A friend of mine recently asked me this, and it has stuck in my head ever since. I answered with a bit of clichéd advice that didn’t truly address the full depth of the question. This question is incredibly knotty and can strike people in a wide range of ways. Thus, my response may not resonate for all. It is merely my response at this point in time, one that will likely change and be reshaped by my experiences. So, I will ponder my response aloud and let it stand as a work in progress.
Depending on your perspective, this question has two sides – one hopeful and one fearful – and it can change in a millisecond. But it’s a perspective that can be manipulated by your mind regardless of the circumstances. You can let your perspective dictate your choice or let your choice dictate your perspective.
When you choose to be hopeful, you choose to create your own future – to get creative and brainstorm ways of decreasing the negatives and increasing the positives. You focus on what is within your control and not what is beyond your ability to change. You keep yourself in the moment and don’t let yourself get stuck in the past or go finding reasons to believe your chances for success are slim. You choose to rewrite your story and not let your current reality play on repeat in your mind. It’s a lot of work, but it’s the work that ultimately allows you to get out of your own way.
When you choose to be fearful, you choose to let your past dictate your future. How could someone with a great past (i.e., a great story) possibly fear the future? It’s quite easy! No one knows what the future holds. So, regardless of whether our past was good or bad, we tend to fear that our past will either align or not align with the future.
Incredibly successful people are full of fear – the fear that their best work is behind them. They compare themselves to themselves and can’t seem to comprehend that things change, that nothing is constant, and that we break our own records just as others break our records too. There is no way to know how the tides will turn.
However, we get to decide what we take from our past into our future. What do we want to use? Why not use the lessons, the hardships and anything else we can find? Surely, the past is beyond our ability to change, so the only way to move forward is to truly own our current place in life, and to own our ability to create our future regardless of the past. If not, we remain in the past, unable to move forward.
image: dear colleen via pinterest
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Lately, I’ve been feeling very blah – 
