Have you ever looked back on your life and wished that you could sit your younger self down and give them a few tips? I think about that sometimes, how little things I've discovered later in life would have been really useful when I was younger. Sometimes I'll even call out to my former self, as if maybe I could speak across time.
Of course, that's a bit of magical thinking there, but one thing that might actually be possible is something that can change my life right now - having a conversation with my future self, asking.. what would my future self tell me right now if he could. Excuse me while I go floss...
O.K. As I was sharing with a friend tonight, one thing I'd like to do is have a sort of a spiritual yard sale - I carry all of these things around with me that I don't really need, and get in the way of living my life. They were all things that I picked up, most likely, at other people's yard sales, hoping to adorn my life with something that looked pretty or was useful at the time, but which really "aren't me". Now, they are clutter, and interfere with those things that can really define me. Tonight, more than ever, I am feeling a strong need to focus only on those things that are necessities to being me, and letting go of those things that I put on the display shelves for the sake of impressing company.
The hardest thing to believe sometimes, deep down, is I can be only myself - nothing more and nothing less - and that this is sufficient. I hold on to all these trinkets of ideas and beliefs picked from somewhere else because I am afraid people won't accept me without them. But at some point, I'm going to have to move - to grow - and it's hard to move when I am trying to cart around a bunch of junk - it's hard to grow when I've got barnacles hanging off of me. When I have holes in my life, it is too easy to spackle them with something that will serve the moment, but so much more useful to walk around with a hole until the right piece is added, or the right part of me grows.
This is what I believe my future self is telling me - focus on the important stuff, and release the stuff you don't need. Your life will be so much happier that way, and you'll laugh at the notion of why you ever thought you needed half that junk in the first place.
Well said, and great point! We always think about what we would tell ourselves looking back, but we rarely look ahead...unless it's at all the junk we plan to accumulate in the future. :)
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