Future-Tripping

What are you looking for, friend?

Are you looking at the world for ways that it can bring you joy, love, satisfaction, and adventure…

or are you looking for the ways in which the world can hurt, betray, disappoint, and let you down?

Here is a tip, friend: You will find what it is you’re looking for.

We are really good at affirming our worst fears and darkest insecurities and we REALLY like attempting to predict, plan, mold, and squish our future into a box labeled ‘expectation’.

The more we worry about the future, as if if can be controlled, the more anxiety that is introduced into our lives.

A good friend told me recently that anxiety is the tax paid for worrying about the future.

This “future-tripping” robs you of your present and engages you in a self-fulfilling prophecy cycle.

Your thoughts, your words, are spells.

While it sounds magical, it’s really just the power of the brain.

The brain filters all of the information it receives on an activation/inhibition model, called “priming”. When the brain is primed by a certain belief to look for something it will shut down competing neural networks so that you have a hard time seeing evidence to the contrary of an existing belief.

Whatever it is you focus your thoughts on becomes an existing belief.

Our beliefs inform our actions, and the result of these actions confirm your original belief.

Worrying can occur in any part of this, thus feeding this loop with its negativity and anxiety.

All those worries and anxieties then run rampant within our minds that we forget are just thoughts, not facts.

We let these thoughts fuel the loop.

In my life, for a long time, this showed up for me in the belief that I was unlovable.

This became the narrative that I created for myself.

As a result of this belief, many of the partners I found myself pursuing or in relationships with were unavailable, disinterested, or dishonest.

Being cheated on, lied to, ghosted, ditched, and both emotionally and verbally abused became my norm. What I expected, anticipated, and felt deserving of.

Thus confirming my belief about myself that I was unlovable.

On and on went the cycle.

A couple of things had to occur for me to change this.

1. Recognize when thoughts needed to be dismissed.
2. Let go of worrying about the future.

If it sounds simple, it is.

That is really all it takes.

When a negative thought enters I literally imagine myself flicking it away.

It isn’t that I don’t have negative thoughts, it’s that I choose which thoughts I allow to take root.

So, when I have a thought that I am a failure, a disappointment, that I’m fat, ugly, or unlovable.

I flick them away, because these are not truth, and then I replace them with the beliefs that I want to hold about myself.

I am resilient, strong, intelligent, creative, and loved.

If these are the thoughts and beliefs in my mind that I give space to, that I choose to believe, then these will be the thoughts that fuel and inform my actions and thus lead to the results that I am truly desiring for myself.

Once I believed that I was loved I found a partner who was able to honor that in a beautiful and magical way.

A different kind of self-fulfilling prophecy designed by the power of my thoughts.

What thoughts and beliefs are you choosing to give space to in your mind?

Are there ones that you can let go of and replace in order to receive that which you really want?

It’s not magic, it’s science.

So, that’s the first thing that is necessary.

Additionally, I try very hard to remove any expectation and attachment to outcome and avoid ‘future-tripping’.

Things will go awry, people will not act or behave as I expect them to. The more I attempt to control or force my will, the less that I am able to live in and enjoy the present.

Future-tripping doesn’t protect or prepare me for anything impending, it merely invites anxiety.

The more anxiety that I allow to prosper and flourish, the more stressed I become.

So, I let it go.

I don’t pay the tax and, instead, focus on enjoying the moments that I am living now instead of giving them away.

So I ask again, friend: what is it you’re looking for?

Because I can say with confidence that you will find what you look for.

Therefore, believe that you are love, beauty, and magic so that it will be what it is you find.

Always,

Your Trusted Friend ❤︎