At the end of a year, we all look forward to the future; we fantasize, dream, wish and let new ideas come in. But we also look back – summarize, reflect, understand, accept, forgive and make choices.
I’m astonished and touched at the clever pathways we create for ourselves. Some random points that we might not connect together initially for ourselves, can later be revealed as steps towards the master plan for our life. Times of frustration bring us to new innovations. Those times of anger were the ones that made us realize that we might need to take a different direction; times of physical difficulties often become the points of major crossroads in our life.
The future doesn’t stand alone. It’s a result of all of those points in our past – some points were chosen and carefully crafted by us, some surprised us, and some were put in place by our family, our country, our way of growing up. The future stands on events much further back in the past than the time when we were born – previous generations and their actions in many cases lead the situations we face today. This entire amazing map of past events navigates us to where we stand today and from where we are placed to dream about our future.
So how do we manage to gain strength from our past?
By respecting our past
Respecting what happened in the past leads us to own it in the present. Naturally it’s easier to respect positive things that happened to us – our successes, our profession, courageous decisions we made etc. But ALL of our past needs to be respected. Our failures might have been what brought us to our success, our difficult times may be what taught us about life and those boring times led us to look for the things that excites us. When we let our past be inform who we are, we create a larger foundation to step on and a stronger springboard to jump from.
By being curious about our past
Everybody knows the good thing about the past is that it already happened. We dealt with it – maybe well in some cases, maybe in ways we would rather have done differently in other cases. But it already happened. If we let ourselves ask questions, we might figure out new ways to understand what happened and why, and eventually own it in a better way. Asking questions such as – why did it happen? What did it lead me to? Who was I without it? Questions such as these might lead us to a curious new understanding.
By understanding that everything is in flow
Events never stand alone. Every act leads us to the next thing. When we look at our life and understand that, we can take any event and see what process it was a part of. When somebody understands that their difficulties at school were a part of what led them to become a great artist, it could change the way they look at their time at the school. It allows a better way of accepting our life and who we are meant to be.
By joining the flow in our life
There is a certain flow in our life. Something moves us forward. We made certain decisions that might have felt random when we made them, but years later we can see and understand the bigger picture. Life is not positive or negative, it is the complexity of all things that make life what it is. Everything moves forward and if we let ourselves enjoy being a part of this big river, we could feel the force of life itself that push us forward.
The future is already here
Just as in our past, each event was built on things that happened already (even a complete change is built on what previously took place); the future has foundations in our life already. When we feel the strings that attach us to our future in our ‘here and now’, we can enjoy the confidence that comes with that. We might be scared of certain things, or insecure, but generally the journey has already begun, and it invites us to fully join in.
I wish us all a beautiful future, with dreams that come true, with surprises to lead us toward our calling, regardless of what we know about what’s ahead.
Happy old 2017, happy new 2018!
Awesome post! Keep up the great work! 🙂