I haven’t got time for this!
It seems that the very week I was going to write about Time, I lost track of it! As the familiar saying goes, where did the time go? Philip Zimbardo, the scientist behind Time Perspectives, calls the phenomenon “something that influences every single decision you make about which you are totally unaware”. Is it just me, or are you as addicted to finding out more given a sentence like that?
When we talk about positive change, there is an implicit assumption that people can look to the future and adapt their perspective from the here and now to the what if? Time perspectives suggests that this isn’t the case, with everyone having a bias towards the past, present or future. There are, so research suggests, five time perspectives:
Past Positive (you look back fondly at the past)
Past Negative (you perceive your past negatively or critically)
Present Hedonistic (live in the present for fun; feelings; stimulation)
Present Fatalistic (nothing you can do in the present makes a difference)
Future Orientation (achievement, work, responsibilities and goals oriented)
Research suggests that our time perspective is learned and resetting your psychological time clock is possible and worthwhile. (To find out what your time perspective is, you can go the website, http://www.thetimeparadox.com and take the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory).
Research suggests the optimal time perspective profile is:
High in past-positive time perspective
Moderately highly in future time perspective
Moderately high in present-hedonistic time perspective
Low in past-negative time perspective
Low in present-fatalistic time perspective.
This blend offers three critical advantages:
A sense of a positive past gives you roots. The centre of self-affirmation, the past connects you to yourself over time and across place. A positive past grounds you and provides a sense of the continuity of life, allowing you to be connected to family, tradition and your cultural inheritance.
With a future perspective, you can envision a future filled with hope, optimism, and power.
The future gives you wings that enable you to soar to new destinations and to be confident in your ability to deal with the unexpected challenges that you might encounter on the way.
It equips you to escape the status quo, the fear inherent in straying from the safe, known ways, the well-travelled roads to your destination.
A hedonistic present gives you energy and joy about being alive. That energy drives to explore people, places and self. Present hedonism is life affirming, in moderation, for it opens the senses to appreciation of nature and the pleasure of human sexuality.
So, this week explore your own Time Perspective and how it affects the decisions you make.
You’ll start to also see how a shared or different perspective can be the source of agreements or disagreements. And if you haven’t got the time to do it… think roots, wings and energy!