“You can make more money, but you can’t make more time.”

I’m not sure who originated that quote, but I’d always accepted it as true. After all, there are lots of ways to create more cash.

Invent something the world  can’t live without.

Find a better job.

Have a garage sale.

Beg, borrow or steal (not highly recommended unless you want to stand on a street corner, pay interest or get arrested).

But there can’t possibly be a way to make more time, right?

Wrong.

And I’m not talking about getting better at time management. Downloading yet another day planning app and sacrificing sleep and sanity in order to pack more activity into the same 24 hours.

I’m talking about literally creating more time.

At this point, you’ve either decided I’ve been eating peyote buttons for breakfast, or I’m possibly onto something.  I hope it’s the latter. Because if you can wrap your head around the idea I’m about to share with you, your relationship with the clock will never be the same.

Welcome to living in “Einstein Time.”

In Gay Hendricks’ bestselling book, The Big Leap, he presents the groundbreaking idea that time is not a finite entity outside of us, but rather something we ourselves create internally.

As Hendricks puts it, “When we’re running on Einstein Time, our experience of time changes because we make a fundamental change in how much space we are willing to occupy. By learning to occupy space in a new way, we actually gain the ability to generate more time.”

Here’s a practical example from Einstein himself that perfectly explains the flexible nature of time:

“Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute.”

Unless you are wearing asbestos gloves, your tolerance for occupying any space at all on the scorching stove is going to be zero. Conversely, when you’re with someone you’re attracted to, you are more than willing to inhabit each moment together.  And time literally flies.

So how do we stop doing battle with the hours and minutes that seem to rule our lives?

One of the most simple ways to begin accepting the fact that YOU are the source of time is to stop complaining about the lack of it.

Notice that I said “simple,” not “easy.”

We’ve been conditioned to believe in scarcity when it comes to time. So, of course it’s second nature for us to gripe about it.

How often do you catch yourself saying the following:

There aren’t enough hours in the day.

I don’t even have a second to stop and breathe.

Where does the time go?

But if you can (even for a day or two) allow yourself to play with the mantra “I am where time comes from” whenever you feel rushed, you’ll be surprised by how quickly the pressure of trying to wrestle time into submission will dissipate.

While alleviating stress is reason enough to adopt this new way of thinking, there is another benefit that I’ve found to be equally important:

Increasing your creative output exponentially.

If you read my blog, I’m willing to bet that even if you aren’t a writer, you have a huge passion to create.

You want to make more music. Paint more canvases.

Cook more amazing meals. Grow stunning gardens that would make Martha Stewart hate you. (If that last one applies, call me. I have been known to kill a cactus by breathing in its general direction.)

But after you factor in all the other aspects of your life – job, spouse, kids, pets – the assumption is that there is very little room left for your creative outlets. That you can’t possibly generate anything worthwhile when you don’t have an entire day set aside to noodle on your latest project.

And that kind of erroneous thinking is precisely why you need to switch over to Einstein Time (ET).

When you’re operating on ET, you become more easily absorbed in the work you’re doing, whether it’s for fifteen minutes or five hours.  Blocks and resistance dissolve because you aren’t obsessively watching the timer, counting each minute as it slips away. The less you believe in a so-called “time crunch,” the more easily your words, melodies, images or whatever you’re trying to bring forth will flow.

ET applies to the business world, too. The demands you feel upon you (meetings, deadlines, etc.) are much less crushing if you realize that you own the clock, not the other way around.

But what if everyone else thinks I’m crazy? Or they won’t  play along with my new perception of time?

Not to worry. The beauty of ET is that other people don’t have to buy into this concept.

Just you.

The idea of ET is simple, but it takes a little practice to integrate it. In fact, as I began writing this post, I was hyper-cognizant of an appointment I had looming on the horizon today. I found myself getting uptight over the prospect of finishing this – and several other pieces – before I had to leave my house.

So, I stopped, took a breath…and reminded myself of who’s really in charge.

And I wrapped it all up with time to spare.

If you’re ready to give up feeling like you’re living on a shot clock, give ET a try.

You’ll find that time really is on your side.