Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to the Jack Hopkins Show podcast, where stories about the power of focus and resilience are revealed by the people who live those stories. And now the host of the Jack Hopkins Show podcast, jack Hopkins. Hey, this is Jack Hopkins.

Speaker 2: 0:21

I don't think there's a person around who has not had the experience of maybe sitting in line at the bank in the drive-thru or getting in line at the grocery store and having five minutes seem like an hour. Maybe only four or five minutes passed, but in experiential time, perceptual time, it seemed like you were there forever. But then we've also had kind of the opposite experience, right, remember when maybe you first started dating and your parents said all right, you be home by 10 and it's eight o'clock when you left the house, right, so you go see your girlfriend, your boyfriend, whoever you're going to see and spend time with that you enjoyed being with, and two hours seemed like it went by in like 15 minutes. It was just like boom and it's over Now. Wouldn't it be cool if we could manipulate that to our benefit? Wouldn't it be cool if we knew how to tweak the knobs inside our own head so that we could take 10 minutes and make it seem like an hour, when we really had something that we enjoyed, but we only had 10 minutes and we wanted it to seem like it took a lot longer. And then wouldn't it be cool if there was something that we knew from prior experience was going to be a royal pain in the ass, and it may have been something that was only going to take 10, 15, 20 minutes, but it always seems like it takes two fucking hours. It'd be cool to be able to change that, reverse that, switch that around, play with the knob, so to speak. Right, well, guess what we can.

Speaker 2: 2:35

Here's the cool thing about our perception of time. When somebody says, oh my God, I went to the bank and it just took so long, it went so slow. Or on the opposite end, you say, man, they say I could go for two hours and I went, and that was like no time at all. It like went by in 10 or 15 minutes. Remember those conversations, or at least thoughts in your head when you were a kid, teenager, right?

Speaker 2: 3:11

Anytime we say faster or slower, or that was slow, oh, that went by fast, every time we are making a comparison. Every time we are making a comparison and we are usually making that comparison on the other-than-conscious level, meaning we're not always aware of what we are comparing it to. That part kind of stays silent. But we have to be comparing it to something Otherwise. But we have to be comparing it to something, otherwise we wouldn't be able to know whether it seemed slow or whether it seemed fast or, you know, somewhere in the middle we wouldn't. We wouldn't be able to make that judgment, because we always have to compare in terms of time. We have to compare it to kind of a baseline or at least a previous or prior experience, right? So that's where we get kind of the magic, if you will, when it comes to playing with our own perception of time. We are going to play with what we are comparing it to. We are going to compare the actual experience to something that we set up ahead of time.

Speaker 2: 4:35

What am I talking about? Let's say, for example, maybe like Thanksgiving was coming up soon. For example, maybe like Thanksgiving was coming up soon and you just happen to be from you know one of those families that for the most part pretty cool, but you got a couple real sticks in the mud, or maybe just a royal pain in the ass that you always dread, you know, thanksgiving dinner, because you've either got that pain in the ass grilling you with questions and wanting to nitpick and argue with you, or something of the sort, and it can take a you know 45-minute-hour meal situation and make it seem like it lasts forever, and you don't want it to seem like it lasts forever. In fact, you'd like for it to be able to seem like man. That took no time at all. It was like done. How do you do that?

Speaker 2: 5:46

If I were going to do that, what I would do is I would close my eyes and I would imagine being at that Thanksgiving dinner with those people present, and I would imagine everything on the side of me, all of the interactions, all of the voices, all of the movements, anything that typically goes on in those Thanksgiving dinners. I would imagine it happening at like ultra slow motion, slow motion. So the movements in terms of what I in this pretend visualization that I'm doing, the movements of the people on the side of me at that table would be moving at about that speed. Right, that's what I'm going to have it. I'm going to play out 10, 15, 20 seconds of this meal, with everything that's happening in the periphery going slow as syrup, and then I'm going to open my eyes and I'm going to do another little five, 10 second clip of that Same thing, maybe even slower. Then I'm going to open my eyes and I'm going to do another five, 10 second clip of everything happening at about that speed. I'm going to play that out in five or 10 second segments for six or eight times. Right, the whole thing take a minute and a half at most and here's what happens. And if you've never done this before, then it sounds batshit crazy. I get that, but once you've done it you're going to be like, holy shit, is it really that easy? I guess it is super slow speed.

