Brighter tomorrow begins today

 One of the hardest things for most people is to let go.

Letting go of the past, and letting it be past is hard, especially when memories remind us of sorrows, failures, or other painful experiences.

Our brains are wired for survival, and, since they don't know the future we tend to rely on the past to determine how to act...or in most cases how to re-act.

Let's rely on the advice given, but often ignored, to potential investors: Past performance does not indicate, guarantee, or predict future performance. This applies to us.

No matter what happened in the past, it is past. Water under the bridge. Gone. History.

For many people the past can be hard to let go, and lives are lived while looking at the past.

Yes, who you are today is the combined factors of your yesterdays. Maybe this can be depressing. But, look at it another way: How you choose to think, act, and be today will determine who you become in your future tomorrows.

That is the power each of us has. Where we direct the energy of our hearts is the direction of who we become. We have the power of choice, particularly the choice of our thoughts and how we feel.

Yes, we choose how we feel. Too many people don't believe that but it's true.

While we may be conditioned to respond and feel in specific ways there are simple things we can do to change our emotional state almost instantaneously. And, as we become more adept at these our ability to change our state can become instant to the point that it becomes natural.

One of the challenges people have with letting go is they have lived in the past for so long, regurgitating ills from the past so frequently that it makes them sick, that they don't believe they can let it go. In a way, their past has become their identity.

Have you ever tried driving down a road, be it a back street or a freeway, while focusing your attention primarily in the rearview mirror? Probably not.

In fact, you may have found your attention too caught up in what was behind you, or what you're driving past, that you suddenly realize your vehicle is drifting. What happens? Your attention (hopefully) redirects to what is important, to what is ahead of you.

If we drove our vehicles constantly reliving driver-ed days and experiences, there'd probably be a lot more accidents. What do we do? We learn from the past. What worked. What didn't. And then we move on.

How many people are still terrified of parallel parking? Why is it? Because of bad past experiences that have colored the emotional and affected the physical response. Avoidance comes into play...avoiding parallel parking because of negative past experience. What happens? Those people even avoid practicing.

There are people who do all they can to avoid left turns because they're terrified of possible oncoming traffic. So they make a bunch of right turns to go around a block to get to where a simple left turn would've gotten them.

How often do we have past experiences in our lives that cripple our ability to improve the quality of our present and future lives? We live life falsely believe our past is what defines our future.

We have no power to change the past. We can change our future.

Here's the challenge. Future results will not change by thinking, feeling, and doing the same things we have always done. Future results will only change as we change how we feel, think, and act. This is where our energy of heart comes in.