Are You Focused on the Past, Present, or Future?

by Rick White, President 180BIZ                                                            (Estimated Read Time 4 minutes)

In this episode, I want to talk about the future. William Paul Young is the author of The Shack. I was listening to a video, and he talked about this term called “Future-Tripping.” For years, I've called it catastrophizing. But I really like his idea of future-tripping. It’s when you spend most of your time in the future and not where you are now. There are three parts of our lives. There's the past, there's the future, and there's the present. Future tripping is when you spend all your time, all your creativity, and all your imagination, in the future. And your sentences typically start with “what if.” What if this goes wrong? What if this happens? What if I lose my techs?  What if I…? And you just build and build on that.? This is fear on steroids. Remember, where focus goes your feet follow. 

Do you spend your time thinking about “What if?”

When you spend most of your time thinking about what if, you lose movement and you lose momentum. It’s because you're filled with misgivings. After all, you're thinking of everything that could go wrong.  That lack of movement and momentum, lack of action is more likely to cause exactly what you want to avoid.  If I'm going to Disney World and there's a big sinkhole, I'm not going to sit there and stare at it or stare at how bad I feel about how scary that sinkhole is.  I'm also not going to focus on the feelings associated with that sinkhole. I have a destination and I'm going to work on right now getting to it.

What is Reverse Future-Tripping?

There's such a thing as called “Reverse Future Tripping” and that’s when you go to the past and you start a sentence with “if only.”  If only I had done this.  If only this happened. If only he or she didn't do this or did do that. It's a complete waste of time and creativity. You cannot alter the timeline. You're pissing away your joy, you're pissing away your life. You will get to the end of it and realize that you never actually enjoyed any of it. And it's because you're constantly future-tripping or reverse future-tripping. Stop. Too many times where you're living in the past. That causes doubt and it causes restrictions. And if we stay in the future, we're filled with anxiety, worry, depression, and fear. We don't need these things.

Learn from the past.

So here's what I want you to do. I want you to learn from the past. Recognize that there are only three things that come out of the past, doubt, regret, and lessons. Pick lessons. The past isn't meant to define you, it's meant to refine you. So, look for the lessons and then let it go. No “if onlys.”  Then the second thing I want you to do is plan for the future. Set your destination. Set where you're going. And then I want you to live for right now. Live for right here. 

Ask yourself two questions.

Ask yourself two questions. And if you ask these two questions, every time you come up against something, it's going to be an absolutely amazing life when you turn around and look back.  The first question is, “Where am I now?” And the second question is, “What's the next best thing to do?” That way, you're not overwhelmed, you're not worried, you're not afraid, you're taking action and you're staying focused on where you want to go. So, I want you just to ask those two questions.

Do you see how this might make a difference? Don't catastrophize, don't future trip, because it is always scary. And we never go into the future creatively, or positively. We always go there with every fear, doubt, and tragedy that can happen.  Let's stop the future tripping and let's start creating lives where we have challenge, fun, joy, and progress. And we don't get that by living in the past. As Richard Flint said, “The past is a library to learn from, not a room to live in.” So, let's not live there. And let's not live in the future. We don't have the mental capacity or the emotional capacity to deal with the future. If we stay there too long, our dreams turn into nightmares. Learn from the past, plan for the future, and then enjoy today.  Do your best today. And you know something, you will have an amazing life if you do.

Please share this video.  And we have our Shop Owner’s Round Table, on the second Thursday of every month, 7 p.m. Eastern, and we would love you and your friends to drop on us. Shop owners only come in. And then also, we have our upcoming Pocket Business Genius webinar on the second Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern time. 

God bless. stay safe, have some fun, and go make some money.

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