Doubt

Doubt is the brain worrying about the future.

Here is the kicker the future is unknown.

There will always be doubt about the future.

Your worst fears become realities, but only in your own mind.

Are any of those worst fears going to happen?

I don’t know. No one does.

“He who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than necessary.” – Moral Letters to Lucilius, Letter 98, Section 8, Seneca

If something bad is going to happen, it is going to happen. Worrying about it only makes us suffer twice.

Trust that you will be able to handle whatever comes your way with the skills that you already have.

“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.” – Meditations, Book 7.8, Marcus Aurelius

Most of the time our worst fears only happen in our imagination.

Now the future may not turn out the way you hoped, but is that your worst fear?

Not necessarily. Sometimes, we don’t know what we need out of life.

Life tells us what we need.

It is better to ride the wave and adapt to new circumstances.

Control what you control. Your attitude and response to what happens.

It’s often better to lower your expectations.

Your serenity is in inverse proportion to your expectations.

Give life your best effort and adapt to whatever outcome comes your way.

Knowing the Unknowable

The unknown is unknowable.

Why?

Because its’ in the name.

What am I afraid of?

The unknown future.

That’s where the anxiety comes from. Wanting to know the future.

“Do not disturb yourself by imagining your whole life at once. Do not sit in grief imagining what discontents are yet to come. Instead, ask yourself in any given moment: ‘What is so be unbearable about this? Why can’t I endure it?” – Meditations 8:36, Marcus Aurelius

Look at the “bad” things that have happened in your life. Did you see them coming?

Probably not, or you would have avoided them.

But is what happened really bad?

Maybe, maybe not.

But you probably didn’t see the good things coming either.

Whether something is good or bad is unknowable to you at the time.

We as humans are limited in knowing what is good or bad in any given moment.

That only becomes clear in hindsight.

The best any of us can do is get the most out of this moment.

Being present cures anxiety.

“True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future.” – On the Happy Life, Seneca

Past > Present?

You can’t change the past, but the past changes the present.

Something that happened in the past that you didn’t understand or couldn’t see the meaning becomes more clear as the present unfolds.

“We must abandon completely the notion of blaming the past for any kind of situation we’re in and reverse our thinking and see that the past always flows back from the present. That now is the creative point of life. So you see, it’s like the idea of forgiving somebody. You change the meaning of the past by doing that …” – Alan Watts, Out of Your Mind, from Reflections from Holstee newsletter

Even things that were horrible in the past take on new meaning if you grow and learn from them in the present.

That person that did the unforgivable must be forgiven for the present to take the shape that you want.

“Holding on to anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die” – Buddha

The past does inform the present. That is why we need to be present in each moment. The present becomes the past.

Since we can’t change the past the only influence we have is being present in each moment.