BACK TO THE FUTURE!
Does the Future Exist? Does your Past Exist?
As a concept this pretty much blew me away when I first understood the implications.
Our pain can only come from two places – the past (regrets) and the future (unfulfilled expectations)
We constantly berate ourselves for things we have done wrong, and we secretly hope that something will come along in the ‘future’ to save us! – the lottery, sudden bonus at work!, perfect partner.
Is that a position of power or weakness though? In this narrative are you the hero of your story or the victim?
Did you know that you could even choose!
Take away any blame for the past – blame of yourself or other people/events, take away your expectations that the future will somehow save you…
YOU ARE LEFT IN A POSITION OF POWER
Only the NOW MOMENT exists – you can neither do anything in the past (it was simply a series of now moments that have gone and now live entirely in your mind) nor can you do anything in the future (it is only a series of now moments waiting to be lived)
Is there anything that you can do either in the past or in the future? – You only ever have the present moment.
There is ONLY ONE WAY to be happy in the future – and that is to be happy NOW!
It really is a choice that you can make.
If you are not happy now, then nothing in the future will EVER make you truly happy and at peace. Why? – because you have trained yourself to not be happy in the moment and you have trained yourself to keep on ‘hoping’ for something to make you happy in the future.
Yesterday we talked about goals and goal setting (Happy in the Future or Happy NOW! part 1) which by definition are ‘in the future’, and the reason we get frustrated by goals not appearing to come to fruition is because we depend on the result to provide us happiness.
As we have just been talking about this will never work
So what is the answer?
- We become happy now, if we are in a situation that we label negative then we observe our reactions and this transmutes into peace.
- We set goals for ourselves but with the intention that it will only add to our happiness, not that our happiness is dependent on the result!
- We then work on our goals but disassociate from your expectations. – this step is probably the most difficult and one that I am still working on every day.
And by doing these things we create our future moments in the now
Whatever the outcome of our goals –WE WIN, we know that no matter what happens we can grow from our experiences.
I said at the outset that our pain can only come from two places – The Past or The Future.
Now that we have realised neither of these places exist except in our mind, we have now tracked our pain back to only one place – OUR MIND!
This is why controlling our mind is the most important step in our process.
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Part 3 will be How To Be Happy Now
Photo: Happiness, by donireewalker cc by 2.0
Architect of your Mind 