The Third Law of Chronoception: Expansion
Lesson 7 from: How to Expand Time and Live a Full LifeJohn K. Coyle
The Third Law of Chronoception: Expansion
Lesson 7 from: How to Expand Time and Live a Full LifeJohn K. Coyle
Lesson Info
7. The Third Law of Chronoception: Expansion
Lessons
Class Introduction
00:50 2The Earth is Flat: Time is Linear
03:37 3The Antecedents of an Obsession with Time
09:23 4Life isn't Just Short, is is Actively Getting Shorter
03:40 5The First Law of Chronoception: Contraction
06:12 6The Second Law of Chronoception: Inversion
17:46 7The Third Law of Chronoception: Expansion
05:41 8Designing Event Horizon Moments
09:13Lesson Info
The Third Law of Chronoception: Expansion
Law Three is the most important and this is the Law of Expansion. This is the idea that under the right environmental circumstances, you can actually create time out of nothing. Time was actually created out of nothing right? It didn't exist in the thesus of the universe until space intruded itself and started expanding and time followed in its wake. The same goes for memories. You can create memories of such intensity, such gravity that they expand beyond all temporal constructs and they overlap into the worlds that make no temporal sense but ultimately leave lasting impressions that are well beyond the moment that they were built out of. So there's some physics here we'll talk about the Law of General Relativity from Einstein, probably familiar with that. Mentions the idea that if you take a clock, leave it on earth and put another on a space shuttle, let it do a few loops, when it comes back, the clock that went through that acceleration to get up and out of orbit will come back wit...
h a little bit slower time. You take that to the extreme, if you take that clock and you put it near a giant gravitational object like a black hole, there's a place, and time where time actually stops relative to the outside world as you accelerate toward the speed of light. And that place in time is called an event horizon. And these exist all throughout the universe they're real things and time just stops relative to the outside world. And nobody knows what happens after that 'cause nobody knows. I think we create the same in our lives. We create Event Horizon Moments where time stops and where time is actually even created. And so, think of this: Is there a week of your life that was really relatively boring and mundane that you would trade away to keep a day that was really important? Right, so easy right? There's a boring week, I get rid of it, I get to keep this awesome day. Let's take it to the extreme, is there a moment, a minute of such scintillating gravity and intensity that you would trade away an entire year of routine days to keep that one moment? So maybe, maybe not, but inverting that, what if you design moments that are worth a year? Or if you could do five a year? What if you could do 10 a year? You do ten a year, you don't live for 43 more years, you live 430. And there's a man who's done exactly this, and his name was Eugene O'Kelley. So Eugene O'Kelley was an amazing guy. He was the CEO of KPMG, and at age 56 a few years ago, he got diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and given 90 days to live no treatment. And so what he did next is amazing. He realized that what mattered in life was his experiences and the people. And so he designed the remaining 90 days to maximize those. So he unwound himself from KPMG swiftly, and then he had his 88 days or so to live the rest of his life. And what he did was he put everybody in his life that mattered into cohorts and he started unwinding them from the outside in. So five cohorts, the exterior being mentors and business acquaintances that really made an impact on his life and there's a phone call or a walk in the park and they had a nice dialogue, and then he said goodbye forever 'cause he wouldn't have time to do it again. But these were not all sad, in fact, they were filled with gratitude, and love and this mutual admiration. And then he moved into the inner circles and for circles four and three, he recreated how they first met. Whether it was a baseball game, or it was maybe a certain restaurant, or a certain event, or skiing, or sailing and he recreated how they first bonded so they could revisit those same synaptic connections and then again he had to say goodbye forever. He unwound those relationships, yet again and it was really heart-wrenching and incredibly filled with love and gratitude. And then he moved in to the inner circles and this is where it got very hard. For those people in his last 30 days or so, nuclear family and friends, best friends, he did bucket list things. So things that they would remember far after he was gone because they're so unique and amazing. And finally, he moved into the inner circle and he had to say goodbye to the hardest of all, his 14-year old daughter. And he asked her what she wanted to do and she said "I wanna go visit the Inuit in Alaska and I'd "like to see Prague with you before we lose you". So he planned that trip. But here's the amazing thing about Eugene O'Kelley, he realized something near the end of his life that has changed my life. He realized near the end, that he was creating the perfect moments, his own words, "perfect moments where time stopped" and that he was going to live longer than if he had never gotten cancer at all. Each day was expanding well beyond its temporal construct each day was feeling like a year. He felt like he lived 90 years in these 90 days. He'd never gone to lunch with his wife on a workday and here he is having the kinds of conversations that were life changing every single day with the people he loved, the things he always should've said that they should've always said and it completely changed his relationship with time. And he was grateful. If you read his book, he wrote a book during the 90 days, "Chasing Daylight". You could feel the gratitude oozing off the pages for this gift he was given of time to be able to expand and dilate it in ways that are almost incomprehensible. And so, I'll share with you the way he finished his book. So the very first, not the way he finished, the way he started his book. The very first two sentences in his book, "Chasing Daylight" were "I was blessed, I was told I had three months to live." Incredibly grateful for this gift of time and how he used it. And we can do the exact same thing, it's not hard.
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Ratings and Reviews
Susan Burks
This is an important class. John reminds us of the incalculable value of filling our lives and those of people we care about with what is truly important - the gift of meaningful time. I loved reflecting on experiences that have truly changed the course of my life. John's stories and the science behind them was so inspiring.
Anastasia Shatalina
Very interesting and inspiring. Thank you.
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