319 Holly Worton ~ How to Let Go of the Past and Future to Focus on the Now

Today’s Guest

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I’m back again, with another solo episode! This week’s episode is inspired by my weekly Akashic Records reading from Vickie Young.

Listen To This Episode

What You’ll Learn

How to balance past, present, and future so you can focus on the NOW
How to get clear on how YOU get unbalanced
Different reasons why we get stuck in the past – and how to get unstuck
The reasons why we get stuck in the future – and how to get unstuck
Ways to disengage from past/future ruminating and return to the present
What to do if you’re stuck in the past/future because you don’t like your present
The magic question you need to ask yourself to get back on track

Things I Discussed

Other Resources

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Transcript

The transcript for this episode can also be downloaded here (no opt-in required).

Holly: Hello and welcome to the Into the Woods podcast, episode 319. This is your host Holly Worton and I am back with another solo episode. Today I am talking about how to balance the past, the present and the future. How to focus on the now, and quit worrying about the past or the future, quit ruminating on stuff that you can’t resolve, or find solutions to them. It is something mildly related to last week’s episode, which was all about how to balance being really goal driven and still allowing yourself flexibility based on the stuff that you see need to be focussing on in the present moment. So I think this is a really delicate balance and I think this is something that takes some trial and error and I think the solutions will be, as always, different for everyone.

So in this episode I will be sharing my own personal thoughts, my own personal experience, in the hopes that it will be useful to you to find your own path forward in terms of balancing past, present and future. So I am going to be talking about how to let go of the past, how to stop worrying about the past, how to stop or worrying about the future, how to balance, again, being goal driven but also staying focussed on the present. And finally a bunch of tips on how to break away from those patterns of focussing on the past and future and get back to living in the present, which is something that can be challenging for a lot of us.

So, before we get into today’s episode, I just wanted to remind you about Patreon, if you get value from this podcast, I would love for you to support me on Patreon, you can head over to: http://Patreon.com/HollyWorton and join me the;, membership starts at $1 a month and you get exclusive access to content and done-for-you-mindset-work that I don’t do anywhere else, also a monthly Q and A.

So, into this episode. I am not necessarily one of those people who worries about the past, or who lives in the past, on the contrary I tend to kind of person, maybe I don’t want to say shove it under the rug, because I think I have done a lot of healing on stuff from the past, but I really don’t focus on the past, as much as I do the future. So when I am out of balance in terms of not focussing on the present, I tend to shift more to the future than to the past, as I said in last week’s episode. I tend to be very goal driven so I often find myself focussing on the future and the stuff that I want to achieve, that I haven’t yet achieved, and that can make me really frustrated sometimes. So I actually went for a cranial sacral therapy session this morning and before we were getting started the woman said to me: just relax, and be open to things coming up and shifting, which they will do in their own sweet time. And I laughed and explained why I laughed because when I do healing stuff and mindset stuff I tend to want to heal all the stuff now, and I want to see results now, and of course I know it takes time for integration and I know it takes time to see the results and I know it takes time to make changes. But, my natural tendency is to really want to rush through my healing and see the results now, instantly, instant results and of course that leads to frustration sometimes, even though I know all the stuff that I do in terms of healing and mindset work, I know that it is working, even though I am not seeing instant results all the time.

So, take a moment and think: how do get unbalanced in terms of not focussing on the present? Do you tend to focus on the past? Do you tend to focus on the future? Or both? If you are not driving, or running on a treadmill or doing something where you are kind of mobile, maybe pause this for a second and reflect and write down: how do you get unbalanced in terms of mindfulness on the present? Past, future or both? I think that will be really useful for listening to the rest of this podcast.

