When we talk about timing, we think about something happening at the ‘right time’ or the ‘wrong time’.
‘Wrong timing’, involves something happening too late or too early, taking too much time or not happening at all.
Good timing is when things happen as we’d hoped they would.
When we talk about bad timing, it’s really just frustration that the situation doesn’t match up to what we had in mind.
This can happen in any area of life; relationships, our work, our finances, our health, even our sporting teams.
When the results aren’t going the way we want them to, it’s frustrating. ‘If only I could just get X to happen?’ ‘Why won’t Y come into my life?’ etc.
When we think of it in this way, we are missing an important point.
We Are Interacting With the World, Not Controlling it.
No matter what we are trying to achieve in life, everything we attempt to control in the world relies upon other things, people, events & situations that we have no control over.
We can’t control what other people do or think, how they will respond, what the weather will be or if we will get that promotion or contract. All we can do is interact with the situations as they occur.
I look outside my window today, and everywhere I look there are green leaves covering all of the trees outside. But only a few weeks ago these trees were completely bare, and before that, they were covered with red, yellow and orange leaves.
In a few months time, those leaves will change colour again, and then pretty soon after the trees will be bare again. It all happens outside of my control.
If my life, identity, or sense of happiness was based on how many of those coloured leaves I could collect, what could I do to change it when the seasons change?
No matter how much I try to change this process or speed it up, I couldn’t. It happens when it happens. I have no control over it.
What I can do Is trust that the seasons will change and when the leaves begin to fall again I can be ready for them. Until that happens, my effort and focus are better placed elsewhere until I notice the seasons change.
When we try to force a solution or control a problem we don’t like, how do we know that the way things are isn’t exactly the way they are supposed to be? Or that the seasons won’t change by themselves soon enough?
We Can’t Control it, But We Can Influence What We Do About it.
Even if we can never fully control the outcome. It doesn’t mean we have to sit back and watch the world go by. We can change the way we respond to what is happening and move forward with something that better suits the season.
Steve Jobs once mentioned this skill as one of the most important lessons in life during an interview.
“The minute that you understand that you can poke life and actually something will pop out the other side, that you can change it, you can mold it. That’s maybe the most important thing. It’s to shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you’re just gonna live in it, versus embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it. I think that’s very important and however you learn that, once you learn it, you’ll want to change life and make it better, cause it’s kind of messed up, in a lot of ways. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”
Steve Jobs understood that even though the world was out of his control he could respond to what was happening in the moment, and influence what came out the other side.
It’s a similar concept to grappling or wrestling. If you are too rigid, tense or wanting to force a particular move on an opponent, there is no guarantee they will do anything close to what you want them to do. In fact, you are more likely to waste energy or injure yourself.
Sometimes an opponent is slow and heavy, sometimes they are quick and technical, or light and aggressive. But good grapplers adjust how they move and interact with those opponents and react to different opportunities that arrive, as they happen.
If we trust the timing isn’t good or bad, but is how things are supposed to be, it frees us to focus on the opportunities that are available. There is no such thing as bad timing.
