Time dilation really is nothing more than changing the orientation of your worldline in spacetime, in a way that is analagous to changing the orientation of an object in space. For instance:
The two sticks in the first image have the same height.
In the second image on the other hand, one of those sticks has been turned at an angle, and they have different heights. The height of the red line is only that of the black line, and is significantly less than the height of the blue line. But they are the same sticks! What happened to that height? It became width: which we see has increased by the length of the green line. The conversion factor is the pythagorean theorem.
The two sticks in the first image have the same height.
In the second image on the other hand, one of those sticks has been turned at an angle, and they have different heights. The height of the red line is only that of the black line, and is significantly less than the height of the blue line. But they are the same sticks! What happened to that height? It became width: which we see has increased by the length of the green line. The conversion factor is the pythagorean theorem.