So let’s start with the past, because it is in the past, there are things that happen when we live in the past, or focus on the past, rather than the present. I was listening to this 80s playlist on Spotify in the car the other day and that song, Glory Days, came on from Bruce Springsteen, and I was listening to the lyrics and I have been doing this a lot lately with older songs that I never really listened to the lyrics of and now that I am it is not shocking but it makes me see the song differently. [This song is] obviously about people living in the past and glorifying the past and how good it was in comparison to the present and I just kind of feel like ugh, so this is one way you can be not focussed on the present and focussed on the past. I just feel if you feel like your glory days are in the past then something is wrong and you need to start making different decisions in your life so that your present is as good, or hopefully better, than the past. And this is going to be different for everyone’s situations, you could often reminisce about the past and it was so good back then, whether it was high school, university, whatever. Maybe do some journalling on this and stop and think: what was so good about that time of your life? What was it that made you so happy? And what was it that made those the glory days of your life and how can you bring some of those things into your current life. So if you felt like you were particularly carefree and had a lot of fun and you were partying, maybe that is something that you can fit into your life on a daily basis if you have a partner and children and bigger responsibilities but there are ways to introduce those feeling into your current life. So if you were partying a lot and you miss that, what did partying give you? What feelings did it give you? How did it improve your life? Was it fun? Was it playful? Focus on those activities and what sensations they gave you, how did they make you feel? And then try to bring more of that feeling into your current life. You don’t necessarily need to do more of that activity that was so much fun, but it is about bringing that feeling of those glory days into your life today. And maybe the things that you do are the same, maybe the things that you do are different, so maybe instead of going clubbing you could join a dance class and that might or might not give you the same feeling. I don’t know play around with it and this is going to be different for everyone. But if you are the kind of person that feels like: oh the glory days have come and gone, that’s not good, think about what you were feeling, what you were experiencing in those days and how you can feel those feelings and experience that sensation in your current life. So that is one way you can not let go of the past but let go of living in the past and glorifying the past and bring some of that good past stuff into the future.

So, that’s one of the way that we can be focussing on the past, focussing on a past being being better than the present so a lot of times the past is not better than the present and a lot of times we have dark, crappy, stuff in our past that hurts and that is why we are focussing on the past because we are still processing the stuff that happened to us one, five, ten or more years ago. And as I am saying this I realise that tends to be, when I think about the past that tends to be where I go, to my crappy stuff: I don’t really feel like I have glory days in the past, like I really feel like my life keeps getting better and better because I am consciously making it better and better in terms of what is right for me and what I want to experience. So, I don’t reminisce about glory days, if I go to the past it is kind of feeling sorry for myself for crappy decisions that I made and things that I experienced that I wasn’t happy with, or that I didn’t like, so yeah, that is where I tend to go.

So let’s start of, there are several ways that you can deal with this so that you can let go of the past crappy stuff and start focussing more on the present. So if you have made some decisions in your past, that led to suffering, or pain, or unhappiness, that is something that you need to let go of. Hopefully you have made better decisions, and have gotten yourself out of that place, but if you are still in a really crappy place, I understand, I have been in a really dark place based on my bad decisions that got me there and I think that one of the first steps is forgiving yourself. So if you are still in a bad spot with someone, it could be hard to forgive that person, especially if that person is abusive, or treating you poorly in anyway. That can be rough, I think that is something that is very important eventually, but that can take time. And also knowing that forgiving someone’s doesn’t mean condoning their behaviour, you are just forgiving them in your heart so that you can move on. You are forgiving them for you, not for them, and you don’t even have to let them know that you have forgiven them, but that is an aside. I think the most important person that you need to forgive is yourself, and that can be hard, I think I have often beaten myself over bad decisions that have led to great period of unhappiness in my life, so forgiving yourself is absolutely the first step, and I have mentioned this before but the Ho’oponopono thing, which I will link to in the show notes, is a good and easy exercise to forgive yourself and others and that might be something, probably something that you will need to repeat over and over again, whenever you feel like you are beating yourself up about something in the past, it is probably not going to be a won-and-done kind of solution. So the practice of Ho’oponopono it is four steps, it is a kind of forgiveness prayer: step one is “I’m sorry”, step two is asking forgiveness, saying “please forgive me”; step three is gratitude, “thank you”; step four is love, “I love you”. I am linking to this in the show notes but basically it is those four steps: “I am sorry”, “please forgive me”, “thank you”, “I love you”. It is a very simple prayer that you can do to forgive yourself and to forgive others. I really believe that if you are stuck in past pain, forgive yourself and forgive others but forgiving yourself first is the most important thing.

