How much is your time worth?

Okay, so you work for a living and you make so much per hour. This question is not really about your wages; instead it is questioning how much your time is worth when it comes to your children.

The story goes something like this…

A man comes home one day from a hard days work and his son asks him a question: “Dad how much money do you make per hour?” The man was a bit taken aback by the question from his young son, but he went ahead and answered his question. “Son, I make $20.00 per hour”.

The son then looked up at his dad with a very earnest look on his face and asked, “Could I have $10.00?”

The father was upset that his son would ask the question only to ask for money. He worked very hard for his money and his son was out of line. He commenced to tell his son what he thought of the question and told him in no uncertain terms that he had better not ask for money that way again.

The son, with his head hanging, walked away.

Later that evening as he was putting his son to bed, the way he had treated him earlier started to bother him. He reached into his wallet for a $10.00 bill and handed it to his son. The son got a big smile on his face and turned to reach under his pillow and pulled out ten $1.00 bills. The dad then got upset and asked his son why he asked for $10.00 when he already had that much money.

The son, who was now holding $20.00 in his hand, looked up at his father and said, “Dad I needed that money so I could buy an hour of your time….”

How much would your children give to get an hour of your time?

Take this job and….

Take this job and love it—and you thought I was going to quote the country song made famous by Johnny Paycheck, Take this Job and Shove It?

Since we are talking about our jobs, do you really like yours? I mean do you enjoy getting up and looking forward to your job? Or do you find yourself wishing you did not have to go to work?

Gallup did a survey and found that only 42% of Americans loved their jobs: definitely room for improvement.

There once was a wise man who said, “A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work.” If it is true, and I believe it is, then the world should stop (so to speak) until we start doing what we really want to be doing. The alternative is to keep doing what you are and being unhappy. What are you gaining by being unhappy? Nothing.

If one of the wisest men to ever live said that there is nothing better we can do in our lives than to be satisfied with our jobs, let’s not waste another day, week, or year being unhappy.

Yes I know there may be times in life when we have to do things we don’t like in order to accomplish our greater goals. But that does not mean it should consume our lives, or we will end up at the end of our time without having the satisfaction that was there for the taking. Now that would be a waste.

So what do you really want to do with the rest of your life?

The Gallup survey also found that the people most satisfied with their jobs were the ones who work in service-related occupations, helping others.

The same wise man also said this: “I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live.” How about that! Doing good things is related to happiness on the job.

Are you ready to take the plunge? Maybe you have not even allowed yourself to dream about what you would like to do. Then start dreaming and after you have dreamed, take action. If you do not act on your dream, it will never become reality. You will be stuck in the same pattern of life until your time is done.

Is time our friend?

Is time really our friend? Or, are we always fighting with it to accomplish what we want? Maybe the bigger question is…what we are filling our time with? After all, aren’t we the captains of our time? Isn’t it easy to say, “Tomorrow or the next day, I will do this ‘thing’ that is important to me”?

Have we ever looked backwards and noticed that time has come and gone for some of those things we wanted to do, things we will never get the opportunity to accomplish? I wanted to go camping more often with my oldest son and daughter. Now they are older and too busy—and I missed all those summer nights when we should have been sitting beside a fire, all because I was too busy with ’something.’

How do we stop this before it is too late for the next thing that is important? Maybe we should grade each event according to what we value as a priority.

Here is a great quote on time that I would like to share. “Time is an equal opportunity employer. Each human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes every day. Rich people can’t buy more hours. Scientists can’t invent new minutes. And you can’t save time to spend it on another day. Even so, time is amazingly fair and forgiving. No matter how much time you’ve wasted in the past, you still have an entire tomorrow.” — Denis Waitely.

Since we all have the same amount of minutes per day, let’s make them work for us!