If you focus too much on the past, it brings out emotions of unforgiveness, anger, and resentment. If you focus too much on the future, you attract emotions of fear and anxiety; a lot of what if questions.

Well what are you supposed to focus on? The now, obviously. If you continually focus on the past and future, it's like a hamster running on a treadmill; one's already happened, and the other has yet to happen. Both in reality, which are out of your own control, are the causes of negative emotion, self-talk and any other ego-stroking emotions.




Are there any benefits of focusing on the past and future? Minutely. One can refer to the past to understand certain behaviours and actions so that if they occur, they can be identified. The future creates a sense of goals and aspirations; a trajectory. But the thing is, those actions direct back to the now, the present. All you have is now. The past and future and intangible forms of the now. The now is where you make conscious decisions. The ego often breeds off of fear, what if this and that happens. Certain mental thought patterns in the past begin to replay like an old tape recorder. The ego likes to have identity. But what if those things were not thought about?

What problems do you have now? Not tomorrow, not in an hour from now but NOW. That is where stillness speaks, that is where you are present and actually living. Die to every moment in the past. Focus more on the now. I constantly re-read Eckhart Tolle's Power of Now to keep myself grounded.

I'm human, I have my bad days, but when I focus on the now, I regain this sense of equilibrium; inner peace.