How to Slow Down Time

Here's an interesting news item about how time can seem shorter as we get older. According to Steve Taylor, author of  Making Time , there is truth in 'proportional theory', the idea that as we get older, a year is a smaller proportion of our life as a whole, so it seems to pass more quickly. But he also believes that time seems to pass more slowly for children because they are taking in lots of information from the world around them. "Children are experiencing everything for the first time," he says. "All their experiences are new... Children are incredibly awake to the world around us, so time passes more slowly for them."

We've talked a lot in this blog about 'living in the moment' (as described by Eckhart Tolle in his book The Power Of Now ): the idea of being in touch with our senses and so experiencing the world as it really is, instead of just being lost in our thoughts as adults so often are. It's interesting to make a connection between this and Steve Taylor's ideas. Think back to an afternoon in which you were preoccupied with your thoughts for most of the time. When you think back to that afternoon, you will remember very little about it because you didn't do anything. There will be nothing for your memory to latch on to, so it will seem to have been very short.

Now imagine instead an afternoon in which you met with some friends or explored a new place - or better still both. Or even an afternoon in which you just pottered in the garden but were alert to your senses so that you really experienced each moment: feeling the breeze on your face, the soil beneath your fingers, smelling the scent of the flowers. These afternoons will seem to have been much longer because you were interacting and taking in information from the world around you.

If you have practiced living in the moment yourself, you will already know how good it can feel, but you will also know how hard it can be to maintain that presence. The habit of living for most of the time in our minds instead of in the real world is deeply ingrained in most of us and it can be hard to break out of this 'programming'. It is good, therefore, to have another reason to remember to make that change: the idea that it may allow us, at least subjectively, to experience longer lives.

Comments

[Mark]

Excellent wisdom! We can control time. Of course time is an illusion which we dictate it's speed. Living in the "now" often not only slows down our perception of time, it can actually stop time as we know it.

[Linda]

This post is really good and reminds me to be in the moment. Because I walk slower than most people I usually do stop to smell the roses, but it is important to make that part of every day.

[Guilty Secret]

Wow, I *really* can't wait until my copy of this book arrives now... it seems you have gleamed so much wisdom from it.

[Mel Kaye]

You have very similar concepts as me.

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[Simon]

Thanks for your comments.

Mark - You're right about stopping time. A friend of mine saw the avatar Mother Meera when she came to Edinburgh recently. People came forward to be blessed one by one and spent only a short time in front of her - yet in that short time, my friend had an experience of Oneness with the universe which seemed to her to last an age.

Linda - Yes, it is all about remembering to make that change.

Guilty (though it doesn't seem entirely fair to call you that! - I'd call you 'Secret' instead, only that's my name) - I've found Eckhart Tolle's The Power Of Now to be the single most useful self development book I've ever read. I hope you find it equally useful, though as Linda reminds us above, it is all about remembering to put his teaching into practice...

Mel - Great to hear from you. I've linked you in...

[Marion]

Excellent post, Simon...living in the moment consistently can be difficult for me...now I have further reason to practice it.

[Secret Simon]

Thanks Marion! Yes, it's the 'consistent' bit that's tricky. I hope this helps.

[mwaybob]

wow, gosh that makes total sense!, gonna have to try and be in the moment, i wander farrrrrr to much

[Secret Simon]

Welcome mwaybob! Good luck with being in the moment, and pop back here to The Secret Of Life if you need a reminder!

[Ryan]

Great advice. I am also learning to appreciate life in the moment and it definitely does seem to slow down time. Thanks for the post.

[Liara Covert]

Its interesting to note some people believe that if they're busy, they have lots of ideas in the form of memories to latch onto. Yet really, busyness may be a fallacy whereby you watch time and life pass you by.

I sense that to live in moment, is to abandon what you think you know, to recognize your thoughts, grounded in the past, mean nothing. Instead, just accept being.

[Simon]

Hi again Liara - I agree with your second para totally - and when you can do that, it is truly blissful.

As for busy-ness, I think it depends on how you do it. So often we tend to do it with an eye on the clock, willing all the tasks we have to do to be complete. When we do that, we're in our minds all the time, disgruntled with reality, and (as you say) life is passing us by unnoticed.

But if we're *really* busy, it can also *force* us into the moment, because we've got to be present and paying attention to keep our heads above water. So being mega busy can actually be a very happy time for people - without them necessarily understanding why.

[Simon]

Whoops - I forgot to say Hi to Ryan. Many thanks for your comment, Ryan. I'm glad you liked the post and I hope you'll call again.

[Liaara Covert]

It has been said that if we depend on our own readiness, that is, our own human sense of time, then we endanger our own sense of understanding. We, as individuals, don't control time, only how we choose to perceive it.

[Judith]

Hi. I would like to comment my personnal ideas about it. Sorry for my english (I am not a native spoken). I work for an airline (not as a crew member, but at the administrative department), and I have to travel a lot (some times 2-3 weeks a month). It seens to me that in those travels, the days are long.. I mean I have to be totally focused in the country & people that I'm visiting. Some times even the language is different, and I have to adjust my percepcion of the world to try to see from the perspective of the local people of my company. When I travel back to my country, even when the travel was only 2-3 days, It feels a lot more time. But when I spend 2-3 weeks on ground (meaning in my local office), It appears as the days are joining together... and I can easily add one day to another, and lost track of the time. It makes sense to me that, in order to enjoy time and really learn to live the moment, one has to stop, to look around, to interact with people and listen to them, to try to learn something new, and remember that the world is much, much bigger that we even imagine.

[Simon]

Welcome Judith and thanks for your comment! Your experience seems to support the idea that the more we interact with the world, the easier it is to live in the moment. Perhaps this is because there is more going on to capture the mind's attention and divert it away from internal chatter. Travel is an excellent example, but I am starting to realize that any place where there is activity can have a similar effect. Some days, the only time when I am really in the moment is when I am in the supermarket(!) in the company of - and interacting with - all those people.

[carole]

Have you noticed that when one is experiencing great pain, time seems to slow down, but when one is fully engrossed in something enjoyable, time seems to fly? Could it be that during the latter, the consciousness enters the eternal present, which is beyond the dimension of time. Thus when the mind kicks in again, one is surprised at how much time has appeared to pass without our realisation of it!

[Simon]

Welcome Carole - it's great to hear from you! I think there is a lot in what you say, yet at first glance it appears to run contrary to the whole thrust of this post: about being in the moment *slowing down time*. I think, however, there is really no contradiction. When we are truly in the moment, we do indeed lose awareness of time. So, as you say, when we eventually notice the clock again, we can be surprised to see how much time has passed. Yet I think that when we look back over that same period, we will be surprised at how much has happened and how much we have achieved.

The previous commenter, Judith, mentioned travel, and this brings to mind that looking back at the end of a holiday, it often seems to have been both very short and very long! You seem both to have been gone a long time and hardly been away. Perhaps this is another instance of the same twofold effect.

Or perhaps it is time for us all to stop analyzing and simply be!