An oldie but a goodie: Bloodletters: “Hack Yourself”:
…You know whose fault it is that your life isn’t perfect. Your boss. Your teachers. Your ex-lovers. The ones who hurt you, the ones who abused you, the ones who left you bleeding. Or even yourself. You know whose fault it is – you’ve been telling yourself your whole life. Knowing whose fault it is that your life sucks is an excellent way to absolve yourself of any reponsibility for taking your life into your own hands.
Forget about it. Let it go. The past isn’t real. “That was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead.” If we’re not talking about something that is real and present and in your life right now, then it doesn’t matter. Nothing can be done about it. If nothing can be done about it, then don’t spend your energy dwelling on it — you have other things to do.
I may sound cruel, I may sound simplistic, I may sound like I’m saying you should just “get over it,†by suggesting that you should let go of your past. I’m sorry for that. But life won’t hold still and wait for you to lick your wounds. The race is still being run. Get up and keep moving. You can’t do anything about yesterday.
You can do something about tomorrow. And about the next day. Focus your energies there.
“I don’t have time to write.” “I can’t dance.” “I can’t talk to new people.” “I’m not attractive.”
I hear this all the time. I always hear the people around me sabotaging themselves, drawing lines and borders and boxes around themselves.
To which I say, make the time; dance; just talk to people; be attractive!
Yes, again, it’s simplistic of me to say that. But it’s simplistic of you to so easily say what you cannot do!
We’re excellent pattern-matchers. That’s what the human mind does – it’s a pattern-matching engine. So we look at ourselves, at our history, at our behaviors, and we draw straight lines between the points – we assume that just because we’ve done things a certain way in the past, we’ll always do them that way in the future. If we’ve failed before, we’ll always fail.
Screw that.
From my stuff tagged “texts” at del.icio.us…
To take this even further, I would not even focus on tomorrow. Why not live in the now? The opposite of living in the now is… you got it… insanity!
I really recommend Eckhart Tolle’s “The Power of Now” to anyone who consistently draws on their past to predict their future. It truly takes a strong person to live only for the now, but once you learn it, you will just feel free. If you can quiet your mind, what would you think about – nothing! You’ll just be. Life is air, heartbeats, and science stuff. Life situations is what we call our past and where we base our assumed future. You can’t change life, only your life’s situations. Great article, dude!
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A great book, which is more about psycology then self help is called “Stumbling Towards Happiness” – I really recommend it dude.