There is Only Now

I’m on an airplane right now, thinking about a conversation I had after my stress seminar this morning.

A man came up to me and asked all sorts of questions about whether I thought my self-hypnosis CD “Unlimited Confidence” could help him with his own lack of confidence.

It seems that every time he has to give a presentation in front of a group he dreads screwing it up (therefore all but insuring that he will) and then obsesses over it for days afterward, feeling miserable the entire time.

I reassured him that this is exactly the kind of issue that this CD is meant to address, but he still seemed hesitant. “But I’ve had this problem for such a long time.” he moaned, “It’s so entrenched.” My answer to him is what I offer you now…

First of all, there is no such thing as time. Time is a fabrication we construct to make our lives seem more linear and therefore more in control. Dwelling on what we perceive to be past mistakes only exacerbates their hold over us. You can do NOTHING about whatever has happened in the past. It is done. There is only now. There is only to decide and to do in the here and now. There is no “entrenched”. There is no “been going on so long”. There is now and only now. Decision. Action. Or nothing.

When I was a philosophy major at one point in my long and winding college career, we were often asked the big questions in life “Who are we? Where are we going? Why are we here?” There are no right or wrong answers to these things, but it is very easy to get caught in the trap of ruminating about them.

“Are people basically good or evil” is another one of these eternal questions. I thought it was very easy to answer. I just asked myself “What’s in it for me?”If I decide that I think that people are basically evil, then I will naturally begin to withdraw from them, isolating myself from those I think might seek to do me harm, eventually becoming a surly curmudgeon with few friends and limited opportunities.

On the other hand, if I decide that people are basically good then I will seek them out and attract more of them into my life. I will expand my circle of friends and invite limitless opportunities. The worst that could happen would be to be taken advantage of from time to time via my Pollyanna naiveté. But it would be a choice, and a price worth paying when weighed against all of the good that would come from seeing the best in people.

Now as is usually the case, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. But truth is what we decide it to be for ourselves; and for me, my truth, the truth that I live, is that people are basically good and so I chose to see the best in them whenever possible.

We all chose what to believe either by conscious action or by default. Whatever was true for us in the past need not be in the future if we simply decide that another point of view is in our best interest in the here and now.

Perhaps believing in yourself, in your own ability to change and grow and embrace new opportunities for personal fulfillment might serve you better than choosing to believe that you are limited by your past experiences. Just a thought.

He just stood there. Sweating a little.

What will you chose to believe about yourself today? Are you going to allow yourself to be limited by your past, or are you going to believe that you have an unlimited future?

The choice is yours and you can make it right now.

Look into the mirror and confidently, with genuine feeling, tell yourself what you’ve decided that you believe to be true.

Now go out and have an awesome day!

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