How do you store time in your memories?

Taking a break from talking about money for a minute, I've been reading various articles about how our brains store information.  In particular, how do you store memories in a timeline?  When you think about something, how do you understand whether or not it is a memory from the distant past or recent past, or a constructed vision of an event in the near future or the distant future? 

Depending on how you store memories from the past and future related to the present, you might be someone who dwells on the past, or someone who is always set on some big future pay-off.  Or, you might be someone that is content in the present and has trouble sticking to deadlines in the future because they aren't as tangible for you as they are for other people.  A few clues into your brain's way of handling time might give insight into your own personality.

Take a minute and try this exercise.  To begin, try to think of these five things:

1. A time when you were brushing your teeth 10 years ago.
2. A time when you were brushing your teeth last week.
3. When you brushed your teeth this morning.
4. A time when you will be brushing your teeth a week from now.
5. A time when you will be brushing your teeth 10 years from now.

Flip through these images a couple times and try to notice any differences between them... are some brighter than others?  Closer?  Do they move around at all in your mental space?  How can you tell real memories from constructed memories?  Are the memories triggered by any feelings in other parts of your body?

Everyone stores this information in different ways, but some people have found that certain patterns emerge that relate how you store the information with how you feel about the information.  For example, if your memories nearest in time are closer, brighter, and bigger than those that are further away in time, then you might value the present more than someone who has the brightest and biggest images in the past compared to the future.  Or, if you locate the past to your left and the future to your right, you might percieve the passage of time differently than someone who stored the future in front of them and the past behind them.

It's all a bit fuzzy and difficult to pin down very well, especially if you haven't explored these kinds of ideas before.  Give it a try and see if you find out anything interesting about how you think, and how that relates to your outward perception of the past, the present, and the future.

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