The only truth you need to know for making immense peace with Past and Future
You can rarely find peace until you make peace with your past and future and live at present. For convenience, we take one day as the frame of reference for the present. If we don’t you can consider even one second earlier time as past.
Making peace with you Past:
Our bodies represent our own history, so does our life. It is the sum of everything that’s happened to us and how we reacted to it. You may have committed a terrible mistake. Yes, that’s you. Always and always remember that you are much more than the sum of all your mistakes. There are basically three categories to categorize anything you have done in the past.
- Pride of performance (Best option):
You have done a good job. There is nothing much to say here other than keeping yourself on the right track. Keep up the good work.
2. Learn a new lesson & step ahead (It’s still the best option):
Life is equally about making mistakes and learning from them as it is about being proud of what you have done right. In fact, doing the wrong thing and learning is much more usual and the best option in life rather than seeking perfection to do the right thing at all times. Doing your best is billion times more important than focusing on perfection or doing the right thing. If you had read carefully then you would notice that it’s about learning a new lesson every time. When you make the same mistake twice it’s not a mistake it is a choice. In reality, such a strict rule may impose a sense of overwhelmingness emotion but remember that knowing what is ideal and approaching the same executing your best is what life is all about.
3. Regret
This is clearly the last option and rightfully so. It is the worst option available if you decide to move forward with your life full of regrets, No matter how many times you have committed a mistake it’s still much smaller than your existence. Forgive yourself and move on. You may have to forgive yourself countless times but it’s still way better than a single minute spent full of regrets.
Making peace with you Future:
People tend to live in the past and people live for the future as well. Many times people who live for the future are much better than people who spend their whole life how amazing their heroic act was in 1947. Preparing and planning for the future is good. It’s amazing. It’s the best thing you could do but worrying and having unnecessary fear and anxiety is seriously worthless.
Live for the present. For the present day. By all means, do all the planning and preparation for the future, be it a week or a decade ahead but focus all your attention on making the best of the day. There is a serious and dangerous sense of peace, self-satisfaction, and tranquility if you live just for one day at a time. Just focus on 24 hours in front of you. Just till 12 am. And then you get a brand new day. All you have to do is repeat the same.
If you are doing your best, then that’s the best you could do anyway. Regardless of the intensity of your emotions or worry, that is never ever going to change.
Stoicism explains this splendidly by urging people to focus on those aspects of their life that they can control and learning to accept what they can’t which is also one of the six pillars of self-esteem as stated by Canadian-American psychotherapist Nathaniel Branden in his book ‘The Six Pillars of Self Esteem’. In regard to stoicism in his books ‘Enchiridion of Epictetus’, the stoic philosopher author states regarding dichotomy of control:
‘Some things are within our power, while others are not. Within our power are opinion, motivation, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever is of our own doing; not within our power are our body, our property, reputation, office, and, in a word, whatever is not of our own doing.’
