I woke up one day, and I wondered?

I wondered how I arrived where I was at that very exact moment in time.

Because, what I was seeing manifested in my life was alien to me.

My belief On the Present

I had stood firm in my commitment over the past couple of months.

I had made the changes that should have revealed themselves through a transformational experience.

That is what I thought.

Yet, I was seeing nothing in the present to reflect my recent efforts.

Things, instead, seemed to be going in the opposite direction.

Doubt is Sneaky

When seeds of doubt take root, they grow like weeds threatening to choke out the growing bloom. 

And I began to doubt change was possible.

The questions that rang incessantly in my mind were “how and why.”

1. How was I doing all the things necessary to create change, but there were no results to reflect my efforts?

2. Why was I experiencing this?

After some contemplation, inquiry, and seeking, I had a revelation.

When You Open the Present What you get is what you get?

There was no mistake or mix-up.

I had created the present I was seeing.

Everything I was, and I was experiencing in the present, I built it.

Whether I wanted to acknowledge it or not, my habits, over the last few years, brought me to this place.

Your life is not a FedEx Delivery Service.

Nothing I was doing to change in the present would bring a change overnight.

I was shocked by the lack of change, but it was undeniably a result of what I had invested in my life up until that point. 

And without a doubt, it would take me the same amount of time to reconstruct that it took me to get to where I was currently.

Accepting the Present

I now realized I needed to accept the harvest and understand my role in the cultivation. From there, I could redefine my vision of who I wanted to be, what I wanted, and why I wanted it? Above all, I had to believe the investment I was now making would manifest those desires, but not instantaneously.

NO matter what I saw in the present, it would not define who I would be if I continued to work.

No Fixadent and Forget It

I recently listened to a straight talk conducted by Peter Sage, who gives an excellent art exhibit metaphor related to this account. 

Suppose you planned to visit an art gallery and did not like what you saw. Could you demand the paintings be removed?

Absolutely not!

In fact, if you were to go into a museum and rage about the artwork, you would get thrown out and nothing would change.

You would still be angry now sitting outside the gallery. Unfortunately the art will still be on the wall. 

The Metaphor

Our lives are like a gallery. All the paintings are our experiences. We can’t change those; they have already occurred; they are, as one would say, history. So to fly into a rage because you do not like what you have created in your life is fruitless. Anger and frustration are not going to erase the artwork. 

“One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.”
― Golda Meir, My Life

Here is the lesson of the metaphor.

In life, one must recognize the artwork on the wall is made with indelible ink and it is fixed. However, one does not have to stay in the room. No one is holding an individual prisoner to that room. Likewise we are not chained to our past.

Wonderfully, we are perfectly capable of walking into a new room, a new future.

From that point, we can paint the type of paintings we want. 

I want to motivate you.

Believe that whatever the present looks like and how impossible it may seem, your present does not have to define your future.

The life you live today is a reflection of your past.

You want to change your reality start today and define your future. 

You must be realistic and accept this truth.

*Lasting and effective change will take more than 30 or 90 days.

If you stick to it, you will wake up one day, and you will be pleasantly surprised at what you see.

“The future depends on what you do today.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

So, if you stick to it, you will wake up one day, and you will be pleasantly surprised at what you see.

You may even miss the exact time you start becoming and transforming into what you have been building.

Be assured that what you will see did not occur overnight.

Today I reaped what I sowed yesterday.

Tomorrow I will reap the harvest that I am sowing today, good or bad.

Recommended Read:

Meadows, Martin. “This Time Will Be Different: Short Book on Making Permanent Changes.”