Time Perception

How do you perceive time? How does a baby perceive time?

In this episode we will talk about

• how we perceive time,
• my personal struggle with time
• what I have done to get better with time
• the importance of being present in the now

Episode Notes

What is our life other than a collection of events in life. Moments stacked up together forming our past, all coming together in the now.

Time is a concept that has captured the imagination of many. Discussed to a great length both philosophically and scientifically. How often do we actually though speak about how we experience time.

Our perception of time is not static, it is changing throughout the day depending on what we are doing but most importantly on how we are feeling.

0:07 Carl Jung Quote
0:29 Welcome
0:47 My story with time
2:50 How I started being better with time
3:04 Make it important to be on time
3:33 Tip: Rush early
4:35 Our perception of time
6:49 Mind can compress time
7:20 Emotion is linked with time
9:10 There is only the now
9:56 Our thoughts and emotions move us out of the now
10:40 Push your urges aside
10:56 The past and the future
11:28 The future
12:29 Conclusion
13:17 Jim Rohn Quote
13:27 Stop selling the now in favour of yesterday or tomorrow
13:35 Outro

Transcript

Call Jung. In the collected words, he wrote,

the unconscious has no time, there is no trouble about timing the unconscious part of our psyche is not in time and not in space. There are only an illusion, time and space. And so in a certain part of our psyche, time does not exist at all.

Welcome my friends to another episode from inside treasures. My name is Phoebus. And I love to challenge myself and those around me for the purpose of growth. This podcast is about helping you to heal, to change, and to grow. This episode is all about our perception of time, and how we relate to time, and how we experienced in time.

My struggle with time has started years and years and years ago. And part of it is just me wanting to be relaxed, taking my own time and doing things my own way. But the truth is, when we’re working with the world, we have to learn to adjust to it certain time, I like to be relaxed. I don’t like to be anxious, I don’t like to rush to places, I don’t like to rush in general, I like to take it easy. But there are times to do things quickly leave time to do things and be places on time.

But for me, that was a struggle. It was hard, I was always late, I was the one who would say let’s meet up, people will say let’s meet up at 730. And I would show up at 830 I would leave at 730 and then wonder why I was anxious why was stressful, then I will have a go at myself about being late again. Finding the end, I was just being late rushing to get to places.

And it wasn’t like those places were five minutes away. Of course they needed like an hour. And if there was traffic an hour and a half. And of course with every minute up has, I felt like in behind. A lot of the times I would meet with my friends and they’ll say Come on, you’re late again, I would feel terrible for being late.

And the thing that would happen is they kind of start to give up about being being on time, of course, that caught me off the hook. But he also didn’t make me become better with time.

And being there when we said we would be it was breaking my boundaries and was breaking the relationship I had with my self and my friends around me because they couldn’t rely on me on being on time. So they kind of changed things they’ve said, Well, we know you’re going to be late. So we’re going to tell you 730, but we know we’re meeting at 830.

And that was just kind of the joke that would try and sit me down and say look, you can sit here you can. If you want to be somewhere at 730 and you need an hour, you will at least leave at 630 if you’re leaving when you just add some more time, add another 1520 minutes on top of that. And you know what time you need to leave for that would be like 610 plus six.

Now, give me enough time to go there and be there. But the truth is, I still failed at the time that I started getting better with time was after I had kids, and they kind of started going to nursery. And it was a specific time that we needed to drop them off. And the specific time that we needed to pick them up and dropping off, there will still be the times we’re getting ready, it’s gonna be late, it’s okay.

But most of the times it was about making sure that be there on time, because it was kind of like a very important appointment. So I had that sense of importance, that sense of urgency. And especially when it comes to picking up my kids from school. It’s been about absolutely that I can’t be late any single minute because I need to be there to pick them up. Because I know consequences of parents not taking up their children, it feels like a huge drag. So that’s made me more accountable to myself and to my children and making sure that I’m there when I need to be there.