Speaker 2: 8:22

Then when you actually go to that meal and the people that you rehearsed with are the people there and they're just doing things at normal day-to-day speeds. By contrast hear me again, because we always compare to something else by contrast, the speed of normal Thanksgiving meal, conversation and movements is going to be light years faster than that ultra slow movement that you played out in your head of that Thanksgiving dinner, and it's not something that you even have to focus on when you actually get to the dinner. You've already done your work the day before. Now you can just go to the meal. You can just go to the meal and interact because you've already cued up your brain to make that comparison. It's going to take the actual real-life speed of everything that's happening and it's going to compare that to the most recent file in your brain and you don't have a literal file in your brain, but that's the language we will use to describe that most recent experience. And when you are engaging at that Thanksgiving dinner, unconsciously your brain is taking everything that's happening and measuring it against that most recent file and it's going to say, oh wow, this is like this is fast compared to that. And so your perceptual experience of it then, both while it's happening and then later in the day, after it's over with and you're thinking back on it, it's going to seem like it just boom, blew by. Man, that went fast.

Speaker 2: 10:30

Now, if you want to do the opposite and that is, let's say, let's think of a good one. Let's say that your favorite actor or actress is going to be doing a book signing right, let's say, it's Mark Hamill. Mark Hamill played a huge role in get-out-the-vote efforts this year. The name Mark Hamill is maybe as significant as it was in Star Wars days, and rightly so. So let's say, mark Hamill's doing a book signing and your work schedule is screwy and you've got an asshole for a boss that won't let you off, even though they know you're a huge Star Wars fan, and you've only got like 10 minutes. 10 minutes that includes just standing there staring at Mark Hamill and the maybe 15-20 seconds that you actually get to speak to him as he signs your book. And this is such a big thing in your life. You don't want this to just go and then 10 seconds, 15 seconds, it's over. You want it to seem like you're sitting at the bank in line. You want that short little piece of time. You want it to seem like it lasts forever.

Speaker 2: 12:09

So what do you do? You do the opposite of what you did in the first scenario. In your mind, you just close your eyes and there's no Look. Don't get all hung up when you hear somebody say visualization, or I visualized. Don't think that they are closing their eyes and seeing these crystal clear looks, just like the outside world images. They're not. They're thinking. So if I tell you, close your eyes and visualize a flower, the same thing is going to happen as if I say close your eyes and think about a flower. It's going to bring up the same image, the only difference being is sometimes with some people, when you tell them to close their eyes and visualize a flower, they'll go oh, I'm no good at visualizing things, so I just usually leave visualize out of the vocabulary and I just say, okay, close your eyes and think of a flower. Boom, they've done exactly what I needed them to do. So same thing here. You're just thinking about it, right, so don't get hung up on it.

Speaker 2: 13:31

So what you would do, you'd close your eyes and you would think about meeting Mark Hamill at the book signing. But what you would do is you would have everything going on in the periphery and right in front of you Every interaction, every word that was spoken, every sound, everything. You would have that going at lightning speed. You would have it, just like you, almost no more than close your eyes and it's over, right, that's how fast you've got stuff. Than close your eyes and it's over, right, that's how fast you've got stuff going in your head. So you do it again.

Speaker 2: 14:12

You say, okay, round two of meeting Mark Hamill, the book signing, eyes back open, and you do that six, eight, 10 times, and then you forget about it and the next day you've got your ten minutes that your boss was so kind to let you have and you get in line and you get up there and you've got that 15, maybe 20 second window of a handshake or a oh my God, you're my favorite actor in the world and signs the book, maybe last, like I said, 10, 15, 20 seconds, but it seems like it lasts. Like I said, 10, 15, 20 seconds, but it seems like it lasts a lot longer. It's like wow, and it's so real that later if somebody told you hey, you know you were only up there for 15 seconds, right, you'd be like bullshit, that was longer than 15 seconds. I guarantee you I was up there at least a minute, maybe a minute and a half. They're like, no, that was 10, 15 seconds. They're like, no, that was 10, 15 seconds. Because you had cued your brain and set up a scenario where the most recent file in your brain of thoughts of Mark Hamill at a book signing everything moved so lightning fast that once you got there and everything was happening in real time the real-time movements, the real-time tempo of the conversation, the movements was so much slower than what your brain was comparing it to as it was happening that perceptually it felt like a much longer time. Does this work? Is it real? I do it all the time, all the time. Let me tell you where I first used this with great success, with other people with great success with other people, and it was on the oncology floor at the San Diego Naval Medical Center where I was the senior corpsman.

