Your Life Is Now. Your Happiness Is Now. | Note 572

Why do we waste so much time worrying about yesterday?

 
One day I was sitting at the Soho House in West Hollywood, talking to a friend. I apologized at the end of our conversation. I apologized for wearing her ears out with so many stories from the past.
 
Don’t get me wrong, I have marvelous stories and I’m not bothered by anything in my past. However, it was as if I had nothing else going on for myself than what was. That concept is false for you and me. We have what’s now and what’s coming.
 
You know you can put the past behind you, right?
 
Here’s another question for you. Would you rather live in regret and have intense feelings for what could have been or love and embrace life exactly how it is now?
 
Constantly replaying what you could have done differently won’t change what happened, so why bring misery to the present by worrying about what was?
 
How about adapting the attitude that every decision you’ve made – good and bad – is the best and only decision you could’ve made at the time with the information you had?
 
Instead of trying to go back and edit the past, be present in the now. Fall in love with what you are experiencing right now.
 
German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once said, “My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it—all idealism is mendacity in the face of what is necessary — but love it.
 
Amor Fati is “love of fate” or “love of one’s fate.
 
You see, you can see everything in your past as good or, at the very least, necessary.
 
You can continue to live in the past by focusing on what happened, or you can be happy and welcome all of life’s experiences.
 
Remember, your life is now. Your happiness is now.
 

LISTEN: