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Time Isn’t Linear — It’s Lived: Why Breaking Your Survival Patterns Is the Key to Real Life

 

By: Sharee Murphy

By:

Most of us were taught to think of time as a straight line: past → present → future.

But the more I observe life, faith, leadership, and even my own internal world, the more I realize this isn’t true. Time is not linear. It is not a neat, predictable timeline we walk down step by step.

Time is something far more fluid, more human, and more spiritual than that.
Time is lived—constructed from memory, experience, emotion, revelation, and meaning.

 

We don’t live in minutes.

 

We live in moments.

 

And those moments form the architecture of our becoming.

 

1. Time isn’t counted — it’s remembered.

Your brain doesn’t store time the way a calendar does.
It stores sensations, conversations, heartbreaks, breakthroughs, revelations, and turning points.

 

That’s why… a painful moment from five years ago can feel like yesterday,

and a joyful moment from last week can feel like it happened a lifetime ago.

 

Time bends around experience. Time stretches around meaning. Your memory is the true clock.

 

2. Biologically, you are not the same person you were.

We say “I’ve changed” as a metaphor.
But science says it literally.

The human body is in constant regeneration.
Nearly every cell is replaced.
New neural pathways form and old ones fade.

 

Your body updates itself.

 

Your brain rewires itself.

 

Your identity evolves.

You aren’t living a timeline—you’re living a continuous becoming.

 

3. The brain protects patterns, not possibilities.

The human brain’s first priority is simple: keep you alive.
Not fulfilled, not expanded, not transformed—just alive.

And to do that, it repeats what you already know:

familiar habits

familiar environments

familiar emotional responses

familiar fears

familiar limitations

 

Patterns keep you safe, but they also keep you small.
They preserve survival, not purpose.

This is why you can want new outcomes but still default to old behaviors.

Your brain is recycling yesterday.

 

4. To actually live, you must override those patterns

The moment you decide to grow, something powerful happens:

You interrupt your brain’s survival script.

You choose presence over autopilot.
You choose faith over fear.
You choose intentionality over instinct.
You choose becoming over remembering.

 

This is spiritual and scientific alignment.

 

Scripture says:
“Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (Romans 12:2)

 

Neuroscience says:
Your brain must form new pathways to create new behaviors.

 

Both are saying the same thing:

You cannot step into the fullness of life if you’re repeating yesterday’s patterns.

 

5. So what does this mean for your life right now?

If time is not linear…
If you are always changing…
If the brain prioritizes safety over purpose…

 

Then the real work is not managing time. The real work is managing presence. Transformation happens when you:

• slow down enough to see your patterns,
• get honest about how they are shaping your life,
• and then choose to live beyond them.

 

Because life doesn’t unfold in a straight line. Life unfolds in layers of revelation. You grow in the moments where you dare to step outside your survival loop and experience life with full capacity, full awareness, and full courage.

 

Final Thought

Time is not a line you walk—it's a landscape you shape.
And every moment you decide to show up differently, you rewrite not just your future, but your very identity.

If you’re willing to override your patterns, you’ll discover something quite profound:

 

You have more life available to you than you could have ever imagined.