Then Again - Grasshopper

Reliving the past is reliving “then” again. That’s no way to live.

I know that a lot of therapy is based on a person’s back story. That’s certainly appropriate to explore. But staying there too long has the client/patient sing the same old song: one that was popular then but doesn’t belong on the playlist now.

 

The biggest stumbling block I see to moving forward is pretending then is now. “Then” is either past or future; it’s never now, and now is the only time you can make a change.

 

Now is always the jump off point.

 

Telling our story serves mainly as a history lesson of how we got from then to now. It explains how we got here, but continually going back over the territory does little to help us plant our flag in the future.

 

Whoever first said, “The future is now” was not someone who was stuck in then. They knew the folly of the refrain, “let’s go over that again.”

 

My famed hypnosis teacher Dr. Dave Dobson had a descriptive phrase he used to characterize the consistent dragging of a person back to then. He said, “You don’t have to visit a dump to remember what garbage smells like.”

 

Recognizing that then is then and now is now is the difference between focusing on the weeds and starting up the plow.

 

Then will never be now. The day we adopt that mindset is the day that then starts melting and fading away, making room for now to come out to play, today.

 

All the best,