As we approach the end of the year, look back and ask yourself,
Did it go by in just a blink? or was it like the longest year ever?
Well the answer often depends on our age.
Hey Brainwashed Friends, I’m Aaron Tupaz of Positively Brainwashd
and in this video I promise to teach you practical ways to slow down your perception of time
to make your next year the most memorable ever.
To begin, you need to know the difference between objective or fixed time vs. subjective or brain time.
Fixed time is simply the clock our world goes by.
And Brain time is how fast or slow we personally perceives time.
Just note that I’m not here to discuss Einsteins theory of relativity.
Now, if you’ve ever been in a life threatening situation, like a car crash, falling off a roof or got into a fight,
you might have felt that time slowed down.
And that’s because all your brain’s resources become intensely focused on survival
during fight or flight scenarios.
More specifically, the amygdala, a part of the brain connected with memory and emotion
becomes set to overdrive, telling the brain to record much more detail than normal.
And because the brain creates these dense memories of those terrifying moments,
when you later look back on the experience, there’s a lot more “footage” than normal to run through
And this makes the experience seem like it lasted much longer than it actually did.
On the other hand, if you’re not doing anything new, like your usual day job,
then there’s less resources required for the brain.
This makes your brain go on auto pilot causing it to not really record anything.
So when you think back to that moment later, it’s like it never really happened.
There is something called the Oddball Effect, and I’m going to show you 5 pictures
Now you may have felt that I showed you the flower for a little bit longer than the shoes,
and if you did, then know that was all in your head.
The reality is, as we get older there isn’t much new information to take in,
you’ve seen all the patterns before, so the mind creates shortcuts.
It’s like seeing nothing but brown shoes all day.
Now this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as this can be advantageous for operating in the real world,
but the truth is, our first experiences forms our identities.
When we’re young, we experience so many things for the first time.
We’re still trying to discover the rules of the world,
Think about your first day of school,
learning to ride a bike, your first dance, your first job, or your first break up.
Your first kiss was probably the world to you and nothing else in the world mattered
So the secret is to put yourself in situations where you’re always learning or experiencing something new.
Like, try putting your watch on your other wrist, this will shake up your neural network.
Meet new people, drive home from work in a different way.
Because right now your drive probably registers at zero time.
You could rearrange your office space, or take a new class.
And my personal favourite, is to use my less dominant hand more often, or sometimes my feet….
Now if you watch many of my other videos
I often talk about consistency and doing the same thing again and again
which is great for productivity and getting great results.
But this doesn’t mean that you can’t have a routine and mix things up at the same time.
For example: I try to workout every morning,
but I'll spin a wheel to determine how many push-ups I need to do.
I also do this to determine how long my breaks will be,
how I'll reward myself for getting work done,
and sometimes how long I’ll spend on social media and so on.
And I personally like wheels because it makes life like a game, and that’s always fun
But make sure you’re still only focusing on one task at a time because multiasking only makes time speed up,
and it doesn’t even improve productivity.
So learn to say no more often, and don’t juggle so many things
Next if you want to remember more, then simply move more.
Don’t always watch Netflix all day in the same room, get up and move.
ake a dance class or go jogging around your neighbourhood taking different routes each time.
Another way of slowing down time is by planning a trip, and having that anticipation
vs. just booking an air BnB at the last moment.
And what’s funny about trips is that you could be gone for weeks or months,
experiencing new activities or cultures and it may feel like an eternity for you when looking back,
but when you return people might not even notice you left.
Because for them, time was moving faster.
Now what about the old saying, “time flies when you’re having fun?”
Doesn’t that contradict how having fun vacations are supposed to slow down time?
Well that’s why it’s important to know the difference between Prospective time and Retrospective time.
Prospective time occurs when you’re in the moment, and your brain is anticipating what will happen next.
When you’re busy and a lot is happening, your mind is no longer attending to time at that moment.
You’re not checking your watch or clock so it seems like time is going by fast.
If you’ve ever been a waiter or waitress on a busy night, you know your shift can just fly by fast
your mind is super focused on serving customers and what your next task is, that you forget about the clock.
Then there’s retrospective time which occurs in situations that lack stimuli to engage your brain.
If you’re in a boring meeting, or on a long flight,
your mind is deeply attuned to time because you’re always checking your watch every 10 minutes or so.
You have little else to do besides watch the minutes tick by, which makes time seem to slow way down.
Hence, time does fly when you’re having fun and experiencing something new,
but when you look back, it will stretch out in your memory.
Compare this to when you’re bored in class and watching the clock every minute.
It might feel like forever while in the moment,
but you won’t remember much of it a week later.
So if you want to slow down time in the moment, then all you need to do is simply improve your awareness.
Take deep breaths throughout your day, and become attuned to the here and now.
Next, there’s research that shows drugs can change our perception of time.
Now I’m not endorsing anything, this is just for educational purposes
But there’s an experiment where Rats were trained to pull a lever every 12 seconds to receive food.
The rats who were given cocaine pulled them faster, suggesting that time speed up for them,
and the rats who ever given Marujuana took longer than 12 seconds to pull it,
suggesting that time slowed down for them.
Lastly, there’s always keeping a diary or a journal that you can look back to from time to time,
to help you remember events.
I personally keep a win journal where I only write down positive things that happened to me each week.
As you can tell, this video isn’t about how to live longer,
it’s about how to seem like you lived longer.
So don’t let the remaining year or the next be a bunch of Brown shoes.
Mix things up, go on more adventures,
go after that dream job you’ve always wanted, finally ask out that person you like,
and make the next year and all the years ahead of you the best ever.
So when you’re old and gray, you can look back and say “I had a great life"
Now I want to know in the comments below, how fast did this year or the last go by for you?
Thanks for watching, if you liked this video then choose one of the following
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Hope a Tornado hits me