Recently I was having a chat with a friend. Amongst the other things we were talking about he mentioned, “I don’t know about you, but I have always grown up believing that I have to ensure my future is secured.” And knowing his lifestyle, putting 2 and 2 together, this guy has grown up to be a workaholic. He keeps himself available to ensure that his job is safe. He invariably takes on other people’s work and keeps himself open even on weekends and vacations. 

Do you have someone similar in your life you can relate to? You see, the future isn’t real. It is never is. It is always imagined. And, you can always imagine a better future. But being a learner of human behavior and potential, I realize that this is not easy. 

We are always seeing the past.

Did you know that everything that we see is from the past? Take a moment to step out to the window and look at the Sun. The Sun that you see, is an 8-minute old image of the real Sun. Because light takes a finite amount of time to travel, everything we see with our eyes is an image from a recent past. The same goes for everything we hear or touch. There is always a finite, albeit minuscule, period of time that passes by between the stimulus and we noticing it. So, everything we see, hear, feel and think is actually a snapshot from the recent past.

And, we see this past as our limitation.

Seeing everything from the past is still objective. What’s not objective is the filtering mechanism in our brain. Our brains have a great tendency to delete our victories and distort our perceptions. This is what we are most used to. What we choose to take from our past are often the not-so-good memories, hurts, traumas, waves of shame, guilt, and other experiences. We look at our guilt, our shame, our regrets, and even our traumas from the past and we believe that is who we are. We use them as a reinforcement of our limitations and limiting beliefs. This is who we are! If it happened in the past, it will most likely happen to us again. Every story we tell ourselves from our past actually casts a vote for our limitations, making them stronger and stronger. We build this identity, this sense of who we are from our past, and we cling to it – dear life – no matter what because our identity at least helps us make sense of the world even if it’s ultimately harmful. 

This is not the right way. Because we project all of this into all our reasonings about the future. 

Here’s a way to change this way of living: 

1. Accept that everything you see, hear, and feel is from the past. There is also ongoing research to study the speed of thought. In other words, what we feel as an instantaneous thought might still be taking time to think. 
2. Knowing point 1. and knowing our brain’s tendencies to favor negative moments and experiences, consciously document the gains from your life. It helps to take time to think about all the times you’ve won instead of remembering your pains and struggles so you can feel motivated to win again. It helps to start thinking about how you can translate your past experiences into fuel and not limitations. That doesn’t mean we neglect the dark sides of our past. That doesn’t mean we shelf our bad memories and bury our negative emotions. We accept them as a part of us instead of being glued to them. 

And, when you do these two things, I am not guaranteeing anything. I am only opening up a possibility and a channel to unleash your infinite potential. From this place, maybe, you could start imagining a better future. Maybe!

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First published on LinkedIn.