The little trick that I try to use is knowing the time and also try my best to rush early. So I know roughly how much time I need, I need to know the time that I need to leave. But then I try to rush just for a few minutes for me to get ready to do my best to lean in and just get get out of the door. That’s the message I’m sending to myself.

I keep telling myself just get out, just get out, get out, just do this, do this, then get out. And that’s what I have in my mind is not about arriving the place about getting out of the door and not like get out of the door, then I have enough time. After that. Only a few minutes of me being anxious and stressful to get out. But then I can still take my time and be relaxed because I know I’ve accounted for it.

But why is this all important to you. The thing I want to talk about today is about our perception of time, how we personally perceive time, and what effect that has and our lives. Because like I said, we can be anxious just for a few minutes to get out of the door and then they relax or I can be relaxed and then be anxious for a whole hour and a half trying to get to a place. And that is our personal perception.

I won’t be talking about you know, the time and how a clock ticks and because that is the same for everybody that’s scientific. But how we perceive time and how we perceive ourselves within time is a huge difference within ourselves and between people. And to person within ourselves as well.

So how does like a baby perceive time? How do babies perceive time when they say like has kids developed, the perception of time is one of the last ones to come in, as we learn.

So developmentally, it takes time for us to actually be able to describe time and perceive it all very, very present. In the moment, her baby, when it’s looking at his mother might not have the kind of mental capacity and emotional stuff that we have, but he can look at its mother be 100% present, because the whole world is the face of the mother or the father.

And that is just being there without thinking, What do I have to do? Or did I do the dishes or any of that stuff. That’s what’s lovely about babies, they’re very, very present, and have a different perception of how they are present within. Now you and I perceive time differently, like I’m recording this, I’m constantly I’m focusing, you might be doing something else, and you’re listening to this week, each one of us has a different perception of the time, and how that is passing.

If it’s boring, and you want to finish, or you just want to press stop, then it is like, okay, let’s just get on with this and drags on. But if you’re excited about the things that I’m saying, and you really want to pay attention to every detail worth that I’m going to say and how good it is, and you really liking it, and then your perception of time is different, because you’re enjoying yourself, our mind has this amazing ability.

With time, we are in the present yet we can recall things from the past, we have the present moment and the outside world as it is in that space, we create a memory or we recall a memory. And then that starts to take part in the now our mind has the ability to compress time to think of time as if it was only yesterday, although it was like 100, like 10 years ago.

And it can also go into the future. Think about future outcomes, what will happen, what might happen, what hasn’t happened, it can also create with that compression of time, bias on our ability to do things, a lot more things than we are able to do in a specific set of time. Like when we set up our agenda for the day, we think I’ll do this at this time.

And that at that time, and it’s going to take five minutes here, five minutes there. But in reality, they don’t. And things could take longer. But our mind has that ability to do that. And he also has the ability to expand time, when we’re present when we’re in the now.

Time expanse time opens up. One thing that is a key aspect and how we perceive time is emotion. How do we feel is closely related to how we perceive time, when we’re stressful when we’re anxious. When we’re running around, we feel like running out of time, there’s not enough time to do the things that we want to and achieve the things that we want.

But that causes us a lot of trouble into a well being. We have that ongoing sense that there’s too much demand there’s too much going on and various curse amount of time. And then we try to squeeze in. But then how do we relate to that everything is fleeting.

And most of all, our life is fleeting, and we’re not present because we’re constantly on the next thing and on the next thing. And our mind is agitated. And when our mind is agitating our perception of time changes.

Everything becomes too short, too narrow. Everything is fleeing away. We’re not present, and we’re not present.

And we’re anxious and agitated. Life moves out of our hands. On the contrary, when we call more when we happy or perhaps when we were on a date might be so much there and engrossed into the other person talking about things being there. Having fun when that is taking place.

It feels like it’s long. Yeah, we’re there. We’re present. We’re having fun, we’re engaged. We’re curious. But then when that finishes, and we look back, we’re like, oh, that fell quickly.

