The other day I mentioned something called clock time and psychological time. Those that have read Eckhart Tolle: The Power of Now, will be familiar with this(I am unaware of other authors that may have mentioned it) and those that haven’t heard about such an existence…let me enlighten you. Trust me, it all makes so much of sense. I’m giving you the short version…we all like getting to the point.
You know I tend to speak about living in the present…a lot! I also tend to talk about not anticipating the outcome of experiences by basing it on past experiences, but instead living in the present and seeing every experience for what it is, a new experience.
From this you may wonder, but what about learning from past experiences and implementing that into our present so that we don’t repeat the same mistakes over and again? So that is where clock time and psychological time come in.
Let us get into this…
Clock time includes the setting of goals and working towards them; the learning from past experiences so that we don’t repeat those mistakes. It is practical living in the present moment, with the essential factor being that we are living in the present moment. Applying your knowledge to the present moment. Not living in the past.
Okay… get it kind-off? Still breaking down the two concepts first.
So the dreaded the psychological time. This is what happens when we experience something and then dwell on it and beat ourselves up. We punish ourselves for making a mistake and make it a part of our sense of self. We define ourselves by these experiences. That is when it has become psychological time.
Getting there…
Essentially, if you set a goal and work towards it, that is clock time. You put the work in, in the present moment to achieve the end goal. You focus on what you are doing in the present. All your attention is in the present moment. But, as soon as your happiness becomes dependent on that achieving that goal, then you shift to psychological time and in turn stop being present. You know that self-talk… as soon as this happens I will be secure, as soon as that happens I will feel happy. Your entire being becomes dependent on achieving that goal and the thought of not achieving that goal makes you feel like you have accomplished nothing or that you are unsuccessful. The burden sets in.
You end up losing the journey and becoming obsessive with attaining. You say things like ‘time is money’ or ‘I need to make things happen’. When you hear yourself say such things, know that you aren’t living in the present.
A few blogs ago, I posted about focusing on what you do in the present moment, to work towards that end goal without basing your entire existence on achieving that goal. It came from understanding the difference between these two types of time that exist.
And this is part of the reason why I believe that time is relative…that it is a perception and essentially does not exist because we are always living in the now… we cannot live in the future…only in the present.
You know that saying they always say(oh how I would love to meet ”they” haha)…what you do now is what counts!
keralotinspired 