Healing, from trauma, from difficult things that have happened to you that’s super, super, important, I know that not everyone is not in the place that they can afford therapy, but do what you can, if you can’t afford to work with another professional then just research how you can work with yourself to heal. There are also possibly resources where you can get help for yourself at low cost, or free, if you are a young person at university probably you will have some free counselling available to you, but healing past trauma, and healing past difficult experiences is really, really, important, it can take longer than you think. I often reference a previous decade-long abusive relationship in my life, it has been ten years, more than ten years since I left and I am still doing healing work from that. It has gotten a lot better, I have come a long way, I am doing really well these days, but remnants of that past crap still comes up in my life to be healed. So get healing or heal yourself and a lot of the mindset work that I have done has been healing that past relationship and kind of the residual effects of it.

I think part of healing is also accepting. You have got to accept the past because you can’t do anything about it, you can’t travel to the past and change it, you can’t undo what has already happened, the best thing you can do is accept it, forgive yourself and heal. Acceptance can be really, really, hard, it can be really rough, that might be something that I need to do an episode on in the future but for now let’s just focus on the concept of accepting the stuff that has happened to you in the past, because again you can’t change it, there is nothing you can do to change it. What you can do is you can forgive yourself, you can forgive others, you can heal, and you can find the lessons, and I think a really big part of healing and accepting and forgiving, is finding the lessons because I think that in everything that happens to us, in all the experiences that we have in our lives, there are lessons that can be found and sometimes it takes years to see those lessons. Sometimes you need a lot of distance between the traumatic episode or event or relationship and now, to be able to see those lessons. So if you are not seeing anything don’t fret, maybe revisit, whenever you find yourself ruminating on the past, do some journalling and revisit those experiences and take an honest look at them and see if you can find the lessons.

I think ultimately what it comes to is letting go, letting go of the stuff from the past because again you can’t change it, but I think letting go is a lot harder than just saying: oh just let go of the past. One of the things that I mentioned in the last episode is that I have been working on meditating every day and I have been meditating using the mantra: “let go”, “let go”. And it is too soon to really have the perspective to share the results with you, but I feel like that is kind of the work that I need to do now, letting go, letting go, but letting go is often the result of doing the forgiveness work and doing the healing work, accepting and doing the work to find the lessons. So it is not just: oh I just want to let go of this so I will say, “let it go”. I think there is some background work that often needs to be done so that we can let it go. So, that is kind of the end of what I have to say for the moment about the past, about what to do to stop focussing on the past, or ruminating on the past, worrying about the past.

So you might want to pause this now, if you can and maybe do some journalling, and reflecting on what you can do to let go of the past. So maybe make a list of things that you need to forgive yourself for, make a list of things that you could give others for, make a list of things that you want to heal, past traumatic experiences, relationships, events, make a list of things that you want to accept and make a list of things that you are not willing to accept yet and then do some work on that as well. You don’t need to heal everything at once, you don’t need to forgive and accept and let go of everything at once, but I think if you get all of this out of your head and into your journal or onto a document that can make it easy to start doing the work and you don’t need to start healing all of the stuff at once. You can start with the easy stuff, you can leave the bigger stuff for later because I think the more that we do this work with ourselves, the more that we do this healing and accepting, it gets easier to work on the bigger stuff. There is stuff that I am working on healing today that I wasn’t ready to work on six months ago, or six years ago, so make lists of all the stuff that you can forgive, heal, accept and let go. And look for the lessons in your past traumatic experiences or difficult experiences or relationships and know that you may not have the perspective or the distance to see those lessons, but if you keep revisiting those things and doing this work you will see it eventually, if you are open and ready and willing to see them, it will come but sometimes you need several years of experience and sometimes you will see some of the lessons and you will see more lessons down the line, further in the future.

