Читать книгу By Example: Twelve Personal Missions That Will Maximize Your Human Potential - Travis Slone - Страница 8

First, there is your PAST self. This part of you is made up of memories, some better than others, but all of which are about meaningful experiences in your previous life. Your past self has lived… for better or worse… and died, so to speak. To sum it up even more concisely, it was what it was.

As you consider your past self, regrets may come to mind. You may wish that you had done some things differently, or you may think you should have known better than to make certain choices. However, research indicates that people generally make the choice that they feel is best given what they knew at that time. This is called the hindsight bias in psychology, and it’s an important thing to consider when thinking about your PAST self. Simply put, we know things now that we didn’t know then, and that new information has forever changed the way we view past events.

As we have said before, the point of this mission is to begin where you are with what you have now and work from there. This will require some level of acceptance of what has already occurred. Not that your PAST self was good enough, but that it is good enough for now.

Although your past experiences have come and gone, this does not mean that the past is not important. In fact, the past exerts strong influence on your present thinking, decision-making, and behavior. Past choices or actions may influence the way others act toward you, or the environment in which you currently work and live.

One awesome thing about your PAST self, is that you add to it with each new choice and every new experience. In other words, you can change your PAST self by doing things differently today, for today will soon become yesterday, and your PAST self will continue to evolve as time goes on. While you can’t change what has already happened, you can always create positive meaning for why you have survived this long.

Our past exists in the form of memories, which serve a basic biological purpose: survival. If left unquestioned, our thoughts and beliefs about these memories of the past can become quite troublesome. Therefore, it is important to try and remember that our past does not typically make us do anything. We can always use the present moment, the moment of opportunity, to think and act more appropriately. Before this can be done, however, we must begin where we are by developing awareness of what is, defining what we wish to change, and discovering a motivation to accomplish that change.

The present moment holds the answer to both a hopeful future, and satisfaction with your past.

In summary, though you should always strive to create healthy meaning of your previous life experiences, you can do so only by altering your thinking in the present and making healthy choices today, for that is where all change takes place. Basically, if you wish to be different, then you should do something different right now, with your PRESENT self.