8.11.2006

Which Time Zone Do You Live In

That should be a simple question that may produce a correspondingly simple answer. My twist is that I am not talking about Greenwich Mean Time or Mountain Time.

Could it be that we only live in three possible time zones - past, present, and future.

Future
For many of us, we tend to romanticize the future through our visualization of what we WILL become and what we WILL achieve. We dream about the success we WILL achieve and we set a timeline for it's attainment. The future is a place of great fear for many however because it can represent the end of a process of significant change. All too often, we project this future and accept only conditional and incremental change in our behaviors and values.

Past
If anything conjures a greater fear than that of the future, it would certainly be the past. Why? Because we have already lived the past - we know the result of our previous attempts. Within our memories, we have both good and bad experiences. Common sense would teach us that we should not repeat the bad or negative experiences from our past. What I find to be unusual or uncommon is that our good or positive experiences can actually prevent us from taking important steps today that are necessary to experience progress on our journey. The comfort zone strikes again.
Some may consider the comfort zone as a present tense condition but I believe it to be an extension from our past positive experiences. The comfort zone is an acceptance that what we have today is ok.

Present
Too often, we construct barricades that prevent us from achieving success because we choose to live either in the past or project ourselves into the future. We cannot take any physical actions in these periods, only in our present do we control our decisions in the spiritual or physical sense. And yet, so many people continue to rehearse events from our past, often re-living the pain of some previous shortcoming that prevents us from taking the proper actions needed to reach a future goal.

The only real exercise of power we have lies in the present. Now. We must stop reacting, responding, and re-living our past. The quality of the future we seek to create can only be achieved by the action and decisions we make today. Draw your line and commit to not continuing to re-visit a past that produces nothing but negative energy. The change starts and ends with the conscious choice on your part.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home