It is a quiet night as you are enjoying a drink and the present book you are reading. At this moment you are single and living in the downtown area of the city you live in. Your apartment is on the tenth floor and facing west. Taking a moment you look up from your book and see the sun setting over the city. For a moment your mind takes you back to when you were a kid and remembering that first sunset that you watched. The colours of orange, reds and yellows covering the western skies. At the time there was no worries that you now face as an adult. With your gaze you can see that the day maybe just ending as you then go back to reading. This is just a reminder that we live in an amazing world.
Echoes are sometimes more than sound. When you take the time to remember something from your past, that in itself can be an echo of the mind. As with most memories, they can bring with them the emotions that you had at that time. Some can be of joy, like the birth of your first child or of pain you felt when one of your family members died.
When we start to live in the past, we lose grips on what is happening in the present. By living in the past we are allowing it to control us with how we make decisions. To move back out of the past, there are all types of feeling that come from fear and anger. As we continue to move from the past we open up the hope and freedom of the present. The truth is that all of us have live a life and no one’s past is better than someone else’s. Just because some people do not go through being from a broken family, they have their own battles that they have faced. Some have come from poor beginnings to rise out of the harsh reality of that to being able to support a family with a little extra money. For them that is wealth as someone may complain that they do not have the money to go drinking when they are going to post-secondary education and living at home with their parents. For those who come from the bottom of societies world and have a goal to do better for themselves is where the magic happens. They make it happen by taking ownership of their choices and short falls. Something that I know all to well.
In the end the echoes of the past only shows you where you were and it is where you either dig in and keep moving forward. We only need to see where we were and then we can refocus on where we want to be. As for what is to come will also become an echo to you as you gain the strength to achieve your goals and dreams. To remain present in the moment and hopeful for the future is all about not allowing your mind to take you into your past, easier said than done. Having a positive mindset take effort to maintain because when challenges come up the first thing your mind does is to bring up negative thoughts.
I have found that working with a journal everyday is a way to stay in the present and I use it for me to focus on my goals and dreams. Like doing these essays, it is easy for me to skip a few days of doing them. That is where the journal comes into allowing me to reflect on my past that echoes in its pages which puts me back to what I need to do. One of the biggest things that happens when you journal everyday is that you remain in the present with all that is happening at that moment of your life. You can do just one page on your computer or get a binder and hand write them. The main act of writing out your thoughts, goals and dreams, you build your life from one word at a time. As well there will be times when you find out that bad thing that happened in your life was the greatest learning experience you could ever wish for.
With the nature of what an echo is, it will guide you to where you are looking. If you are looking back in your past that is where you will go to repeat what you went through. This is the bad part of looking into your past no matter if it is positive or negative, you will remain in the past. If you are always looking to the past, it will show in your journal and then you can slowly pull yourself to the present moment and what is happening at that moment. I know this because I have traveled that path before by always dwelling on the past. Once I started to write my journal again, I moved to what my present was and that was when I stopped running from what I not wanting to deal with. Once you manage to make peace with your past and stop running, you can reach any goal or dream that you have.
In life we are not given any real direction in which way to go. If our family is negative well, there is a good possibility that we will be negative. That also goes for being from a positive family. The path we take in life will come down to the decisions that we make and what kind of support that we get by the people around us. I will tell you one thing and that is if you do not believe in yourself, why would someone believe in you.
The echoes of good times with friends always lift us up or that one friends who’s voice is in the back of your head cheering you on will help you move mountains. It is these types of things that can come from the past and well if you think negative thoughts it is easy to let them go. Every time you have a negative thought say thought and do that every time until all the negative thoughts stop happening. It may take days for that to happen but it will. I know this from experience as it took me almost a full week to get rid of my own negative thoughts. Not that I do not have them anymore, I just choose to not pay attention to them.
Wherever you are in your life always remember that you woke up today and it is a blessing. You will live another day and then go to sleep. If you wake up tomorrow thank God/The Creator or what you believe in for the chance for a new day. To believe in yourself will take you to the point where you will question yourself and when you get there you will truly have control of your mind. As you reach that point, take the time to understand where you were and where you are now. It is one step, one thought, one goal, and one dream at a time.
Stay safe.