Have you ever noticed how the passing of time seems to accelerate as you get older? I mean, all my life I have been hearing “old folks” telling me, “oh my god, time goes by so fast… the last time I saw you you were only this tall” as they stand there holding their hand up at waist height. I remember thinking to myself, “what the hell are they talking about, the last two hours at this (insert family/formal event here) seem like an ETERNITY… and who the hell is this old lady anyways?” You have the same memories, of that I’m certain; even if you didn’t have the foul mouth/mind I had as a young lad.
Well, the time has come in my own life where I just caught myself playing the role of the old man telling one of my best friend’s kids how much he grew since the last time I saw him… while he looked at me with the “who the fuck are you again” look. Come on, who doesn’t remember uncle T? Being in my 30s, it’s a hard pill to swallow that I’m no spring chicken anymore. First they stop asking for your ID at the liquor store, then kids start giving you funny looks when you think you’re being cool, then you’re getting your good luck charms ready for bingo night at the VFW.
The relativity of time and our perception of how fast time passes is something that only comes to mind as you get older. My wife and I and one of our good friends had a conversation the other night that really put everything into perspective. We have all thought about it before, but I had never put words to it so elegantly as I did that night. Ironically my friend’s neighbor who was outside walking his cat (yes he was really outside walking his 18 year old, hobbling cat…) happened to be half-eavesdropping on our conversation and chimed in with exactly what I am about to tell you almost word for word. It is the best verbalization of why time seems to speed up as we get older that I have been able to come up with so far.
When a person is lets say 3 years old, one year’s passing equals 1/3 of their whole lifespan. Since a child only really becomes conscious of their individuality and existence as a person and starts thinking thoughts with words instead of only riding their emotions somewhere in between baby and toddlerhood, their conscious memory is even less than that. On the contrary when a person reaches age 30, each passing year is only 1/30 of their lifespan. That same year the 3 year old goes through is consciously experienced as passing ten times faster for the 30 year old.
Think about it. Each passing year as you age makes up a smaller and smaller fraction of your total conscious timeline and memory. When you get to be 60 years old, time will be passing twice as fast to you compared to the experience of a 30 year old. When/if you get to be 90, you feel like time just whizzes by so fast and so much change happens so quickly that you have a hard time keeping your mind anchored into the present moment. The 3, 30, 60, and 90 year old human beings all experience the passage of the same calendar year in dramatically different ways. Asking a 90 year old to sit in a room and quietly wait for 10 minutes would be like asking a three year old to to wait for 300 minutes or 5 whole hours! From their respective perspectives. Isn’t that insane?
The ancient elders were absolutely right when they said that time is a river flowing downhill. It get’s faster and faster as you get older and if you fight the current, you get worn out real quick. As time goes by in this world more and more change happens in each age compared to the preceding one. This is actually what the Mayans were timing with their elaborate calendar system, but that’s a discussion for another time. You can read statistics all over the place that tell you that every two years ten times more data is created than in the previous two. Mind boggling! Consciousness and data grow exponentially and not in a linear fashion. More opportunity and more information is made available to us every single day than has ever been thought of before on this planet.
Back to the analogy of time being a river, some people seem to be stuck in eddy currents where time stands still. This became apparent to me a while back after going away to college for four years and returning to my home town where nothing seemed to change. It became even more shockingly apparent when I moved cross country for two years with my wife and two little girls and then moved back to the Chicago area two weeks ago where my wife and I grew up. I stopped at a friend’s parents house where absolutely NOTHING had changed since high school. Same furniture, arranged the same way… same smells, same vibe in the house, family members sitting in their same spots where they were 15 years ago. The only thing that changed was the date on the calendar.
This slapped me in the face with the importance of conscious growth. You have to grow and change and learn new things ON PURPOSE. Otherwise the river of time will push you off to the side into one of these eddy currents where you get stuck in old habits where nothing changes and there you sit as a spectator. With the amount of change that has happened in my family’s life and in my own personal awareness, I feel like I have aged at least ten years in the last two calendar years but that’s a good thing. I’m in the best shape of my life and I am getting smarter every day ON PURPOSE; not because I’m lucky. I love roller coasters and I love white water rafting. I couldn’t imagine sitting on the sidelines watching the world blow past me. I hope you feel the same way.
Keep evolving a little every day in any possible way…
Time is not measured by the passing of years, but by what one one does, what one feels, and what one achieves.
-Jawaharlal Nehur
This is referred to as bullying and bigotry. Why then do we think it is OK to do the same thing within the confines of your own thoughts? Just because nobody else can hear or see you doing it doesn’t make it acceptable. The door swings the other way too. Constantly putting yourself down by comparing yourself to other people is like cutting and other forms of self harm, only you’re doing it to your mind and emotions.
This GOLDEN RULE extends into the mental realm. Don’t think about others the way you wouldn’t want them to think about you.
Just about every “normal” person you know is probably just an acquaintance. Once you get inside their hula hoop and break through their defenses, the jig is up and BINGO there’s that insecure, weirdo you knew was there all along.
