Start Where You Are

Posted on November 1, 2006
Filed Under Embrace Your Highest Path and Purpose, Releasing Limiting Beliefs, Spiritual Development |

In setting our goals for the future, we often use our past experiences as a frame of reference. We wish we could get back to being less stressed, having more financial freedom, more personal time, or a healthier body. We look back to our past life circumstances, and try with all our might to recreate those same circumstances in the present. We try the same stress management strategies, the same diet or workout, the same financial plan that worked so well for us in the past. And, very often, we find ourselves frustrated at a lack of results. Why can’t we recreate what we once had? Often, when we look at the past, we may feel like we’ve lost something – a fortune, a career, a sense of well-being. We know what we’ve achieved in the past – surely we can do it again? Of course we cannot. We cannot do anything “again” because we simply cannot move backwards, much as we’d sometimes like to. The truth is that we cannot move forward into our desired life circumstances by reliving the past. In order to move forward and create change, we must first truly embrace and acknowledge our starting point – which is always the present. To recreate the past means dismissing all the experiences and changes we’ve undergone in the interim. To try to “go back” to past circumstances would mean leaving a part of who we are unacknowledged and uncelebrated. When we are undertaking an effort towards a new state of health, or financial abundance, or fulfillment in our careers, let us first embrace the journey the brought us to this present moment. So maybe our waistline has expanded, or our bank account has dwindled – but what have we learned? How have we grown? The truth is that, since those past circumstances we so long for, we have utterly and irreversibly changed. Perhaps the change was for the better, or perhaps – in our perception – for the worse. But we are no longer the same person. And so it stands to reason that, in order to move forward, we must embrace who we are now, in all our present circumstances. There is no opportunity to “go back.” And, if given that opportunity, would we really want to? We short-change ourselves on the joy of discovery and exploration if we attempt a path that we’ve trodden before. We encounter only frustration trying to take a previous road from a different starting point. Why not go somewhere completely new and different, rather than somewhere we’ve already been? Why not cultivate a “beginner’s mind” and allow ourselves a path of new experiences, new insight, and new growth? Let’s start where we are, by embracing the present. Let’s move forward, one step at a time, acknowledging all that we are today. And let’s discover new growth on a new path. Blessings, Andrea