About Time

Posted on September 19, 2023 by Yun Chen, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.

When asked about the super power one would want to have, I used to think about time travelling. Of course, I do not have that, and have not been able to tell whether such super power would actually make my life better. Now, after watching the movie About Time, I know I do not need to have any super power such as time travelling. Life is a journey where I make choices and create experiences for myself and the people around me. We are not bounded by time, rather living with time at the moment. To me, watching this movie with the intention to capture some meanings, it indeed taught me several lessons about living a meaningful life as a kind person as well as a compassionate coach.

Lesson one: “All time travel in the world cannot make someone love you.”
Sometimes we hear people say, “If I did that or didn’t do that, he / she will love me more mow.” As ordinary people who cannot travel in time, we blame the lacking of love from others in the past incidents. However, Tim proved that no matter how he tried to travel back in time to do things differently, he could not make his first crush Charlotte to fall in love with him. Love is beautiful and yet complicated. It is not just about the action, but also about the deeper connections, chemistry, commitment and many more. It is so true to really just treasure the people who you love for every moment spend together. At the same time, we love with healthy boundaries. The healthy boundaries create respects and trust along love, and a signal to tell whether we are loving the person the right ways for both.
The application in coaching, is to focus on the present and setting goal for future. As a coach, with the understanding that it’s common for clients to dwell in the past and not able to shift the energy to do better at present, my job is to create a safe environment for the client to stay at the present, so that he/she is more willing to leave the past and come to the present to focus on what they can do better now. Similar to true love at every present moment, it is the unconditional positive regard and empathy I will have for the clients.

Lesson two: “If something to be fixed, she could probably have to do it by herself.”
It is so common that we love someone and so always want to do something for that person to fix all her / his problems, and to protect the person from hurt; especially when the other person is our family or partner. However, without any intrinsic motivation and transformation, the fix we are trying to do for the person is temporary. Tim learnt this lesson from all the helps he tried for her younger sister Katherine. He wanted Katherine to be with a right man and lived a happy life, but no matter what he tried, he could not change Katherine’s mind and fate. Until she learnt from the pain and loss in her own life mistakes, she realised what she needed to change and fix for her own life. Tim realised he could not fix Katherine’s problems for her life, but he made sure he was always present with her during her difficult time.
At the end of the day, we need to take accountability and responsibility for our own life. We want autonomy for ourselves. Indeed, we feel the empowerment and freedom of taking charge for ourselves without someone interfering so much. Sometimes we have to learn the lessons in a difficult and painful way. The more painful it is, the bigger the lesson leant and the more impactful the transformation is to happen intrinsically. I have learnt this in my life. As a coach, one of the key principles is to allow the client to take ownership of their owner decision and action. We want the clients to transform themselves with their own will power.

Lesson three: “Saying ‘Yes’ to my future baby, means saying “Goodbye” to my dad.”
Tim had not been able to accept that his dad has to leave him one day, so he kept going back to the old days and repeating the good time with his dad, after his dad passed away. However, this meant that he would not be able to be in the time when his second child was born after his dad passed away. He realised that he had to make choice. He decided to say goodbye to his dad forever, and moved on to his new life with new child to his own family.
Life is about making choice. It is extremely difficult to have everything and everyone we want in life, because most of them are not within our control. Making choice is to focus on what is the future we want to be, by letting go of the past which is not serving use good anymore. People always say, “past is the past.” Without letting go of the past, we will not be able to have the possibility of a different future ahead. As a coach, I always feel inspired when I see my client envision a better future, and hence gaining the power to move away from the past. Of course, this is also what I am trying to practice for myself.

Lesson four: “I don’t travel back in time anymore. I live everyday like I deliberately come back to this one day, and enjoy it.”
Time travel cannot make someone to love another person if they don’t mean to be together. Time travel cannot make someone else’s life better if that someone is not ready to make change in her / his present life. Time travel cannot make a human being live forever without impacting the lives of the others at the present. However, time travel and being live on the same day for two months, helped Tim discovered that focusing on the tension and worry and made it a tough day, while noticing the sweet and good in life made it an enjoyable day. As a result, he decided not to travel back in time anymore, and lived everyday like he deliberately went back to that day and lived it for the last time, so that he would only focus on the sweet and good things. Once he only focused the good the sweet, he stopped paying attention to the tension and worry. He was smiling and everything become brighter and smoother. I summarise Tim’s journey for myself as, “if I change, the world changes.”
It is our perceptions and ego that constraint us in our own world. However, the world that we are living is much more than our own world. We can teach ourselves to see the world outside of our own world, by noticing something opposite to what we habitually notice. If that something opposite makes us happier then let us take it into our own world, and throw away the old thing that is not making us happy anymore. What we want at the end of the day, is a happy and meaningful day. Knowing life has its span, anything that doesn’t give meaning to happiness and purpose, should not be taking a place in life. As a coach, I learn to be more mindful of living my everyday life with the focus on the sweet and good. This helps me to bring out the positive energy with my clients, which is filled with trust, purpose, meaning, compassion and gratitude.