How much time do you spend thinking about the past? Besides the obvious influence over your past self, how is it still influencing your present? When you think about your past, how do you feel?
The first and most important influence the past has over our present is from an emotional point of view. Whenever we think about some shitty parts of our past, we get sad, angry, frustrated or hopeless. If we think about the great parts about our past, we can either feel joyful or we can again feel sad because that’s over. Whatever the case is, it’s clear that the past still has an influence over our present because we let that happen. If we did something that triggered a chain of reactions which came into our present and took a bite out of our asses, it’s more than an emotional impact, but that’s another discussion.
The thing is that we’re bringing our past back to life pretty often even when we’re thinking about two weeks ago. Besides learning from those situations, why do we keep thinking about it? We cannot change it. We can only change our present, which will affect our future, but until a time machine is invented, the past is done with us. We’re the ones that are not done with it.
A good thing about the past is that we can assess our present. Where were we 10 or 5 years ago and where are we now? What improved? If nothing improved, why? How satisfied are we with our evolution? If we’re not that satisfied, what can we do to change that?
It’s true, we cannot change our past, but if we still get some negative feelings because of it, we can either stop thinking about it so we can focus on our present and our future, or we can change the way we see it or else we will relive the same negative feelings over and over again whenever some stinky thoughts appear. We cannot let our past influence our present because too much of it will f*ck up our future. Our future will change only if we do something today to change it.
When your future self thinks about his/her past (which is your present), what kind of feelings do you want him/her to have?
I want my future self to be proud of, and satisfied with, my present self. I’m living a wonderful experience and I want my future self to look back at it with a smile
That’s awesome! If you’re now living a wonderful experience, I’m sure your future self will be proud of you 🙂
This present moment is all we should focus on.:)
True, at least 80% of the time 🙂
Not much , I’m a very present/future oriented person.
Awesome! Have you always been this way?
As far as I can remember yes. It’s probably because I grew up with a mother who is stuck somewhere between her 15 and 17’s so, I had to do otherwise, I guess… Recently I have been more focussed on the present, but a few years back the future was my focuss, and at the same time I couldn’t exactly picture myself like 5 years from now. Maybe that’s why I was anxious about it. And also It was as if I had to figure it out right now. At the moment, I Don’t feel that urge, I have finally come to understand that the only thing I really have is now and that tomorrow and yesterday depend on what I do of my today. I must admit that reading Eckhart Tolle helped me a lot.
I believe my future will be smiling any time it remembers my present…. I’m working real time to make greater changes on like the past …my past makes me focus cos I did lot of things that slowed my progress
This is awesome! So you’re learning from it so you won’t repeat those mistakes. 🙂
Wonderful post. Learning from the past can make our present beautiful.
Thank you! Yes, that’s is very true 🙂
Great post I think tell the past sorry
Thanks! Yes, something like: “Thank you, but I’m letting you go now.”
That’s a gift for life I guess
Reblogged this on Onemob.
Thank you so much for your reblog! 🙂
“You can’t start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading your last chapter.”
True! Thank you for sharing this wonderful quote!
We should not forget our past. We keep it with ourselves as a lesson.
Yes, but after we learned the lesson, do we really need to spend much time thinking about it?