The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur

October 5Above Time

But humans postpone or remember; they do not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround them, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. They cannot be happy and strong until they too live with nature in the present, above time.

Ralph Waldo Emerson—Self-Reliance (1841)

You would think there would only be so many ways to talk about mindfulness. Ah, but then you would be wrong.

An aspect of mindfulness that isn't often touched upon is that without it you can't build change.

When we spend all our time in the known past, it automatically creates our future. When we are certain just how something is going to go—because that's how it went last time—it's a sure bet that's how it will go this time around. To our mind and body, it's as automated as breathing.

But what if instead of relying on or obsessing over how something turned out in the past we used the present to obsess over creating a more desirable future outcome? That's how mindfulness creates the future.

If you want to get a bit quantum about this idea, you can effectively change your mind and body to live as Emerson suggests: “above time.”

But this requires the ability to change in the present.

As Joe Dispenza so clearly lays out in Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself:

[I]f we focus on an intended future event and then plan how we will prepare or behave, there will be a moment when we are so clear and focused on that possible future that the ...