Human brain measures time by observing movements

If someone put you in an empty white room with no furniture, no doors or windows, no clock ... you would begin to lose track of time. For a few days, your mind will detect the passage of time feeling the internal reactions of the body, including heart rate, sleep cycles, hunger, thirst and blood pressure.

This is because our notion of the passage of time derives from the movement of objects, people, signs and natural cyclical repetition of events such as sunrise and sunset.

Understanding this point, there is another thing you have to consider:

Our brain is extremely optimized.

It avoids doing the same work twice.

An average adult has between 40,000 and 60,000 thoughts per day.

Any of us would go crazy if the brain had to consciously process this amount.

Therefore, most of these thoughts are automated and do not appear in the index of the day's events and therefore, when you live an experience the first time, it devotes many resources to understand what is happening.

It's when you feel more alive.

As the same experience repeats itself, it will simply put responses in automatic mode and 'erase' duplicate experiments.

If you understand these two points, will now understand why it seems that time accelerates as we get older and why Christmas comes faster and faster.

When we started driving cars, it all seemed very complicated, our attention seemed to be most requested.

Then one day you are driving, switching gears, watching the lights, reading the signs or even talking on the phone all at the same time.

How so?

Simple: the brain already knows what's written on cards (you do not read with the eyes, but with the previous image in mind), the brain already knows which gear change to make (it just takes your past experiences and uses, instead of really repeating the experience).

In other words, you did not experience that experience, at least for the mind. Those critical seconds of changing gears, reading signs ...

Are erased from the notion of the passage of time ...

When you begin to repeat something exactly, the mind erases the repeated experience. As we age, things begin to repeat themselves - the same streets, people, problems, challenges, television programs, claims ... finally ... new experiences (those that make the mind stop and think of truth, make your day seem to have been long and full of news), and they are decreasing. Until that is repeated so much that it is difficult to say what we had as a novelty in the week, year or, for some people in the decade.

In other words, what makes time seem to accelerate is a. ..

ROUTINE

Do not misunderstand me.

Routine is essential for life and optimizing is a great thing, but most people love routine so much that, throughout life, their diary ends up being a one chapter book, repeated every year.

Fortunately there is an antidote to the acceleration of time: M & M (Change and Mark). Move on, do something different and check, make a ritual, a feast or records with pictures . Change your scenery, take a vacation with your family (I suggest you take a vacation whenever you can, and preferably a warm place for one year and cold the next) and mark it with photos, postcards and letters.

Have children (they destroy routines) and always have birthday parties for them and for you (marking the event, and differentiating the day).

Use and exaggerate rituals to make special moments different from the usual moments.

Have engagement parties, wedding, 15 years, wedding this or that, send-offs, please join the anniversary of their graduation class, visit distant relatives, change hair color, shave the beard, grow the beard, buy different decorations for Christmas, go to concerts, cook a new recipe taken from a new book.

Choose different clothes, don't paint the house the same color, do something different.

Kiss your significant other and live differently with him or her at different times.

Go to different markets, read different books, seek different experiences.

Be different.

If you have money, especially if you are already retired, go with your husband, wife or friends to other cities or countries, see other cultures, visit weird museums, taste weird dishes ..... in other words .. V-I-Va. !

Because if you live with intensely different experiences, time will seem longer.

And if you are lucky to be married (a) to anyone willing (a) to live seeking different things, your book will be much longer, much more interesting and more alive ... than most books of life out there.

Surround yourself with friends. Friends with different tastes, coming from different places with different religions and liking different foods.

Anyway, I think you've got the message, right?

Good luck on your experiences to expand time with quality, emotion, ritual and life ..

Translated from the Portuguese version by:

Lisa Karpova
Pravda.Ru