So let’s let go of the past and start talking about the future. So for me, as I said, I tend to be more future-focussed than past-focused, I tend to be thinking about what I want, that I don’t yet have. I tend to do a lot of planning and goal setting, and setting plans, and not necessarily taking the time to celebrate those plans, those goals, when I achieve them, and I think that is one thing that you can do to stay focussed on the present. So goal-setting is very much focussed on the future: you set a goal, you set a deadline for the goal and you create a plan to achieve the goal and then when you do achieve the goal, celebrate. Celebrating I think is a way to integrate that thing that has been part of your future for so long into the present, so you can celebrate achieving this goal and give gratitude to yourself for doing the work to achieve this goal and gratitude to all the people that gave you support, that helped you to achieve this goal. So that’s one thing that you can do to stop being future-focussed on goals and when you do achieve your goals integrate them into your present and make it really obvious that this is part of your new, present, reality. And if you haven’t achieved a goal, the deadline comes and you look at your list of stuff and you think: that didn’t happen, instead of feeling bad about yourself which is where I tend to go ‘oh, I didn’t achieve another goal, I feel like crap.’ Instead of using not achieving your goal as an excuse to make you feel bad about yourself, stop and reevaluate: is this goal something that you are still interested in achieving? Do you still want it? How badly do you still want it? Is it a priority for you? If it is not a priority for you then either take it off your list of goals and retire it or put it on the back burner for the future, or give it a new deadline, but really stop and think: how important is this to you and why didn’t you achieve it, what happened? Did things happen that were out of your control? Or did you neglect to do the things that you needed to do to achieve the goal? Or, once you started on the path did you realise it was bigger and harder and scarier than you thought? In which case you are going to need to re-evaluate your plan and update your deadline. So I think that when you have this goal which is in the future and you don’t achieve it, you need to stop and evaluate so if you find yourself going into that place of beating yourself up because you didn’t achieve the goal stop, focus on the present, bring it back to the present, and re-evaluate the goal: do you still want this or do you not still want this? And how are you going to get it and come up with a new plan and a new deadline and if that doesn’t work then stop and reevaluate again. I think this is really, really important so if you find yourself beating yourself up, stop it, and go back into reevaluating and planning mode and keeping on the present: how meaningful is this goal in your present life? So a lot of times we set goals that are far in the future, they might be three months, six months in the future, well you were a different person when those three, six, twelve months roll around so is that new you still interested in achieving this goal, sometimes we don’t achieve our goal because we change, we grow, and those things are no longer important to us, those things are no longer a priority to us so looking at who you are now, are those goals still important to you? And I think that is why is so important to regularly check in with your goals and your plans and see what’s important to you, is it still important?

So, the next place that we can often go when we are focussed on the future is worrying, worrying about the future, worrying about: oh, what if this happens, what if that happens, and just really focussing on all the negative stuff that could happen, that might happen, but we don’t know if it is going to happen because we are still in the present moment. If you catch yourself ruminating on the future and all the bad things that might happen, when you catch yourself worrying, stop it, and shift your mindset around to focus on solutions. So, if you have something that you are worried about, maybe an exam that is coming up, write down, get this stuff out of your head because I think oftentimes when we get the worries out of our head and onto paper we realise that they are not as bad as we think they are or we realise that that they are not as real as we think they are, or not as possible as we think they are. So, again, let’s go back to that example of an exam you have to take, whether it is for school, or your professional life, maybe it is some professional accreditation or certification that you need, and you are worried about it, stop it and get out your journal and start writing about it. So, write down first of all: what is the worst thing that could happen, what are you worrying about? You could fail and then what? What happens if you fail? I will lose my job…okay, but then what is the worst that could happen? I can’t pay my rent. Then what’s the worst that can happen? You get evicted. Then what’s the worst that can happen? You end up homeless and in the street. Okay, that is really extreme. But this is where my mind used to go, and I have done so much healing on this and I am so glad that I have cleared this, this is not any longer a place where my mind goes. But that’s where my mind always used to go, my worst fear was, and if you extrapolated: this leads to that, leads to that, leads to that, it would always be: I am homeless on street. And I am getting rained on and I am cold, and I feel ashamed because people look down on me because I am begging in the street, as a result of this thing happening that hasn’t even happened, that I am just worrying about. That is the dark place my brain used to go, so you don’t really… It is hard to become aware of that until you actually sit down and say: okay what is the worst that can happen, and then what is the worst that can happen? And then what is the worst that can happen? You get all this crap out of your head and onto paper and you think…’okay, so if I fail this test, that means that I am going to end up homeless’, it doesn’t, but that is where your brain was going. How likely is that? Not very likely. And there are so many things that you can do at each step of the way, to prevent this horrible thing that is like your worst thing.

