What Else is Possible When You Surrender the Past and Truly Create Your Life from the Present?
Welcome to this New Year!
This new moment that is full of possibility that has never been before.
How true is that of every moment, not just the turn of the year?
How true is it for you?
Most of us are not living from a place of connection to the possibility within each new moment. Most of us are busy referencing the past past in order to create our future. As a result, most of us continue to create futures that look a whole lot like our past.
I was recently asked by a friend what it was that I wanted to release or let go of in order to invite something greater into my life. As I sat with that question I recognized how much I have grown over the last few years and that I keep going back to past relationships, dynamics and ways of being that do not accurately reflect who I am now or the vision I have for myself and what I want to create for my life. I see how much I reference the past in relationship to the future I want to create and how much it just limits me.
What do I want to let go of to invite something greater into my life? The past!
I stand on this edge where I can see on one hand what my life has been up until now, and on the other what I would like to create and even believe I am capable of creating. I have a choice about where I want to focus. I can look back to the past, who I was then, what I could or couldn’t do and allow it to determine what I believe is possible now. OR I can look out into the horizon of my future, to what I know is possible, or even just dream is possible, that has not yet come to be and put my full focus and energy in that direction. There is no need to look to the past to create the future I desire, in-fact it mostly just hinders me.
“Die to the past in every moment, you do not need it”. Ekkhart Tolle
How much do you reference the past in order to create the future? How much possibility does it actually create?
Do you see how much using the past as a reference point creates limitation rather than greater possibility? Even if your past was amazing, if you keep going back to the past to try to create the future, you’re not showing up for something new. You’re still trying to re-create an energy that doesn’t exist anymore rather than seeing and recognizing what would contribute to your life now and creating that.
If you could let go of your past completely what would that free you to be, have, create or choose that would help create the future you desire?
How much of your past is actually true?
For some reason, over the last few weeks I’ve been exposed to several presentations on the inaccuracy of the human memory. So much of what and how we remember something is subjective and often doesn’t line up with recorded reality. So, what if the past you’ve been so fiercely holding onto as true doesn’t actually exist in the way you’ve decided it does? What if the past is actually just a projection and creation of your mind. Whether or not your memory is correct, what’s the value of re-creating and revisiting that past over and over again? It doesn’t exist now except as a creation of your mind. Does referencing the past create more possibility for your life or less? Is it an expansion or a limitation?
What if you could function from space and presence and create your life from that energy?
Have you ever experienced a moment where you forgot about who you were and were able to just be? Where you were just present and being? For me that happens most often by my myself and in nature. True presence, true space, just energetic presence of being, beyond all the judgments, limitations and stories I usually confine and define myself with. What could you create from that place? What becomes possible if you start from that place of being and presence?
From this place of being, truly, what else is possible?
Some tools for getting out of the past and focusing on the present:
- Ask yourself, “what else is possible?” in any situation. Then you are moving from present into future and not dwelling on the conclusions and limitations of the past.
- Is that true? Question the story and you open to greater possibility. Whether it’s the story that “those were the best times of my life” Or “this happened to me which proves I can’t… ” “I can never, I always…” (I’m sure there’s a past story there, projected into the future) Ask yourself if that is really true? Chances are it’s not and you’ll be able to access a greater possibility. “The past does not equal the future unless it is to your own advantage” and unless you keep making it so.
- Interesting point of view. This is a bit like “is it true?”. Whatever story you have about yourself, ever thought you have really, you can say, “wow, interesting point of view”. Then you are recognizing that it is truly just a point of view and if you wanted to you could shift your point of view.
- Gratitude! When we find things in our lives that we feel truly grateful for- yes, actually have that feeling inside, not just an intellectual conception of gratitude- It brings us back to that place of space and presence and being I was speaking of earlier. In order to truly feel grateful you have to touch into something expansive, something present with you right now. Being grateful opens us to presence and grater capacity to receive. When you are coming from gratitude you are creating your life from possibility and not from limitations and conditions of the past.
- Stop trying to figure out the past in order to create your future! This is perhaps one of the biggest places where we get stuck and why we’re not willing to let the past go. We think if we could just figure it out, if we could just solve what went wrong somewhere in the past we could finally get it right for the future. The truth is, that doesn’t usually work (trust me, I’ve tried that intensively for much of my life and I’ve just gotten more of what I don’t want!) It usually just locks the thing more in place and makes you think you’re even more screwed up. How much blame, judgment and wrongness is there in that? How much space or allowance? What if you were never wrong in the first place?! What if you could just let go of all of it and allow a different possibility to show up in your life? What if you could just choose to be different and create a different future because that’s what you choose to create for your life? What happens when you remove your attention from the past and put your attention squarely on the future you would like to have and create??
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