Study Positive Psychology – How Everyone is a Time Traveler

Most positive psychology program you may find today will push for well-being, success and happiness— but the can they be predicted? One psychologist proved that these three things can be predicted by an individuals’s ‘time-traveling skills’.

Through our memories we draw from our pasts, through our aspirations and hope, we go our future and through an awareness of the now that we live by the present. How we go back and forth our past, present and future is called the time-perspective. It is a concept that bears the difference on how an individual will do well in their life (success) and an aspect of how joyful they are living it (happiness).

It was through my positive psychology course that I learned how I can make use of time-perspective as a means of time traveling thorugh time.

Our time perspective which involves our tendency to get stuck in the past, the decision to live only for the moment, or be confined by our ambitions for the future — were found to predict almost everything from the educational and career success to an individual’s general health and happiness.

In This Article:
So what’s Time Perspective?
What’s Your Type?
The ‘Time-Travel Skills’ I learned from my positive psychology course

So what’s Time Perspective?

It was Philip Zimbardo, a Stanford University psychology professor emeritus who coined the concept of time perspective. His research for more than ten years led him to a conclusion that our attitude toward time – or how we view and go through our past, present and future — are essential aspects that influences our judgments, decisions, and actions. Zimbardo recommends the adaption of more future-based time perspective to help students in studying and progressing to higher education. Zimbardo claims that we can all change our time perspective even if it is influenced by the following:

• Culture. Individualistic cultures has more of a future focuse perspective, while a collectivistic culture invests more in the past .
• Age can render different time perspectives
• Social status or affluence also affects as poorer communities has a tendency to live more in the present.

By shifting our focus between the past, present and future, we are able to adapt our mindset to different situations. Switching through perspectives allows us to savor moments like a moment of pause before sipping one’s coffee or reminiscing times with your siblings Switching through time perspectives in an unconscious skill, but taking control and improving one’s awareness and use of it, it is a vital still that can help align our selves with our visions and present situations. Zimbardo came up with a 56-item inventory for measuring levels of time perspective, this inventory is used specifically for time perspective therapy. The inventory still has unresolved psychometric problems and thus researchers are creating short versions of it for more validity and reliability. We used the original version (one that is linked above) when we tried looking at our time perspectives on our positive psychology program. A research regarding the short versions of the Zimbardo inventory revealed that the ZTPI-short version is “a quality instrument for assessing time perspective and can be recommended for further use.”

What’s Your Type?

There are five key approaches to the time perspective according to Zimbardo. These are:

1. The ‘past-negative’ type.

• Past negative-oriented people tend to focus on what went wrong in the past and the negative personal experiences that still triggers or upset you.
• This may lead to feelings of regret and bitterness.
• They have this pessimistic view of their lives and the world;
• Most past negative people prefer to think and regard themselves as “realists” – believing that the way they view the world is “the true” bigger reality.

2. The ‘past-positive’ type.

• You love taking a nostalgic view of the past, thereby staying in very close contact with your family.
• hey may have friends they’ve known since childhood.
• You tend to have happy relationships, but the downside is a cautious, “better safe than sorry” approach which may hold you back.
• These has their attention and focus on the ‘‘good old days.’’
• They may tend to look forward on celebrating traditional holidays, like to keep souvenirs from past experiences, collect photos;

3. The ‘present-hedonistic’ type.

• These people are dominated by impluses to pursue pleasure and maybe reluctant to postpone feeling good for the sake of greater gain later.
• They maybe the ones we call those “who live in the moment.”
• Their goals in life are mostly about seeking pleasure, sensation, and new and unique experience.
• These type frequently do the above to avoid feeling pain and may have addictive personalities.
• They may tend to be popular but also have a less healthy lifestyle and be more likely to take risks.

4. The ‘present-fatalistic’ type.

• You aren’t enjoying the present but feel trapped in it, unable to change the inevitability of the future.
• These types feel that their fate is pre-determined a destiny – and future – set
• They may tend to believe that that their actions don’t make a difference in the world and they have little or no control over what happens to them and.
• This time perspective may come from their religious orientation, for others it can be a realistic assessment of their poverty, or when they are living with extreme hardships.
• This sense of powerlessness can lead to anxiety, depression and risk-taking.

5. The ‘future-focused’ type.

• These types are highly ambitious, has the greatest focus on goals, and a fan of making ‘to-do’ lists.
• They tend to feel too much sense of urgency that most of the time create stress for themselves and those around them.
• They invest a bit more in their future which comes at the cost of their close relationships and recreation time.
• Future-oriented people loves thinking ahead
• As they plan their future they also have a big trust in their decisions;
• In the extreme they may become workaholics, leaving only little time to enjoy or appreciate what they have been working so hard to achieve.
• They are the types who are most likely to succeed and not get in any trouble.

All these five types can come into play in our lives at some point, they can be in one or two directions simultaneously depending on where you are more focused. By identifying these and you can start developing a more flexible, healthier approach.

The ‘Time-Travel Skills’ I learned from my positive psychology course

The question is, how can I use this?

The goal is to find a perspective that is appropriate and helps realize essential psychological needs and deeply held beliefs and values. Finding balance and positivity can come from making positive use of one’s past, finding healthy ways to savor the present, and routinely making improvement for future plans.

Example:

Consider how you can use your regrets for the greater good. Maybe you can take that course you long dreamed of? You can use the heavy emotions to motivate yourself. Let yourself immerse in rewarding activities that demand your full attention than the passive activities like watching Netflix. This shift can lead to greater fulfillment and can more likely create lasting happy memories.

Believe that you can improve your future through your helpful actions and you can gain a sense of empowerment and control. Push away those nagging doubts and the uncertainty of what lies ahead. Through a belief that we will have a positive future, we can increase our likelihood of doing so.

Time traveling to your past, present and future can beneficial if you know how to make use of memories, situations and visions.

A positive psychology program can help you look further into the use of the time perspective, so… will you take a chance?