Psychological time and weighing the consequences

One of the most fascinating areas of study is the study of time. I mean not the time of physics or the time that varies from culture to culture, but subjective time. As we have certain cultural agreements that there is a week, a year, a century, we come to assume that all people deal with time in the same way.

NLP, Neurolinguistic Programming had already done studies on individual differences in how each person deals with time. For example, I once knew a gentleman for whom 10 years from now was like a month from now. He saw and felt and thought that a decade passes extremely quickly. And that explained his behavior of being economically cautious, of saving and investing. Other people can’t even visualize a few weeks ahead, not because of a cognitive disability, but because of the way their timeline (usually unconscious) was being built.

Other people have an incredible ability to forget the past or to transform it, while others have a fixed past – like a painting. With regard to the future too: some manage to paint a vivid picture or film, while others lack clarity, that is, the future seems hazy, distant, complicated to imagine.

Psychological time and the Time Paradox

In psychology, more recently, we have the wonderful work of Phillipe Zimbardo, The Time Paradox🇧🇷 In another way – evidently different from that of NLP – he proves how the way a person deals with time determines his behavior. Zimbardo, one of the most productive and creative psychologists of our times, created some experiments to prove this initial hypothesis.

In one of them, he invited university students to study oratory (they therefore did not know the ultimate purpose of the study, which was about time). He divided the students into two groups. Everyone was tasked with creating an oral presentation on the parable of the good Samaritan.

Group 1 students were told they were late. Individually, each one of them had to cross the campus until they reached the place of presentation. On the way, they found a person feeling sick (not really, it was one of the researchers) and the research then evaluated whether or not they stopped to help. Group 2 was not told they were late.

Comparing the two groups, it was concluded that those who thought they were late practically did not stop to help a person who was sick, even when their minds were turned to the parable of the good Samaritan.

So this is another example of how our behavior can change because of how we’re dealing with time. If we are thinking that we are in a hurry and without time, we may not notice the need of others, we may be stressed or out of patience. The key point here is that, psychologically, time is not a fixed entity. Time is a perception that changes.

A good example of this is the practice of meditation. 50 minutes paying attention to breathing sometimes seems like a very long time if we are anxious, sometimes, on the other hand, it seems like it flew by.

And the other fundamental point is that subjective time, directly affecting our behavior, also creates our life in the long run. This is the weight of the consequences of what we do or fail to do.

The weight of consequences

As I have been working with Professional Guidance for many years, I often see young people aged 20-25 believing they are too old to start college. There is a perception there that people start college at 18. An idea of ​​a past that was not as they would like or should have been and a future without much hope or desire.

Now, the past was as it was and cannot be changed (in concrete terms, because we can give new meaning to previous events) but the way we think today about the possibilities of the future creates this future, since the future does not exist, it is a possibility .

If we’re lucky enough to live for many more decades, time will pass anyway. So a good question is what we would like to have done in the past. For example, 20 years from now, what would you like to have done today to live your dream life there?

Another way to ask is: is what you are doing today going to get you where you want to be in 10 days, 10 months, 10 years?

See text: Know the 10-10-10 technique

In the short, medium, long term, what have you been thinking, planning, putting into practice, leads you to the realization of your dreams?

These questions are not intended to create guilt or resentment. If you happen to notice that you don’t, you can change your path. If it’s difficult, you can seek help from a psychology professional.

Questions, suggestions, comments, please write below.