How does your relationship with time affect your life?
Do you live in your current time zone or in the past? Or with the dream of the future? There may be many moments when living a spontaneous life, enjoying the day and having fun are your top priorities, or you may live this way all the time. Present-oriented people sometimes feel social anxiety and anxiety, but living in the moment and looking to the future without worry distinguishes them from other people. They tend to be more inclined to affirm life.
Each time period has its own positive and negative perceptions. Culture, our perception of the outside world and our perspective are also three critical components for our perception of time. If we think in terms of culture, collectivist societies such as China and India are more inclined to live with the past period. Industry-oriented societies such as Korea and Japan are often focused on living in the moment and what can be done in the moment. North American society is more focused on future-oriented, future-oriented strategies and plans. Europe, on the other hand, was a society with a high focus on the future in the 1960s, but now it has a high focus on the past and a pessimistic picture about the future.
The second component after culture is our perception of the outside world. The fact that we see the outside world with its positive or negative sides affects how we perceive the time period. For example, someone who has a positive perspective on the past often looks at past family albums, maintains family routines, often expresses how beautiful the past was, and is in search of those days. People with a negative perception of the past, on the other hand, see the past as a reason for what is happening today and what will happen in the future, they blame the past and often express their regrets.
People who tend to perceive the present positively may be inclined towards hedonism. They can base their life solely on enjoying the present moment, often avoiding situations that will cause pain or distress. On the other hand, people who have a negative perception about today may think that everything they experience is due to fate. They tend to accept the negative situation by saying, “This is what happened to me right now because that's how it was supposed to be” and not look for a remedy for it.
Future-oriented people prioritize working, producing and aiming for the better when they have a positive approach. They ignore the current temptations in the outside world and focus on the job at hand. In this way, they set a goal to build a good future. The negative-prone approach of being future-oriented is to prepare for the post-world life, therefore, to set aside the pleasure one will get from the present and the future, and to construct life to fill the time in this world.
So, can we be "in the moment" at any moment, or is that a good thing if possible? In fact, it is important to try to choose the "good" from every perspective in order to find the balance. For example, you are on leave, you have taken a break from everything and you have no pending responsibilities. In this case, you can devote all your time to this subject and enjoy it in order to breathe the air in the environment you are in and to enjoy the beauties around you. Let's say you have to fulfill a critical task related to your job or there are expectations from you for a critical issue. In these moments, it is critical to know how to leave the present behind and focus on the future and how you will get the job done. You can make a prediction about this by opening a time in your mind and looking at how much of your time has passed, how much of it is now, and how much of it is for the future. Maybe you need to revise this account, this is an opportunity to see it.
Everyone around us may have different perceptions and perspectives on time. Considering these differences, the most important thing is to enjoy living together with people we do not think of in the same time period and to enjoy the differences. How about thinking about your perception of the outside world by thinking about the psychology of the time?
