Editor’s Note: Today, the Daily is pleased to welcome back longtime PBRG friend and best-selling author Robert Ringer. Robert has appeared on numerous national television and radio shows, including The Tonight Show, Today, The Dennis Miller Show, Good Morning America, ABC Nightline, The Charlie Rose Show, as well as Fox News and Fox Business. As you’ll see below, his unique brand of insight is as thought provoking as it is motivational…
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From Robert Ringer: Have you ever wondered why time seems to pass much more quickly every year of your life?
Since virtually everyone experiences this phenomenon, there has to be a concrete reason for it. It can’t just be everyone’s imaginations.
As it turns out, there have been many theories set forth to explain this phenomenon. The one that’s most plausible to me claims each additional unit of time we live through is a smaller percentage of the total time we’ve been alive. Of course, we don’t consciously compare any particular time unit with how long we’ve lived… it’s just something the subconscious mind automatically processes.
To an infant, there’s no separation between himself and the world. They’re one and the same. Not only is he the only player in the game of life, he is life. His crib, his smiling mother, and his baby food are all part of him.
He hasn’t lived long enough to figure out these things are separate from him and to understand he’s not the entire world. The world he perceives—which encompasses everything he can see and touch—is static. His unconscious perception is that nothing changes—not his mother, not his crib, not anything in his surroundings. He simply doesn’t have enough experience to notice any kind of change.
His first year seems like a lifetime to him… because it is. That’s why the passage of time has been very slow. But when the baby reaches age 1, he slowly starts to become aware of the passage of time and the changes in his once-static world.
From that point on, each additional year he lives through is an ever-smaller percentage of his total experience. So, the second year of his life goes much faster than his first year because it comprises only one-half of his life, while his first year comprised his whole life. So, even though his total life at that point is two years, the second of those two years would seem to go much faster than the first.
By age 10, time has sped up considerably. A year goes by 10 times faster than when he was an infant because his 10th year comprises only 10% of his total life. It’s only logical he would perceive life to be passing by much more quickly than when he was, say, 5 years old.
At age 50, a year is only 2% of the life span he’s actually experienced, so he perceives time to be accelerating even faster. At 100 (you’re going to make it to 100, right?), he’s at 1%, meaning his 100th year consists of less conscious time (relative to his whole life) than four days did when he was only 1 year old.
What we’re talking about here is relativity and perspective. In absolute terms, the one-time baby’s 100th year was, indeed, a genuine year—meaning the Earth circled the sun one time. But relative to the time span of his entire life, it was only a bit less than four days.
And while we’re at it, why not extend this thinking beyond death and see what it might mean if there’s life after death. Imagine how quickly time would pass when you hit your 1 millionth birthday. By then, a year would be reduced to one-millionth of your total experience, the equivalent of 31 seconds to a 1-year-old. A baby would grow to become an adult in 10 minutes!
But let’s get back to planet Earth and life as we know it. There’s also a theory that says, when you’re young, the reason time seems to almost stand still is because you’re experiencing everything for the first time—first day of school, first date, first kiss, first varsity game, and so on. As people age, life—at least, for most—tends to become repetitive. Their moments aren’t savored like they were in their youth.
In this regard, I remember a friend of mine—who was a star athlete in high school—lamenting when we were in our first year of college, “Once you graduate from high school, life is pretty much over.” His comment took me aback, but I’m glad now he said what he did.
Why? Because it inspired me to make my adult life a thousand times better and more exciting than my life was as a kid and a teenager in a yucky Peyton Place environment. It motivated me to try things no one had ever tried before—some of them ended in disaster, but what a ride I had. And, yes, time has accelerated every step of the way.
So, which is reality—your absolute years or your perceived years? I’d argue both are reality because both are true. It’s a fact the Earth circles the sun one time between each of your birthdays, but your perception of time speeding up is also a reality. After all, what we actually experience is life as we perceive it. Our perception of time passing more quickly may be wrong in absolute terms, but our experience is what it is.
That being the case, the one thing you don’t want to do is unthinkingly wish for time to go even faster—anxiously awaiting the next big game, the next big closing, the next big date… and so on. A much better idea is to have the same mindset toward life that you have toward sipping a fine wine. Savor and enjoy every drop of it, and it might just slow down a bit—or even a lot. It’s certainly worth trying.
Copyright © 2015 Robert Ringer
Reeves’ Note: Robert is the publisher of RobertRinger.com. He’s also author of two New York Times No. 1 best-sellers. Both of them have been listed by The New York Times among the 15 best-selling motivational books of all time.
To sign up for a free subscription to Robert’s daily insights, visit www.robertringer.com.