Do you ever look back at your life and break out in the
sweats? You look back at choices you’ve made with your kids, and know you’ve F’d
up somewhere? How many times have you woke up at 3am and evaluated your life;
letting it replay over and over in your mind like a really bad song you can’t
get out of your head?
For some reason, I have this cycle in my life where every
couple of weeks I wake up at 3am in a total panic and I keep running over and
over in my head scenarios of where I’ve totally screwed up as a parent; thoughts
of “If I only” or “Why didn’t I?” Then, I start to worry about the future. Oh,
man, don’t get me started about the future.
See, we all believe that we want to do a better job than
our parents, and yet, in the back of our minds we keep questioning our
outcomes. Should I have done it
differently? I should have done this or I should have done that. We should
ourselves right out of living in the moment. We keep looking back at what we
did, and stress out on something we have no power to change.
Let’s face it, right here and right now…We will never be
able to change the past. So why do we try? The only thing we have any control
over is this exact moment right now. We keep basing our future on what we
experienced in the past, and you know what? It never works because life is
subjective. Nobody looks at any given situation the same way. I don’t care what
anyone says, we could have a room full of people and something occurs—nobody
will tell the same exact story. That’s because we all have our own history
stamped and embedded in our minds. It’s the past experiences we cling to so we
can draw some form of conclusion for our current state of affairs. We feel the
only way to validate our current situation is by comparing it to what has
already happened. The problem with that is then we are letting our past dictate
our future.
There is absolutely nothing we can do to change the past,
so it’s time to stop living in it. What if I said, who cares what we did
yesterday, today is a new day? Because guess what? Today, right now, is the first
moment of the rest of our lives…What we do right now, is the only thing that
truly matters. The past is over, the future isn’t here; it is right now, the present,
which we need to see as our gift.
We must stop beating ourselves up for choices we made with our
old consciousness and start cheering for the choices we are making with our new
consciousness! Right now, we have the choice to live from this moment forward,
or keep, hitting the ball and dragging George. It doesn’t do us any good to
drag along our past mistakes or doubts. It won’t create the future we want. We
want a better future? We must start with living in the NOW, today. Learn from
our past but stop inviting it to come along for the ride. Stop letting what we
did years ago define who we are today. We are completely different people now.
Thoughts we think today, create the patterns of tomorrow.
Think about it, what we focus on today creates our tomorrow. So what are we focusing
on; more dread, anger, frustration, and our mistakes? Do we really want that to be who we are and what we bring to
the table of our future? Take today each moment at a time. Feel what it’s like
to breathe in the only breath of Right Now. Feel what it’s like to be completely
present, in the moment. It is the most empowering thing we can do.
Here we go, today, take a moment to talk to someone you’ve
never met. Smile at a stranger, hug your children a couple seconds longer, take
a moment to stop and really listen to what your loved ones are saying. Be proud
of who you are, and what you’ve become. Take this moment, right now, to live the
life you’ve dreamed of having. Dare to make right now, the most important
moment of your life.
Thanks for hanging out and reading my ramblings.
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| Picture taken when my son hiked the back country of Yosemite-Aug. 2012 |
