M ... is for Making Choices
We are where we are in life because of the choices we have made. Every minute of every day we make choices and our lives are the sum total of those choices. One choice leads to the next and so on and so on - and this is how we create our future. We do have the power to create our lives by the choices we make. Every day we choose what to wear, what attitude we will bring into our day, how much or how little work we will accomplish - AND we choose whether or not we will be living that day in the past, in the present, or in the future.
Many people waste enormous quantities of time living in the past. They live constantly haunted by pain and anger from past actions that were done to them or done by them. Anger is like a poison that circulates through our system polluting our bodies, minds and spirits. It poisons our minds with depression and fear, causes damage to our relationships and instills in us a low self esteem. It poisons our bodies through physical conditions such as ulcers, high blood pressure and is one of the causes of substance abuse. It poisons our spirits because we cannot grow and reach our full potential when we are unforgiving of ourselves and others. Forgiving does not mean that we ignore or forget what was done to us, and it does not mean that we forget the actions we took which we now regret. It simply means that we gather the wisdom from those experiences and come to peace with the past so that we can move on.
By the same token it is not at all useful to conduct our lives living in the future. We can visualize how we want our future to be and of course we must goals with some idea of what we want to create in our future, but this is different than living in the future. When people live in the future, most of the time it is with fear and dread of what the future will bring...they have fantasies of being alone in old age, suffering poor health, not having enough money, fearful their children will be maimed in an accident, fear that someone will break into their homes - you name it - there are a million fears we can come up with if we are of a mind to! We can turn ourselves into fearful quivering masses, afraid to do anything if we give in to fears of the future. We must stop projecting ourselves into the future this way and make a conscious choice to live in the 'now'. We can make our choices the best way we can, then spend more time enjoying the blessings that are here in this very moment.
Let's choose the freedom to live in the present moment, moment after moment. Let's enjoy and appreciate life as it comes to us.
