Can Happiness And Psychological Time Slow Down Aging?
Put your hand on a hot stove and it feels like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. That’s relativity.
Albert Einstein
Don’t you sometimes feel that some moments seem to last an eternity while some years seem to whiz by before you’ve had so much as a look in? When you’re waiting for something like a web page to download, time seems to take its time!. When you’re dreading something, on the other hand, time seems to gallop along menacingly!
Does time expand and shrink or is it our perception of things that give us the impression that it does? In science and psychology, the distinction is made between ‘physical time‘ and ‘psychological time‘.
The difference between 10.30 pm and 10.31 pm is one minute - physical time. But if I happen to be anxiously waiting for an important call which I know will occur in 1 minute, that minute could seem like an hour - psychological time. It is the ‘anxious waiting‘ that seems to make one minute stretch into one hour. On the other hand, if I had only one hour with the person I am ecstatically in love with, that one hour might seem like one minute! The ‘ecstatic being in love‘ shrinks time, it would seem.
So, here’s something to consider: If we could expand and shrink time by choosing and changing our psychological states, how might we use it to our advantage? If we stayed happy , wouldn’t we be able to shrink time so that even if the clock and calendar tell us that years have passed, psychologically, and here’s the interesting part, biologically, only a fraction of that time would have passed. Benefit? We would feel and look younger, healthier and fitter!
Outrageous? Not really. There is research that shows how maintaining a positive, optimistic, generally happy and hopeful attitude has a positive effect on biological markers such as blood pressure and levels of the stress hormone, cortisol.
I can tell you that for myself, I felt and looked a lot older when I was in my twenties. Back then, I took life far too seriously, was an unforgiving judge of myself and others and believed that others had to be wrong if I was to be right! I’ve learned a lot since, developed a much healthier and happier attitude and am frequently surprising people with my chronological age (and in case you’re wondering, that’s for me to know and for you to guess :-))!
Lucy Lopez mentors and writes in the area of Personal and Spiritual Development with a focus on Happiness and Success through Self-Awareness. Key themes in her work are Beliefs, Consciousness, The Nature of Mind, Meditation and Relationships.
Lucy's Planet Happiness
www.lucylopez.net/planethappiness/
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