So, for me, not achieving your goals usually ended up with me ending up being afraid that I was going to be homeless. Yes, that’s how dark it was. So do that thing for all of the things that you are worried about, get it out of your head and onto paper and so you can see how unlikely that is to happen. And then creating a plan so those things don’t happen. Obviously starting with the first thing, whether it is achieving a goal or passing an exam, or getting a client, or whatever, create a plan to achieve that first step goal, so that you don’t have to think about all the other stuff. So instead of worrying about what might happen, focus on achieving your goals or doing the things that you want to experience so that the bad stuff doesn’t happen. So again, start at the first thing, which is kind of, the first level thing that is worrying you, rather than going straight to the homeless thing because that is pretty big. There are a lot of things that come between where you are now which is probably having a home, to being homeless. There are a lot of decisions that become here and there, there are a lot of decisions that become here and there, so focus on the immediate present or near future goals that you need to work on so that you don’t get to the place that your mind goes to in terms of catastrophising.

So when you find yourself catastrophising, when you find yourself worrying, when you find yourself ruminating on the future and all the bad things that could happen, stop it, get it out of your head and find solutions. And if you find yourself worrying about things that you have no control over, you have no control over them. So whether it is big political things, elections happening in your country, Brexit, you really don’t have control over that stuff. You can vote, yes, but now it is up to other people to come up with the solution, it is not your job to come up with the solution. So let go of the stuff that you can’t effect, let go of the stuff that you can’t fix yourself, let go of the stuff that you can’t solve yourself. But if you are worrying about big stuff that you can’t solve yourself, again, write that list, so, Brexit: we leave Europe, what’s the worst that can happen? My business is going to fail. Then what’s the worst that can happen? You know, go from there… Again, your business is not going to fail probably if we actually Brexit, but you know what I mean, catastrophise, get this stuff out of your head and onto paper and then find solutions for this stuff, because there might be solutions that you can do. So, how could you put in safeguards for your business so that Brexit doesn’t have as big of an impact on your business, if you have something that is international. So again, get that stuff out of your head and onto paper where you can see it, and then you might find solutions or things that you can do to prevent the disaster from happening.

The last kind of place that we can go to in the future is kind of fantasising about a future, rather than living in the present. So you might have a bucket list which we talked about in last week’s episode, you might have your plan, from the ‘where am I going episode’ from previous weeks, you might have this plan of this lifestyle. So this is kind of more than just individual goals, so you might have this lifestyle that you want to live that is in the future and all the amazing things that you want to experience and your future life is going to be so great, and you do a really good job of visualising this future life that you want, and then perhaps you take it a little bit too far, so you are always living in the future, you are always living in this fantasy, that is another thing that can take us out of the present and into the future. I think that some of that is good, I think visualising the future that you want to experience is good, and too much of it is probably not good because in order to get that future, I believe, yes it is good to visualise, yes I believe in the law of attraction, but I also believe that you need to take action to get to the stuff that you want to attract. I think it is part mindset, it is part visualising, but it is also an equal part, at least an equal part, practical action of stuff that you need to do. So when yourself fantasising about the future, stop it and start thinking about one action that you could take right now to get yourself one step further towards that future fantasy. And if you don’t have a clear plan to achieve that vision, and all the practical action stuff that you need to do, sit down, make a plan and then when you find yourself spending too much time fantasising about the future, stop and do a practical action thing. So that is the future.