These are people that you are always scanning and analyzing for clues and subtle signals; hints on whether or not they might be considered good candidates for access into the next level.
This is where you can even get to know somebody better than they even know themselves and they can know you better than you even know yourself. It can be an incredibly beautiful thing when you know what each other is thinking and know what they’re going to say before they say it. Closeness and connection are immensely rewarding to the spirit but we still do an excellent job at hiding our flaws out of the fear of rejection and abandonment but you can’t hide everything and definitely not forever. Sometimes the truth of what was being held back comes out in heated arguments and it’s too hard for the relationship (no matter what kind) to bear. When trust in this inner circle is betrayed lives get tossed into total upheaval. Long term couples break up, best friends go separate ways, whole branches of family stop speaking.
The innermost shell of your being is the story you tell yourself in your own head. It is the thoughts you think to yourself, about yourself when you are sitting awake at night. A history of perceived negative reinforcement from the outside world will program your subconscious mind to beat you up. You can be your strongest ally or your absolute worst nightmare. You can sit in a room full of people that love you, that accept you and it won’t matter because you can completely lay waste to your self from every angle. We’ve all been in the state of mind where you get to thinking “damn I’m such a loser, nobody really likes me, they’re all just pretending to like me, how could anybody love me after what I did, I’m so fat, I’m such a failure, I’m too skinny, I’m so fucking ugly, I’m too short, I’m too tall, I’m such a whore” and on and on.
It’s a scary mental state to be in and it causes a vicious cycle. Shitty thought patterns cause low awareness and shitty choices that result in shitty life experiences which… you guessed it… cause more shitty thoughts. Rinse and repeat. This is a process that has to be derailed and reprogrammed manually. It has to happen on purpose and doesn’t have to follow hitting the proverbial “rock bottom.” Rock bottom happens to be a funeral for too many amazing people on this planet so don’t let that be you or your loved one.
Why would you want to spend your time doing anything other than being yourself, and helping others become their own greatest version? You don’t have to quit your job or run away to do this. It starts right now. The world we live in is pretty damn accepting of just about anything, as long as you can get over your own fear and self doubt about it. You can be a gay, transgender, biker, vegan, who teaches Pilates and have all the true friends you can handle.
Years back I remember watching a documentary about the Hopi elders. The main idea that they were trying to get across to their own people and the world at large was the resounding message, “We are the ones that we’ve been waiting for.” They knew that great change was coming over the world there was nothing we could do to stop it. They also knew that nobody was coming to save us. They were absolutely right on both the global cultural scale but also down to the daily personal level. It is truly up to each and every one of us to determine the trajectory of our own lives.
In a world where knowledge is power it is extremely important to be at your own helm. While it is easy for a person to be dis-empowered by a lack of information, now it is just as easy to stand in front of so much information and so many choices that they are frozen stiff like a deer in headlights. Indecisiveness and procrastination are the new plagues of our generation. Everyone says they hate being bossed around by leaders, but the truth is nobody does anything until push comes to shove. Nobody can make up their damn mind. Then if they do happen to make their mind up, they still don’t get off their ass and DO anything about making a change in their life. THIS MEANS YOU! And ME. This is a WE problem. We all need to get off our asses and start putting effort into making the changes we know we need to make to increase our quality of life as a species.
Get real with yourself. Stop making excuses for why you aren’t the way you need to be in order to feel self confident. Telling yourself these stories in your head is the perfect recipe for depression. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that things like depression, alcoholism, drug addiction, and most chronic illness like obesity and diabetes are afflictions that you are just so unlucky to have fallen victim to. These are symptoms of a poor physical and mental habits that become ingrained into your damn soul. The consequence for inaction is suicide whether it be instant or in slow-motion. You have to put persistent effort into changing otherwise YOU ARE NEVER GOING TO GET ANY RESULTS and you are NEVER GOING TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT YOURSELF when you are alone with your thoughts.
You get the picture. Start telling yourself these power statements when you wake up in the morning. Work like Arnold Schwarzenegger says with reps and sets of the desired behavior until you get the results you want. YOU WILL GET RESULTS WITH THE PROPER EFFORT. It is a damn law of the universe. You can overcome any obstacle in your life no matter how deep your depression or how bad of an alcoholic you are. $50K rehab programs and years of counseling are only as good as they are at making YOU help yourself. Retrain your body, mind, and spirit for balance and upward mobility. Don’t put bandaids on bullet wounds. Keep a daily journal that you fill with things you are thankful for, people you love and want to make proud of you, plans for how you are going to achieve goals. You can do it. From baby steps to big leaps.
