Is it the past or the future that guides you?
It should be an easy enough question to answer and I think most people probably think it is about where they want to be in the future that guides their current behaviour, but that is probably not the case. At least, not based on the excuses people have as to why they can't.
When training sales people to build their business case, one of the techniques is to work out some critical point in the future they are looking to accomplish, and then working backward from there. This creates a timeline and task list likely required to get there, and also gives a starting date that needs to be met to achieve the target.
But people don't tend to do this, even if they know where they want to be in the future. Instead, they want, but use their past experience to go forward, meaning they end up doing what they have already done, tied to what they were, rather than who they could be.
Sure, we can learn a lot from the past, but if we believe that our past dictates our future, we are severely limited. If we instead look to the future as our guide, we can take some of the experiential limitations off and introduce new behaviours and therefore, new results.
In the moment, we are what we do.
Not what we have done, not what we will do. Let's take an extreme example. You are in a car accident and the car catches on fire with you trapped inside, unable to do anything. A person who was on their way to work stops and risks their life to tech into the burning car, cutting you out and pulling you to safety, moments before it is engulfed in flames and explodes.
Is the person a hero?
Once the police and ambulance arrive, the good samaritan who risked their life to save yours, continues their journey to their workplace as a doctor at Auschwitz. It is 1944.
Still a hero?
Bad people can do good things in a moment. But if we think about ourselves in terms of our own behaviours, if we were "behaving badly" in the past and that is our guide for the future, our only action is to continue a similar journey forward, perhaps trying to be a bit better every day. But if our future dictates our actions and we work backwards to know what we need to do today, right now in the moment, and choose to perform that action rather than the default, in that moment, we are something other than what our past dictated. We are a different person, but the same person. What we are doing is creating ourselves based on who we want to be, not who we were.
This doesn't erase our past experience, so we can still learn from it and we are still responsible for what we have done previously, but it allows us to deviate from the default path, the one where we are limited by what we were born into, the opportunities we had available, and the way we were treated. We can take the lessons, without carrying the baggage. Which means that even though we were packed to go somewhere cold and snowy, we can choose to start repacking for a beach life instead.
What is required of me?
When I work on defaults, very little. Because the default behaviour, my intuition, is built on past experience and feels like this is the way I have to be. I can be thoughtless, unintentional, and still meet every goal, because the goals are limited by the default. However, if I choose new goals, work backward and become intentional with my actions toward that goal, it takes work. And yeah, everyone hates work - but imagine that it takes the same energy of work to have the life you have now and where that leads in the future, and having the kind of life you want. The same work to be who you are, and who you want to be. It is just that the actions required change, but so do the rewards.
Doesn't it make more sense working toward what you want, than working to stay as you are? Isn't the journey more rewarding also? A lot of people tie their future self to their past, because they are looking to improve on whatever flaws they had, which seems like it makes sense. "If I only stopped eating this and that, I would lose weight." But, that resistance means that it is a constant struggle, meaning that the problem always persists also. But, if instead I look at where I want to be, work out what I need to do, and then be that person daily, it is just who I am.
The becoming happens, because the being happens.
Be in the moment.
Putting aside that the moment the only place we can ever be, the moment more valuable when what we are doing has meaning for the kind of person we are. But we are that person in the moment, in every moment. While it doesn't wash away the past, perhaps that person who pulled you heroically from the burning car could become something different than what that past dictates. Maybe they could redeem themselves in the rest of their life, by behaving differently with every moment going forward. Yet, if we don't believe this is true, than we are also saying that we ourselves cannot be anything other than what we were. And that is just not true, because what we were is gone, and we cannot "be" in the past. We only have right now.
But, right now, we can think about the future and workout what kind of person we want to be, and then discover what we have to do, to starting being that person now. A tree on the shore will be twisted and shaped by the winds, but we are not trees. Our roots are experience, but we can uproot our behaviours and move into other environments that help us reshape our core, our branches, and how we interact with the world.
We can shape ourselves by the future, without being controlled by the past.
Taraz
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Living in the moment sounds simple but it is actually hard because we re always stuck between replaying the past and stressing about the future. And yeah, change really does take effort—it is way easier to just stay on autopilot. Personally, it"s kinda easy to control those thoughts of past mistakes and worries about the future when I’m busy during the day or busy at any time. But at night specifically, it all catches up, the past (mistakes, laziness) haunts me and I honestly don’t know what to do with it. Though, the past is full of ifs and buts, still I just let it sink in, because in some strange way, it also pushes me to do better and build a future I actually want. Trying to live in the present, yet mind knows how to play games :(
Mentally - but we are still living in the present always. It is the easiest thing to do. The problem is we tend to let our thoughts and feelings about our past and fears for the future dictate what we do right now - or freeze us so right now, we do nothing.