You see how the perception of time changes when we’re going through it afterwards? As a memory? How can we can expand and contract time within the same kind of events. And depending on how we’re feeling if I’m lonely, or if I’m waiting on the line on the queue, and there’s someone there. And I’m just thinking, come on, mate, I have to pick up the kids.

And it’s only been five seconds. I’m expanding time again, because of the way that I feel. Because of not willing to sit there and my mind races to be somewhere else into the future or into the past. The truth is we only have the now there’s only now. And now is very quick.

And now it’s very slow. And now changes. But now is ever present. Now is what it is. And now is now and now is now. Hello it’s been playing with words. But in reality when we experience that from moment to moment, we know that the moment before, when we have time ticking, we know was a different time and it belongs to the past. But that is not something to burden us.

That’s something turn lightness to know that there’s always a chance there’s always a way there’s always a perception with a time that we can have Because there is more time, there’s always more time. There’s always another now. But our thoughts and emotions get in the way. By practising meditation we see that we can be focusing on something we can be concentrating, we can be meditating. And the minute our thoughts arise, the minute pictures arise, the minute sounds arise within our own mind.

And we start to get engaged, we fall into that part. And we start to get lost. You present on something, something else comes that drift says. And that comes with observation and presence being present and realizing that when we start to think it’s not that it’s bad to think, but when we start to think and overthink if we’re not doing it intentionally, if I’m with my kids, I’m thinking about the work that I need to do. I’m being taken away from the present moment.

I don’t allow myself to enjoy that. But I have demands I have things that I need to do. Yes, we all do. But how can I push that all that aside, and say, I can deal with you later. Because right now I want to be present. Right now I want to be here. I want to say, I want to participate in this thing called life that’s taking place in this space. And this time, right here, right now.

The past is driven by memory, it’s about recollecting the memory, it’s about ruminating things we can learn from the past, there’s a lot to learn. But if we’re just ruminated, and thinking why this didn’t work in the past, then I need to make it work and why I’m worried about this. And that happen. It’s just like we’re getting lost.

And again, in that thing of getting lost with lose the present moment, because the present moment might not have the gifts that the past had, or it might be better in other ways. By going back, we’re not doing anything apart from losing the now. And the future is similar.

It’s about perceived circumstances that might happen in a specific way that we fantasize about them that happen happen, we don’t even know we’re guessing whether we’re optimistic or pessimistic, it doesn’t really matter, because we’re thinking, this will happen, although we will go that way. And that will happen. But we don’t know how it’s gonna play out.

We’re assuming we’re expecting whether one thing so don’t want things, avoiding things, we’re trying to go towards things, it doesn’t matter, because it’s the same thing. We’re perceiving a situation that hasn’t yet happened. We’re not in it. And again, we’re losing the present moment. And it’s about finding the gifts in the present moment.

All these things are based on our personality and our beliefs and our expectations, the way we think about things is bringing up our mind back into the present from the past, and the future, might be constant work at times. And at times, you can let go and just go back and forwards and it’s okay. And we drift and it’s part of the learning process. Our perception of life has to do with our relationship with time.

And it starts with a moment to moment expands to our to our, and then becomes day to day but how we experience our moments is how we experience our life in total, because our life is a accumulation of different moments. And the more present we are, the more there were, the more we can taste it. The sweetness and the sourness but to give us a sensation of a full life, and it has to do with us being present with what is going on.

Instead of fleeing, avoiding, fighting, resisting where they’re present. We’ve whatever comes our way.

As my friend Jim Rohn said, time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time.

Stop selling them now. in favour of yesterday. And tomorrow. Be Here Now. Be present.

I’m here to help you heal, change and grow. If there’s something that resonated with you something that you need help with anything give me shout.

Thank you for tuning in to another episode from Inside Treasures. My name is Phoebus and until next time, my friends let peace guide your life, let love guide your heart and reason guide your thoughts.

Photograph by Jose Martin Ramirez Carrasco

PS. If you want to find stillness in your life and connection with yourself. Join the online Finding Stillness self-paced course.

❤️ Support at: Donate