I read a lot of books. Most people don’t read these days which is a damn shame. OK, I’ll admit I went through a dry spell for a good block of time where I didn’t read anything that wasn’t force fed to me in Junior High and High School, but luckily for me I got back on the horse in college. I love to read books about psychology and thinking. I am a deep diver when I get into a topic of interest and this is both a blessing and a curse. I get fixated on whatever is in my cross-hairs. Always have, and this has pushed me into some pretty negative thought patterns in my day. I have inadvertently set a handful of bad habits this way which had to be undone later on. Most (close to all) of the unhappiness in my life, both past and present, has come from me not maintaining control of the voice in my head and allowing it to set bad habits in my way of thinking.
No two people share the same exact reality. Quantum physics even tells us that there isn’t even such a thing as a solid matter “Reality” with a capital R. There are only billions of “realities” (lower case r) rendered to each of us as we observe what is going on in our environment. Five honest people could witness the same car crash and give five completely different accounts to the police of how it played out. Each of them would believe their own account enough to pass a polygraph. So who’s right? We have to let the judge and jury decide. But wait, even their views are completely subjective.
by frequent repetition or physiological exposure.” Our subconscious mind functions totally on habit.
When something eloquently put rings true and resonates with your soul the source doesn’t really matter. All that matters is the value you gain from it.
Everybody is a different person behind closed doors. You would be shocked to see what some of your closest friends are doing behind closed doors right now as you read this. I’ll bet your grandmother would be completely shocked to see that thing you did just the other day. Don’t lie! Pretty much every person you have ever seen in your entire life is a complete weirdo. The whole idea that there exists these “normal” people that we need to stifle out our uniqueness to impress is complete bullshit. Owning your weirdness is wonderful and freeing.
expressing your authentic uniqueness the more of your inner weirdo exposed to others with no fear.
in your involvement they go right back to the condition you found them in. If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. The only way to truly lead and inspire real change is to lead by example. BE that change you want to see in the world and stop leading horses to water.
choices in their own life. We get very insecure around people who we feel are “better off” than we are. We break ourselves down in our own mind and tell ourselves that we are “less than” and not “equal to.” We literally and subconsciously hand our power over to anybody our mind has identified as “superior” to us. This isn’t fair because of how aggressively our subconscious concepts of who we should be idolizing are molded by the media. This is followed by accusing said person of “thinking they are better than us” when the only problem exists within the story we’re telling ourselves in our own heads.
settle for the ordinary.” Don’t be afraid to be yourself. Don’t be afraid to start making changes in the way you think and set some new goals. There is literally nothing stopping you from doing anything you want if you are confident enough withstand the criticism until you get there.
I love listening to different perspectives on topics that pertain to struggles I am having in my own life. I recently listened to a recording of an Indian yogi and mystic by the name of 
known what the best way to parent their children was. Even if you have 12 children you are still learning. You may raise your first 11 properly and the 12th one can really put you through the ringer.
little habit that my girls pick up coming from my lovely wife… and she sure as hell picks up every little annoying habit that I contribute to the pot. It’s quite funny how it’s so much harder to see one of your own habits manifest in your child’s mannerisms than it is to spot those from others.
That is a must, but that will only create the necessary ambiance. It still doesn’t make you necessarily a good parent, but it creates the necessary ambiance. Creating the necessary ambiance is absolutely a large part of parenting. A large part. If you create the right kind of atmosphere of a certain sense of joy and love and care and discipline for yourself AND your home atmosphere, generally they grow up peacefully.
beings or brats you raise. For that, what kind of being YOU are is an extremely important part of raising children. So if your wife became pregnant, it’s time for YOU to start your transformation. Now because another life is coming in and YOU YOURSELF might not conducting yourself in such a way that is suitable to be emulated. Becoming conscious of what we are doing and what is rubbing off on even our babies is extremely important.
their intelligence. That will not insure whether he or she is gong to become, a doctor, an engineer, so on and so forth, but one thing is clear. The curious higher intelligence is active when you do not stifle the innate curiosity. Of course you want to put him or her through the necessary physical activity to give a healthy body, but it is just as important to foster an active intelligence.
control. Right? However we do have control over some circumstances. You CAN create an atmosphere of love, thoughtfulness, and openness. When you do not (knowingly or unwittingly) train your child to be exclusively identified with any particular social institution, naturally there is no sense of prejudice and no grounds for being offended. When you bring up a child free of prejudice, in a loving very open atmosphere, GENERALLY they do well. Buuuuuuuut, there is no guarantee because there are other influences in the society. There is no insurance or guarantee. That is a risk that you are taking. Always.
When I was a young boy I was a huge reader. I learned to read a bit early and I remember wanting to read everything I could get my hands on. Dr. Seuss, dictionaries, encyclopedias, you name it. This carried on until junior high and the advent of puberty. This is when most of us in our culture learn to stifle our imagination and uniqueness and trade it for acceptance into the herd.
the many, many lessons about how to get along in this human situation that can only be learned in social settings. Even our blood family just another kind of social institution.
child is imaginative, open-minded, and free of assumptions and prejudgments. A child has an honest-to-god genuine curiosity about the world and wants to solve any mystery they become aware of.
head is actually the only thing you can have any TRUE control over.
to what amazing things are possible to achieve.