, I do have the luxury of taking a break in the middle of the day from 12-2pm for a walk, meditation, and lunch. This schedule really only applies to me at this moment of my life. You will have to create your own version (for example, people with children, different jobs with different schedules). Get creative and be sincere. Children are amazing companions in community & exploration work!

Regular Workday Schedule

6:30 AM – Rise & Yoga
7:00 AM – Exercise
8:00 AM – Breakfast
9:00 AM – 12:00 PM – Work
12:00 PM – Walk
12:30 PM – Meditation
1:00 PM – Lunch
2:00 PM – 5:00 PM – Work
5:00 PM – Rest (decompress from work before moving into next thing)
5:30 PM – Exploration (Music, reading, writing, etc)
7:00 PM – Community Gathering / Learning (Men’s group, etc)
9:00 PM – Yoga Nidra
9:30 PM – Read / Sleep
10:00 PM – Sleep

Notice how my schedule leaves no room for twinkies. I don’t want them. Each block is nourishing a different element of my life. Some blocks (work blocks) are a combination of plain white bread and a fulfilling meal (I do cool and interesting things that expand me and then I do boring repetitive things that bore me but are necessary).

This is a work day. A non-work day would look very different.

What Do You Want To Eat?

No life is going to be perfect. This blog post isn’t a new-age life hack for you to “live your best life”.

🤢

This blog post is an invitation for you to critically and sincerely evaluate how your spend your time, which is what really matters to you now.

I am confident we can find better ways to live, together. Ways that nourish us more than we ever could have imagined. But we need outside perspectives to show us the possibilities we are not aware of. This is what I have tried to do - offer one possibility for how you might view your life differently.

So before logging off I ask you:

1. What matters to you now? What are you feeding yourself?

2. What do you want to eat instead? What are those categories/elements/buckets for you?

3. How can you shift even one hour a day towards something more nourishing?

4. Do you disagree with me on anything? Have a different perspective to offer? Please share it.

You are what you eat. What are you becoming as a result?

All my love,

Felipe