Is there anything easier than looking back and mulling over the highlights of our past—what we judge as success—and using them to judge our life today?
The answer is NO—it’s like watching your favorite movie over and over. It feels good, but it doesn’t expand or provide you with a wider experience.
Whatever idea or belief we attach to, becomes our normal—something we cling to like pollen on a newly washed car.
Take for example, your investment portfolio. If your portfolio reached a certain high amount before the market turned south, then the standard of success or failure is that number; regardless of the fact that that thinking makes zero sense. That number is stuck in your head and instead of realizing that the markets were heinously oversold, it’s the amount you “deserve” and you want it back!
We gauge our happiness against our past. Things are better or worse than…but is that really useful thinking?
I can tell you emphatically, no…it’s not. It’s like thinking that at age sixty-something, you don’t have the same muscle strength you did at twenty-something. The scale changes and everything is relative.
Perhaps it’s time to use a different metric to gauge happiness, success, health and fulfillment.
Create some standard questions you can use each day. Here are a few thoughts:
How am I feeling physically and emotionally today? (If better or worse than yesterday, can you identify what might have changed or shifted?)
On a scale of 1-10, how are my energy, focus and confidence today?
What do I need to either support or improve my current state?
Is my trajectory positive, negative or static?
What has contributed to my momentum or stasis?
Feel free to create your own—and then ask those questions every day. The past can be useful as a learning tool—maybe. But it’s not the gold standard for your life in this minute. In order to move forward with greater confidence, you need to release yourself from the “used to be’s”.
Cheers,
Michael
