People’s views on time affect health, wealth, relationships – USATODAY.com
Zimbardo is most concerned about how college students view time. Many are preoccupied with unhappy past events and prone to believe that fate controls what happens to them. “This is about ‘My life is controlled by outside forces.’ They’re high in depression and anger,” he says.
He says corruption and lies exposed in business and government are souring many young people during what should be a positive, can-do time of life.
Some of their notable elders, acting on warped time perspectives, have not set the best example, Zimbardo argues. He uses the Enron scandal as an example of “instant gratification” hedonism indulged in without regard for consequences.
The best view on time for a flexible life that’s well lived is a balanced one, suggests the research by Zimbardo and Boyd. People who enjoy the most well-being choose to focus on positive experiences in their past or opt for the most favorable interpretation of a difficult past; enjoy plenty of fun in the present without excessive indulgence as they keep a reasonably careful fix on the future; and they don’t dwell on past miseries or see what happens to them in the present as “fixed” by fate.
Whatever your attitude toward time, though, it can be changed, Zimbardo emphasizes. Their book offers exercises to “reset your perspective clock.”
A curious article on an interesting segment of psychology…time studies. Sure, you can’t travel in it, but you can remember things. And you can remember how things felt and how you felt about that. And you can’t travel to the future but you can think about it. And what you think about it changes how you feel about now and about the past…hint: this matters to your general perception of now.
More on this goes in a book somewhere…
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