I have already talked about when talking about the past, when talking about the future, I have talked about these ways that you can stop it and get back to the present. So, I really think that this is a really fine balance between balancing the past and the future along with the present and I do think that ultimately we need to do be mostly focussed on the present because that is where we get shit done so that we can heal the past create the future that we want. So, ways to stay focussed on the present, I have already talked about some of those, but other ways are to just slow down and be present. One of the biggest messages from the trees in my book was, “slow down, you are moving too fast”. And when we slow down and when we give ourselves the time and space to focus on the present, that helps give us a totally different perspective. It helps us to see the things that we want to do and need to do to achieve our goals, and to live the life that we want. But again, it is not all about the future, you see my mind is going towards the future, because that is where it tends to go. Slow down and experience the things that you already have, today. Slow down and give gratitude for the things that you already have today, a lot of people resist gratitude work, it is not something that you need to force yourself to do, everyday if you hate doing it but if you find yourself thinking too much about the past or the future, do a gratitude list of the things that you are grateful for today, that can bring you very, very easily back into the present. You can meditate, you don’t need to to do it for 20 minutes or an hour you can do it for 5 minutes, that will bring you back to the present.

Doing mindset work of course helps with all of this, it can help you create the mindset you need to let go of the past and let go of the future and stay focussed in the present. And being mindful and being present, also gives us the opportunity to look at things, to really look at our lives, this is going back to question 2 and 3 episodes: where am I in life? Really give an honest look at your life, the good and the bad. The stuff that you like and the stuff that you don’t like, because if you don’t really look at where you are now in your life, you can’t do anything about it. So whether you are reliving the glory days of the past or you are fantasising about the future, think about why you are not thinking about the present, what is it that you are trying to avoid? What is it that you don’t want to see? Look at it, journal on it, write down how do you feel about what you are currently experiencing in your life, make a list of all the stuff that you like about your life, make a list about all the stuff that you don’t like about your life and if you are not happy with your present-day life you need to ask yourself: what do you want instead? Instead of this shitty job that I hate, with this boss that is treating me poorly what do you want instead? And then that will help you create that, again, by making a plan, so, sometimes when we are looking at the present we need to create a different plan for the future, so that we can get out of the present that we don’t like and create a different one. So if you don’t like the present, what do you want instead? Always, always, always, when you are upset, unhappy, disappointed, feeling anything that you consider to be a negative feeling, about anything in your life, stop and ask yourself: what do I want instead and what do I need to do to get that? I think that asking that one question is one of the easiest ways to flip a situation on its head, to get out of a shitty place and start planning for something better.

So I hope you found this episode useful, it was actually inspired by this week’s Akashic records reading, which I get from Vickie Young and I will link to her in the show notes. So she gives you a personalised Akashic records reading which she sends in an email and then she pulls a card for you and the card that I got was mindfulness, meditation on the present. And, so that is something that has been kind of my theme for this week, something that I have been thinking about more of. And I have actually learned stuff about myself just from doing this episode for you, because I have realised that I have really done a great job of letting go of the past, because I have done so much healing on it and I realise that when I tend to get out of balance with the present it is going to the future. So, I think that is something that is really useful for me, and I hope you found this episode useful to you as well. Please drop mea line and let me know what you thought of this week’s episode, and also if you have any ideas for topics, for future episodes, or things that you would like me to talk about, please email me at: [email protected] or find me online and get in touch there.

Thank you so much for listening and remember to visit: http://HollyWorton.com/319 for the show notes on this episode. Thank you.