THAT'S MEN:THE OLD soldier is a well-known male character, sometimes to the irritation of those around him – but now it looks like the old soldier may be ahead of the rest of us when it comes to enjoying life.
The old soldier is the one who spent a few years in the army and who, even if he never saw a shot fired in anger, glories in the experience for the rest of his days.
Old journalists provide another example of this genre as they retell stories of newsroom adventures which may, over the years, have taken wing from the reality of what really happened.
Women, unromantic creatures that they are, don’t go in for this sort of thing quite as much.
Maybe they ought to, because it appears that focusing on the past in a positive way is a key to enjoying life in the present.
This is according to Philip Zimbardo, a former professor of psychology at Stanford University. Zimbardo has studied how we place ourselves in time and how this affects our quality of life.
At this time of year, we tend to look to the future, but people who are completely future-oriented miss out on what life has to offer in the present and on an appreciation of what it offered in the past.
They sacrifice everything from sleep to family as they try ceaselessly to make the future conform to their picture of how it should be or as they attempt to avoid some feared future disaster. They can achieve a great deal in the world, but there isn’t a lot of fun in their lives.
This is also a time when people with an orientation towards the past may be full of memories, good and bad. For some this is a pleasant exercise, for others it’s bittersweet and for others still, it may involve a great deal of sadness and regret.
Zimbardo suggests that those who cultivate a strong sense of the positive events of the past will boost their enjoyment of life in the present. The old soldier wins the day, as he tells his story for the umpteenth time.
What of the present? Some of us, says Zimbardo, take a "hedonistic" view of the present – we focus on what is enjoyable. Others are fatalistic, seeing the present as beyond their influence or control – you could call it the Eeyore view of life after the pessimistic donkey in Winnie the Pooh.
According to Zimbardo, you can improve your experience of living by paying a good deal of attention to the positive aspects of the past, by giving some attention to the enjoyable side of the present and thinking some about the future.
The first step, I would suggest, is to notice your own orientation towards time: past, present or future, positive or negative? Then, when looking at projects and issues in your life, take the time to recall positive lessons from the past as to how to handle them.
If you are a person who is stuck in the future, invest some attention and energy in the enjoyable as well – after all, this is the future you were worrying about not too long ago.
Addendum:Are you making New Year resolutions? If so, try out this advice from Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire who has been studying the outcome of resolutions.
To boost your chances of success, he recommends that you break your resolution down into measurable steps, for instance losing a kilo a month or increasing your exercise times in stages.
Remind yourself of the rewards of carrying through your resolution – focusing on how bad it would be to fail seems to make failure more likely he has found.
Tell other people about your resolution – this works particularly well for women, he says, while breaking the resolution into small steps works for men.
Finally, if you fail, don’t give up – get going again. Go to bit.ly/richardwiseman for more.
Padraig O'Morain (pomorain@ireland.com) is accredited as a counsellor by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His book, Light Mind – Mindfulness for Daily Living, is published by Veritas. His mindfulness newsletter is free by email