Chapter 13: Travelling in Time to Improve Your Life 215
workaholic and want to chill with your partner in the evening, why not pre-
tend that your time line is the other side of your front door, and become an
in-time person the moment you step through your door.Switching time lines can cause some physical disorientation. For example,
you can feel dizzy. So choose a quiet and relaxed time for altering your time
line instead of when you’re busy rushing around. If you feel uncomfortable
while changing your time line, slow down and revert your time line to its
original orientation.
If you’re a through-time person and your time line is laid out in front, you
can change that time line by stepping onto it so that you have to turn your
head or your body to face the past or the future. Or you can float above your
time line so that it spreads out below you; as you float back down to position
yourself, the time line’s below your feet or running through your body.If you’re an in-time person, you can step off your time line so that it spreads
out in front of you and you can see your past, present, and future as a contin-
uum, just by turning your head to your left or your right but without having
to turn your body. If you prefer, you can float above your time line and when
you float back down, position yourself so that your time line’s in front of you.Romilla always asks delegates on the ‘Future Perfect’ seminars to switch time-
line orientation and to keep the different orientation over lunch, as long as
they feel comfortable. One of the delegates, a highly in-time person, initially
experienced dizziness and nausea when she put her time line out in front of
her (through time) but was keen to persevere. After sitting down for a while
she stabilised and went to lunch. On her return, her relief at switching her
time line back to an in-time line was visible for all to see.Apart from switching the orientation of your time line, discovering how to
change the way that you space out events on it can also be useful.John was suffering from stress. He felt as though everything was pressing in
on him and that he just couldn’t cope with all his work. When John went back
along his time line, using Time Line Therapy® (co-created by Tad James), he
remembered that he’d failed to qualify for a scholarship when he was a young
boy. His mother was very scathing and judgemental. John realised that he’d
been trying to please her ever since and always tried to do too much.On examining the arrangement of his time line, John discovered that he had
his present up close to his nose and his future about 15 centimetres farther
in front of that. When we cleared up all the negative emotions behind his
‘failure’ (flip to Chapter 2 for a more empowering term, ‘feedback’), John was
able to move the present out to about 30 centimetres away and place his
future farther along and up, about three metres away. When he stretched out
his time line in his mind, he got into a panic because he felt that because he’d
stretched it too far, that he’d never achieve anything in his life again. When
he shortened his time line so that it wasn’t as tight as it was before, but not