Most things just don’t matter
I often think about things even if I’m not supposed to think about. I also do things that I should not do now, but I like to get them to be perfect. What I realised is that many people do things and think about things that are in the future or the past.
If you think about things that could happen in the future or already happened in the past, without realising that it doesn’t matter, you can get lost in your own head. Most things don’t matter. If you work more hours or less hours, if you come late to a meeting or whatever — it could always be worse.
For me personally it helped to see the past as a history of memories and experience to reflect on. It is easy to lose yourself in the past and it is worse to wish the ‘good old times’ back. Maybe this sounds simple, but I often catch myself thinking about the past, why things happened and how they could have ended differently. Instead, I should have been thinking about that memory rarely and realise that I’ve made choices that lead me to this moment. Then, I could reflect on that memory — if it was a thing to learn about and let it be.
The future is a difficult thing for most people, but in fact could be pretty simple — these moments do not exist yet. So thinking about how you will be in the future or how it will look like prevents you from being fully conscious in the present moment. This sounds a bit spiritual, but makes more and more sense to me over time. Of course the future does and should exist, but the way you may look at that is that you could push yourself in the direction of your goals.
One of the most famous books in this direction is The Power of Now from Eckhart Tolle (A New Earth is good too). The key learnings of this book (I heard the audio version) was exactly what I described here. Also, the author described that most people take a ‘load’ with them (described as the pain-body). This is a parasite that causes people to unconsciously seeking pain over and over again, often by thinking about the past or future too much. An example for that could be in the beginning of a discussion with someone. The other person tells you something and then you say something negative that you know will lead to an unwanted conflict — but you say it anyway, unconsciously.
