Pligget

I feel amazing. I've already got several people worried - they think I've been brainwashed, I'm so different. Well, this is me from now on, so they'd better get over it.

I can't possibly explain here what the experience was like, and there'd be no point. Besides the fact that I'm bound by confidentiality, you don't know me as a person, so I can't explain it with reference to what you already "know" about me. And because you don't know me, anything I say will sound like some pushy born-again zealot trying to foist his own brand of weirdness on you.

Suffice it to say that I have learnt the following about myself:

I am always desperate to be right about things, making other people wrong.
I am always desperate to look good - not just physically, but in every respect - and whenever I don't look as good as I want to, I lie to make myself look better. The effect of this is that I "know" secretly that I'm not as good as I appear, even on the odd occasion when I am.

Well, all that stuff's still going to be there until I die - it's part of who I am - but now I know it, and I can relax about it. I can also make sure that nothing I say to other people comes from that.

I used to think (as most people do) that the way I am is a result of where I've come from - i.e. that I am the outcome of my past. Simple cause and effect. Something happens, followed by the result of that thing happening. A whole sequence of nearly 46 years of things happening have resulted in the way I am now. That's not how I see it any more - at least not as far as my state of being is concerned. Let me give you an example:

You're sitting in your workplace, and your boss has just unfairly accused you of some failure and told you you're going to have to put in lots of extra hours to make up for it. Rain is beating against the windows. You reach into your bag for a paracetamol and see the ticket for your three-week tropical island holiday, which starts tomorrow. How do you feel when you see the ticket?

Now it's three weeks later. You're sitting on the porch of your beach cabin, watching the shadows of the palm trees lengthening on the white sand as the sun heads for the horizon. You've had the most restful three weeks of your life in the most beautiful place you've ever seen. You reach over for your cocktail, see the ticket for your return flight the next day, and remember the job waiting for you when you get back. How do you feel at that moment?

In both those instances, the way you are has nothing to do with the recent past. It has nothing to do with where you are in the present. It has everything to do with where you are headed. In other words, the way you are is a direct outcome of your future.

This is such a powerful idea. If you think you're a product of your past, you're stuck. You can't change your past. If you think you're a product of your future, you have choices.

My aim now is to create the future that I want to live into.

I'm here