All of us have things about our past that we wish were different. All of us have things that we like today and that we hope will never change. And all of us have things we want to create for our lives tomorrow. The thoughts and feelings we carry with us are a magnificent swirl of our perspective about our yesterdays, our today and our tomorrows. In fact, it’s how we manage these three things in our mind that determines almost everything about the output of our lives. Almost every outward aspect of our life is a reflection of how well we manage our thoughts about yesterday, today and tomorrow.
We all have yesterdays. We all have a today. We all have tomorrows. We just view them all differently. We can make these things work against us or we can make them work for us. We can use them productively or not. We can use our experiences as learning opportunities that empower us to better our today and our tomorrows, or we can use our experiences as excuses for our own lack of happiness and/or successes. We can use what we did in our past, or what was done to us, to make us bitter today and tomorrow, or we can use it to make us better. The key is being able to determine and take what we want or don’t want from our past into our lives going forward, without getting caught up in, or hanging on to, any negative emotional responses that our past created.
When we learn how to manage our feelings, we learn how to manage our thoughts. When our thoughts and feelings are in alignment, and positively focused on our future life and what we want that to look like, then our future becomes a greater source of gravity for us than our past does. I’ve often said that life is a constant game of “Rock, Paper, Scissors.” Determining that what you want tomorrow is more important than what happened to you yesterday is an important rule to create in your own game of life. A today spent focused on the activities that create the tomorrow you want, rather than one spent dwelling or wallowing in the emotional wake of an unwanted yesterday, is the beginning architecture required of you and the tomorrows you desire.
Many people have succeeded with far greater circumstances than yours or mine. Their inside desire and focus is greater than whatever exists in their outside world. What others choose to call “excuses,” some choose to call “motivation.” They’ve figured out how to accept and/or use their past so they can live a healthy, happy and successful “today” that will turn into the same kind of “tomorrows.”
Some will say, “Easier said than done.” This is true. However, it’s not impossible, and it’s easier to start than many would think. Get therapy. Read great books that you connect with. Find a mentor or a coach or a consultant or an advisor who cares about you enough to tell you what you need to hear. Upgrade your friends. Improve your environment. Create a vision board. Pretend your future self is looking back and reaching out, trying to help you get through to the next, best phase of your life. Listen to him/her. If the way you feel and the way you think determines everything in your life, why not become obsessed with figuring out how to feel and think better than you always have? You deserve every bit of success and happiness that you can possibly create for yourself.
Yesterday is yesterday. That’s why it’s called, “yesterday.” It isn’t called, “today” or “tomorrow.” Today is today, and tomorrow is tomorrow. How much, and what, of your yesterdays get pulled into your today and your tomorrows is up to you. God gives us all our very own Rubik’s cube called “life.” And no matter what it looks like, somehow, some way all, of the sides can match. We just have to keep turning and turning and turning our cube, knowing that one day we will win.
Recent Comments