There are varying time frames such as the past, present and the future. A pattern by Robert Dilts makes use of an existing resource state that is then taken into the future so that the person experiencing it can feel it grow with them into future to a designated age. That feeling as matured as it is then is brought back into the present and the process is repeated again and again until that resource state crosses a threshold and shift in a different and quite often interesting state that can then be apply to various areas on one’s life.
Milton Erickson along with Linn Cooper conducted many experiments regarding the use of time distortion in order to expand one’s sense of time. For example there was a gentleman that was working two jobs and going to school. One of the jobs was that he was a singer. Given that he worked so much he was unable to put in sufficient time in order to practice his singing. It had gotten so bad in fact that this individual’s boss told him at his first opportunity that he would have him replaced. Erickson had inferred that given the nature of the club’s atmosphere given that this individual would have to sing and then get a break, sing and then get a break that perhaps time distortion would be a suitable intervention for this individual.
What Erickson did was induce a trance state and to tell instruct the individual that from now on whenever he took a break between sets that he would be able to in the period of 10-30 seconds sit down and in his mind in his own special personal time be able to practice extensively all aspects related to his singing and it would feel like he had been practicing for an adequate period of time. He further elaborated that given the hallucinatory nature of his practicing and the brevity of it in real world time that his co-workers would only think that he was self absorbed in thought. From there Erickson gave this individual amnesia for the session and the nature of the work that they had done.
The client reported back to Erickson stating that he didn’t know what happened but that his performance singing had improved and that his boss said if he kept it up that his position would be assured. A few weeks later this same individual informed Erickson that his employer had given him a raise.
Change Personal History is a pattern in which some is taken to a experience that happen previously in their personal experience and they are then told to step out of it to an observer position and to make note of that experience and what personal experiences, resources that they now have that they could apply to that experience in order to bring it a more resourceful conclusion in their experience. As the resources at identified and anchored the person is then told to associate into the experience while the resource anchors are fire and the person is then instructed to mentally grow up with this new resources in place and to notice the changes that occur in their personal history as they go through their personal history with these changes in mind.
All these examples are examples of different ways that distorting one’s perception of time can affect a person’s life in a positive and resourceful way.