Speaker 2: 17:17

Now there are lots of different procedures that go on, some of them diagnostic, some of them testing, sometimes just simple blood draws. That can run the gamut of degrees of how uncomfortable they are or even painful. And if you think about the perception of time, a lot of what makes a bad experience bad isn't just the level of discomfort, but it's how long that period of discomfort seems perceptually Right. So let's say that you're going through a procedure that in clock time only takes two minutes, but the procedure itself is pretty damn uncomfortable and by default human beings kind of really have some shitty default modes so that two minutes of clock time for that procedure on default mode will seem like 15-20 minutes and it's uncomfortable as hell. So it's uncomfortable as hell by nature and now it feels like it lasts 10, 15 minutes. That's your perception of it, when in truth in real clock time it only took two minutes. Wouldn't it be nice? How about this? How about if we could just dial it back down to so that it doesn't at least it doesn't seem longer than the two minutes of actual clock time experience. But I mean, if we're going to do that, how about let's just knock it down to where it seems like it only took 30, 40 seconds? Can you do that? I did it all the time. I say I did it all the time. I say I did it all the time I guided people through the process and they did it all the time. Of course it works.

Speaker 2: 19:40

Our entire experience of life is subjective. It's why it cracks me up when somebody says, well, that's kind of subjective. It's why it cracks me up when somebody says, well, that's kind of subjective. Our entire experience of life is subjectivity. Whatever's going on inside of our head and our body, that's subjective experience, no matter how you slice it. What I do is teach people. I don't teach peels, I teach people. I teach people how to play with subjectivity in a way that benefits them.

Speaker 2: 20:18

Our default modes for subjectivity suck. Oh, every now and then you'll meet this rare individual whose default modes are optimal. Most of the time, people's default modes suck. So if you don't intervene and take intentional and conscious effort to tweak something, your default mode is going to suck. Your default mode's going to suck, which means when you get that two-minute clock time procedure. That hurts like hell. It's going to seem, because of your default mode, like it took 10 friggin' minutes For it to seem like the two minutes that it is, or, better yet, like 30 to 40 seconds.

Speaker 2: 21:04

That's going to require knowing how to go in and tweak your subjectivity, which you can absolutely do. It's another one of those things nobody ever taught us. Now you had to take trigonometry or calculus, and unless you are in a specialized field, how many times have you used that in life? But oh my god, let's not teach somebody how to run their own mind. Let's not teach them one, that it's possible to tweak your subjective experience, and two, let's sure don't teach them how to do that. My God, we might fool around and show people how to have better lives and a better experience of life. That would be awful. That would be awful.

Speaker 2: 22:05

It's as simple as this. If you want certain experiences to seem like they last longer, you can. If you want other experiences to seem like they blaze by in the blink of an eye, you can. Subjective experience it is our experiential reality. But the other side of this same coin is that subjective experience isn't real. How cool is that that subjective experience is our experience of reality. But that subjective experience isn't real. That excites the shit out of me. That whole thought excites the hell out of me. Why? Because it means I can do whatever I want to do with my own subjective experience.

Speaker 2: 23:07

If I don't like the way I'm experiencing something, just knowing that the largest part of how I'm experiencing it is subjective, I go thank God, because I get to change it, I get to tweak it, I get to alter it, I get to manipulate it. It's not this stuck static thing. If I want to experience that as taking half the time it really takes, I can. If I want this thing that takes 30 minutes to seem like it went by in 10 minutes, I can. Just like anything else, I'll get better with practice and before long I'll have it so streamlined that really all I'll have to do is just think I want that to go faster or I want that to go slower, and unconsciously. Everything that I've done so many times before through conscious intention. Now it's just kind of running automatically. It's my new default mode. I can just decide I want that to seem like it just goes slow and I want that to seem like it's over. You can do that. You've already done it. Look, here's the thing. It's kind of crazy for me to tell you. You can do that, because anybody watching or listening to this knows full well. They've already done it.

Speaker 2: 24:43

Countless times in life You've been sitting at the bank tapping your foot thinking come on, come on, come on, my lunch hour's about over and it seemed like it's just dragging you. Look at your clock and it only took like seven minutes. But, my God, it felt like you were sitting there in the sun roasting for 30 minutes. You were with a boyfriend, a girlfriend, the person that you wound up marrying, and you only had 30 minutes and it seemed like in five minutes you had to go home or they had to go back inside. You've experienced this multiple times. You've experienced the subjective reality not matching clock time.

Speaker 2: 25:33

If you, as a human being, were not capable of doing this on a neurological level, you wouldn't be able to have those experiences. But you have, and it's not a fluke. You've had them multiple times in life. So the only thing I'm doing is showing you oh, you know those things you can already do, but you're not sure just how they happen or why. Well, I'm going to show you how to take those things that already happen, so you've already proven to yourself that you can experience. Because you've experienced them, I'm going to show you the how and why of it. It's really simple. And then you get to decide whether something goes fast or whether it goes slow, because you know how, and it's as simple as that. This is Jack Hopkins, and I wish you a very happy Thanksgiving and I'll see you again soon.