How To Make Time Slow Down

If you look someone you love in the eye a second before you press your lips to theirs, time will stand still. It feels like everything slows down, like you can dream and never have to wake up. Later, when you remember this moment, it will feel like time has gone so fast.

On a day when you hear bad news, such as that someone has died, the seconds seem to stretch into an eternity, and time becomes sluggish and slow before your eyes.

The perception of time

You have chronological time, and you have subjective time. This is your perception of time under the influence of a particular event. Subjective time suggests that we have an idea of ​​the past, present and future, and we use this idea to understand the duration of events and place them within a certain period of time.

A person’s sensitivity to time can also affect the results of mental tasks, such as thinking about the solution to a problem, making decisions, or planning for the future. Psychologist John Weardon claims that the perception of time is related to memory and vision.

If it subjectively feels like time is moving slowly, you will notice more things and remember them better.

In 1920, psychologist Hudson Hoagland observed a relationship between the perception of time and body temperature. At one point, when Hoagland’s wife was ill and had a fever, he went away for a minute, and to his wife, it felt like he’d been away for an eternity. So Hoagland had her count to 60 every day, and she realized that the higher the fever, the faster she counted. In other words, as her temperature went up, her internal clock got faster.

New experiences activate neurons

Neuroscientist David M. Eagleman specializes in the study of phenomena related to the human brain’s perception of time. He did a few MRIs and concluded that when an experience is new or surprising, the neuronal activity associated with recording the experience increases.

This phenomenon occurs because you pay more attention to new events and store more details in your memory, which is fuller with new experiences. When you remember a new experience, you think it lasted much longer than it actually did.

Stop time so you can dream

You can’t stop time, but you can make the most of every second so that you are aware of every moment and feel that you are alive. You learn from everything that happens around you, whether it’s good or bad, and if you take a moment to reflect on this, you can learn and remember the lesson.

Seconds, hours, days, weeks, months and years go on relentlessly, and you can’t stop them. What you can do is help your brain experience these seconds, hours, days, weeks, months and years more slowly and let yourself dream. Here are some ways to do this:

• Never stop learning.  By exploring the world with a child’s curiosity, asking questions and reading a lot, you can activate your brain and memory, and you will feel that time is slowing down.

• Discover new places. Visiting new places, breaking the routine, traveling and getting to know the world will open your mind and put your brain to work. Your brain stores all the information from the journey and perceives time as slowing down.
• Get to know new people. We always move in the same social circles and create our routines from there. Friends, family, acquaintances and colleagues tend to stay the same. Go out and talk to new people, get to know them and let others get to know you.
• Follow your heart and your intuition. We often think too much about the decisions we make, and we don’t realize that the more options we have, the more confused we can feel. Follow your heart and your intuition, learn to be spontaneous, dream and enjoy every moment.

• You can dream a life in one minute, and you can extend this minute by thousands of moments. It is possible to remember a moment, hold it in your memory and remember what it smelled like, how fast your heart was beating and who was with you.