Contributed by Irene Watson

You may have heard the saying that half of success in life is just showing up.

I always show up, but like everyone, occasionally I’m late. I also find I am extremely impatient with people who are late and keep me waiting, thinking it rude and discourteous. I find when I’m late it’s because I over-schedule myself. In either case, showing up late is not much better than not showing up at all. It gives people a bad impression of you.

Many of us have been trying for years to run the whole show, not because we are control freaks, though perhaps we are, but because we feel no one else is able or willing to do it. Consequently, we have so much to do everyday that we try to fill each minute. We repeatedly tell ourselves we will be on time for an event. We get ready to go before it’s time to leave. We know it will take twenty minutes to get there, and we look at the clock and see we have twenty-five minutes. We know we should leave now—just in case traffic is bad. Instead, we tell ourselves that in those five minutes, we have time to check our email, pay a bill, call someone about lunch tomorrow. Five minutes becomes ten. We end up leaving late and arriving late.

We can’t do everything. If we try to, we will only end up hurting ourselves and burning out. We need to schedule in cushion time for ourselves, that extra five minutes so we arrive early, or at least on time.

If you’re a parent, you know your children often make you late. Sometimes it’s even a typically late friend who is supposed to pick us up to go somewhere who makes us late. Without being a control freak, it doesn’t hurt to tell someone to pick you up ten minutes earlier than necessary, or to tell your children to be ready to go ten minutes before you have to. Again, give yourself that cushion of time.

Don’t be afraid to arrive early. It will give you an opportunity to talk to the other people there. Maybe you can lend a hand in helping to set something up. See being early as an opportunity to get to know people, or if you are the first one there, see it as an opportunity to relax for a couple minutes, to breathe, to catch your second wind for the rest of your busy day.

Irene Watson, MA, is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.