You can try to live in the future – or in the past, yet it’s impossible. All you have is NOW.
But you can use your present moments to recall the past – as well as to visualize the future. You can also use your now to by aware of your thinking, breathing and doing – as they are taking place in this moment.
Whichever you choose, it’s still NOW. And there’s great power in knowing this. Really knowing this.
Why. Because once you understand the past and future can only be experienced NOW – you realize that everything you think or believe about what has already happened or will happen – is nothing but a mental movie. And if the past and
future are nothing but mental movies, you can write the script, direct the action, call the shots, decide on which frames to keep and which to throw out. You can even be the audience to all of what you’re doing.
In fact, you ARE the audience.
Whenever you remember the past or visualize the future, it’s not just YOU in the picture – it’s You and your other self – the one who is either praising you or condemning you.
Which are you doing to yourself today. If you’re looking at your past and finding the good moments, you’re giving yourself the praise you need to perform at your best in the NOW.
If, however, you’re condemning what you see in the past, you’re making it even harder for yourself to do well in this moment.
Whether you realize it or not, all the movies in your mind that make up your past – you already directed them, edited them and played them a certain way. The good news is that you can do a re-make of the old movies. You can reshoot them and package them to your liking. You can take a sad story and turn it into a happy one.
If you were to look at my ears, even from a distance of 10 feet, you’d probably notice that they are dis-figured. In wrestling and boxing, my ears are known as cauliflower ears. They look a bit like doorknobs made in Mongolia.
If the average person were to have ears like mine, he or she would think of it as awful. But not me – and not most wrestlers, grapplers and boxers who have them. We think they’re great. We consider them a badge of honor. We wear them with pride. They are our battle scars. Wrestlers who have them had to be tough. Wrestlers who don’t have them were most likely average, at best.
That’s the story we tell ourselves to justify the knobs we call ears.
Think of this. If I can look at my ears in a positive light, then I can take anything from my past and figure out a way to make it a good thing.
Granted, some of our memories are not easy to recall. When we watch them we may feel a sense of horror, or anger, or guilt.
But if we will take a step back; maybe even several steps back; and consider that the past and the future are mere movies in our minds, we can make a change in how we feel in the present. If we’ll consider that we have the ability to turn our horror flicks into something better – well then, we then know the REAL POWER in NOW.
Best,
Matthew Furey
