Your future is greater than your past. I learn from my own mistakes and experiences. And I learn from the mistakes others have made. How? I read books, I go through blogs, I listen to podcasts. I look forward to listening to the stories of people who have done something I haven’t – there is always something new I can learn from them. As you add more value to yourself in this way, you become more adept at handling crises than your past self was capable of. Now, you are equipped with a fresh perspective of looking at problems, new set of tools to solve the problems with and a bag of experiences to guide you through – not just those of your own, but those of people who have walked your path, faced what you have faced and have made it to where you want to be in the future. As a consequence of this conscious value addition to yourself you are bigger, your future is bigger. This is why you must keep growing. Only then will your future keep growing and you can say along with Yogi Berra, “Future ain’t what it used to be”.
I believe there is no wasted past and there is no hopeless future. Your past brought you to where you are today. You can either choose to look back in dismay and grimace every time you think of the wrong steps you took or you can choose to use gratitudes to select the bright spots from that past and completely reprogram the way your mind works.
Write gratitudes daily. Things that you are thankful for. Stuff that worked out for you. Avoid the stuff that did not work for you. Write gratitudes daily and you will remember life as mostly fun and amazing and miraculous and magical and so on. Every time you talk about these things that you are grateful for, you are underlining and highlighting these events. I will call them “Bright spots”. You probably want to ruminate over this Bright spot – deconstruct it, reconstruct it, convert it into a reusable framework.
And use it.
And use it.
And use it.
Until it becomes a part of your DNA.
What about the tragedies? Should you completely ignore them? When something failed, when something did not work out as planned – let us call it a “Dark spot”. Well, the only thing you can learn from that is how and why it happened.
So that you know how to avoid a repeat in the future.
Therefore, the past is not wasted.
Work backwards. Design your future. Find people who have what you need. People who are already where you envision your future self to be. Figure out what you need to get there. Hang out with those people. Catch what you need from them – pick up their habits, their mannerisms, the books they read, the media they consume. Get there. No hopeless future.
Speak to your brain instead of listening to it. “What” is in your brain got you here. If you are happy to remain here – great. If there is some better place you want to go to – then start speaking to your brain about that. Instead of listening to your brain, start speaking to it. Listening to your brain will only get you to where you are, not to where you want to be.
Steve Jobs said, “Death is very likely the single best invention of life. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.” He told graduates, “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
Are you ready to embark on a journey of designing your future to have the best in everything and to live an amazing life with purpose?
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