I can only speak for myself as someone who had a lot of this previously - but I have far less of the issue now I write enough. I get to clear my thoughts and process, plan and start acting toward - before putting my head on the pillow. Try it.
Working in education you often here the comment that this kid is a good kid or this kid is a bad kid. I've always kind of been annoyed by that generalization. I prefer to think that kids are kids, they make good decisions and they make bad decisions. Although after 25 years here, there are some kids who make a whole lot more bad decisions than good ones!
Yes. It is not like we didn't make some stupid decisions (and still do) - everyone does. And also yeah - some make many more bad than others, but I wonder how much of it is genetic and environmental conditioning. Can they learn to be better? I think so. Slow down the thinking.
My wife would also argue that trauma is generational, so there is that too.
If you don't think of the past as roots tying you down and preventing you from what you want to become, then you can use past experience as a guide of what to do (in cases you were successful) and what not to do (in cases where you failed). But other than that I agree we need to visualize what we want to become or what we want to achieve and make a plan of how to get there and follow/execute on that plan.
Yeah, the past is a guide for experience, but not necessarily a good one for becoming who we want to be. If we anchor ourselves to that past alone, without considering the future, we have a very limited scope.
Interesting read, my personal experience is you need to reinvent oneself with change.
Set your mind toward five years ahead, once there reassess, many twists and turns may require more studies, change in direction or realization the position you in really does not suit your character/situation at that point in time of your life.
Have a wonderful weekend.
We seem to keep wanting change, but avoiding changing. It is a conundrum!
Have a great weekend too!
Found throughout my working years change came my way, could not avoid it, ended up studying to improve every couple of years. Looking at how many flounder today I can understand why it's an arduous task, in many cases folk walk a familiar path rather than change.
There is no past or future; there is only the human ability to understand the present moment. On the path to achieving a goal, a host of questions typically arise that must be addressed. Depending on one's understanding, one chooses the path to resolving each question (the right or wrong path).
I don't think we understand the present moment well at all. When I think about what the "now" actually is, it has no time at all. So, if there is no time, there can be no movement, and if there is no movement, there is no change, no life, just stillness. Just Death. We make sense of the now by pretending that the now is a period of time, A to B - but that is not the now, is it? For a human, the now is incomprehensible, so we make a fantasy to understand it so we can hold onto our version of sanity.
Yes. For example, it's very difficult to capture a moment and enjoy living it. Sometimes my morning coffee runs out very quickly, and I realize I didn't live that moment as I should have.
In this material universe, everything moves at incredible speeds, everything changes, and I need to effectively integrate myself into this fast-paced flow. To live this period of time according to my understanding.
But perhaps there is a world where everything is different and where time does not exist (or is completely different).
It can be said that it is a bad habit to continue living in the past. Some people blame the past and do not accept responsibility for it. We should learn a good lesson from the mistakes made in the past and make the right plans and commit to it. A good example here is the way a company's sales team makes sales plans for the next month, the next year and achieves them. When planning for the future, it is good to prepare steps for what needs to be achieved in the future.
Yes. But the problem is that those plans make a lot of assumptions about what result is possible, and what obstacles there will be. The path changes, but do the sales targets?
My biggest pet peeve is when people constantly talk about the past. It bothers me. The worst part is, most of my favorite friends are like this :) It gets to the point where I start to get bored with conversation. Talking about the past and dwelling on it doesn't help. Talking about the future boosts one's creativity and helps develop strategies. Yesterday is in the past, today and tomorrow are the realities.
People seem to feel safer in the past, so they hold onto it, even if it was a terrible past. The future isn't created yet, so many people will talk about what they want, but they won't go far enough to actually start working toward it.
I like the thought that we can change who we are by deciding to behave the ways that match our future goals rather than being hold back by what happened in the past.
I like it too. Sure, no one else might accept the change, like forgiving the Nazi, but does that matter? If a person with a bad past chooses to live a good life and still take responsibility for their past, they can be content with themselves, even if no one else is.
I only learn from the past by repeating what brought good results in the past and avoiding what brought bad results. That's how our brain helps to improve our life and behavior, by avoiding things that brought bad results and doing ones that brought good results. Talking of the future, I can pick a result I want to achieve and make a list of actions that will produce that result. But even this relies on past events in a way, because it's by your experiences that you can predict a sequence of actions that can lead to a particular result.
Sure, but this can also create a limitation right? A good result achieved isn't likely the best result possible. I see it a bit like training at the gym. Someone in the 80s trained one way and got world class results for the time, but if people did the same training now, they would be mediocre at best. We can always learn more, improve our process. But, it is still better to do more of what works, than what doesn't!
Yes. This is true. Which is also why when choosing that future, and planning the path, it is worth looking wider than personal experience. Find professionals and others who have done or tried similar, and also people who have made it and see if it is really something worth working toward at all.
Thank you