The price you pay for a week-long vacation with your family is a week of life that you will never get back.
The price you pay for being angry at the driver in front of you during your 10-minute commute is 10 minutes of your life that you will never get back.
In a very real sense, you are always paying with your time.
There’s a subtle but significant shift that occurs when you frame experiences as something that you pay for instead of something you merely receive.
In appreciating that the cost of any experience is arguably your most precious asset, the most pressing question becomes: “what kinds of experiences am I willing to pay for with my limited time?”
Though a peculiar way to frame things at first, it can help encourage some much-needed scrutiny in many kinds of situations that we often regret: situations where we‘re needlessly angry, when we’re with company that we don’t actually want to be around, or when we’re working a job that we’ve outgrown.
And in recognizing these situations, creating the opportunity to break free of them so that you can redeem your time elsewhere.