How time affects your life

Do you remember a time when you where really happy?
Were you living a happier life earlier even though you had less resources?
Do you believe your changed, became someone else or that you can't find yourself?

Few people know that time is one of the most powerful factors that affect emotions, behavior and personality. And by mentioning time i am not referring to small changes like minutes or hours but am actually referring to longer periods such as months or years.

A happy and lively person could become a miserable and sad person in few years even if no major change has happened during these years. Sounds confusing huh?

Read this post to find out how time impacts your mood, personality and life.

Time, relative progress and happiness

Whether you think you are doing so or not your subconscious mind measures your progress in life by taking your age into consideration. Provided that everything else is constant making 50k a year in your twenties will have a completely different psychological impact on your mood than making the same number in your thirties.

In your twenties this might seem like a very satisfactory pay but when you hit the thirties you might reevaluate your progress and start to believe that you didn't achieve much.

Dave , a 21 years old, was a very successful guy. By the age of 23 he was getting a good pay and working at a decent job. When Dave became 25 he suddenly became depressed for no reason. When examining his case closely it was clear that the progress he made was no longer satisfactory to him when he hit 25.

but why 25? why not 24 or 25?
25 is usually a year where a person suddenly realizes that he is moving towards his thirties and this is why so many people start reevaluating their progress when they become 25. (see also The fear of growing up

Time, hope and depression

In my book, The ultimate guide to getting over depression i said that depression is a state of loss of hope that happens when you believe that you can't reach an important life goal.

Now even the unambitious person will still believe that he can become an achiever one day in the future and change his life to the better. This belief keeps his mood in a good state and prevents him from collapsing.

After all , according to his beliefs, whatever goes wrong can be fixed sometime in the future. But when he suddenly realizes that he is 40 or that a lot of time has passed his high hopes might suddenly disappear and he might become depressed.

Time and loss of identity

your psychological identity is the way you see yourself. "I am the brilliant student" is an example of a s psychological identity. Because a psychological identity is extremely important factor in the psychological stability of a person any threats to that identity can change a person's mood dramatically.

In many cases people's identities are strongly connected to time. If a student was the first in his class then his identity might be something like "I am the best" among my friends.

Now when that student completes school or college then he is very likley to get depressed if he didn't find a way to remain "The best". So as you can see when time passes your identity gets reevaluated and as a result your mood might change dramatically. (see also How your psychological identity affects your behavior)

How to prevent time from ruining your life?

So what's the way out?
Here is what you need to do:

1) Put that factor in your mind from now on Many people don't pay serious attention to time only to realize few years later that they wasted their lives. From now on you must understand that every second is precious and that wasting time is a threat to your long term well being
2) Stop procrastination: Procrastinators are among the people who get seriously affected by time since they are the ones who already know that time is important yet they rarely take serious steps. End procrastination today to prevent an identity crisis in the future.
3) What if its late already?: What if you believe you already wasted your time? In such a case the best thing you can do is to read a lot about the people who succeeded at an old age. The founder of Kentucky fried chicken brought the idea to existence when he was 65. Susan Boyle become a famous singer in her forties. There are hundreds more of examples and unless you become aware of them the belief that time has been lost will keep you depressed

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