When checking my email or letters, it’s not uncommon to get a letter that goes something like:
“Dear Doctor: I have a very busy life but it always feels like the days are just zipping by. How can this be the case?”
The simple answer is that your life seems to be moving so fast precisely because you are living such a fast-paced lifestyle. In order to focus on juggling all of your tasks and priorities you need to completely block everything else out. This means that you are less like a free-thinking person and act more like a robot whose sole purpose is to perform one task after another.
Eventually, this means that we aren’t even thinking about the tasks we are doing. In order to be efficient at our lives we go into “autopilot,” performing rote tasks almost subconsciously. And just like time seems to fly past when we are asleep, time also appears to move much more quickly when we are trying to do too much and living in a perpetual semi-conscious state.
One way to live longer is to make every day last. The best way to do this is to learn how to slow down the pace of your life. Living as a truly conscious being with full awareness of your surroundings and your place in the Universe will help you to not only have less stress but to also make every minute last longer. Pushing yourself with new challenges can also force you out of autopilot and make you appreciate each moment.
