adminThis one sentence is so stupidly simple, but has had a great impact on my thinking and actions. It’s one of the things that are so simple, yet so impactful, that you think: why didn’t I think of that before?
Until my late twenties, I always used to look back and reflect on my actions. Mostly, negative actions floated to the top of my memories. Stupid things I did. Not so subtle things I said. Bad choices I made. It always drove me crazy, and I had a hard time snapping out of negative thoughts. Until I read about this concept.
I think it was in the book The Power of Now (I’m not sure, could be another book, but most self-awareness books will tell the same anyway). No one can change the past. No one can predict the future. The only thing we can control is what we do, or don’t do, now. And our current actions can open up possibilities and opportunities that give us a sort of control over the future direction.
But it remains that the future is unknown, largely due to influences that are outside of what we can control. Politics, storms, floods, wars, accidents, etc. Also, history can never be rewritten. If a glass fell off the table, there’s no traveling back in time to save the glass. When the love of your life, when you were 16, broke up with you, there’s no way back to feeling how broken a heart can be.
So, if the past can’t be changed and the future is uncertain, what we have left is now. It’s useless to keep sobbing about the past. It has already happened. The only thing we can do now is to make different choices so that history won’t repeat itself. Or we can change our mindset so we won’t let outside factors turn us into complaining cats. It might not be easy to let go of the past, but once you do, you’ll feel like you’ve successfully escaped from Alcatraz.
And when it comes to dreaming about the future, it’s good to always keep in mind that the future will almost certainly look different from what you’d expect. If you know where you want to go in life, widen the horizon a bit. Place a piece of the puzzle daily. A puzzle of which you don’t know how it should look. The only thing you can see are different links that fit.
Start with now. With a bit of hope, perseverance, and luck…maybe you’ll get somewhere. At least, now is the only thing you have control over. Sort of.