“If you could take a moment, seize it, and squeeze out of it all the life available within it, shouldn't that moment be in the future rather than in the past?”

A thought by Erwin Raphael McManus from his book, Chasing Daylight: Seize the Power of Every Moment (Kindle Locations 78-79). Kindle Edition.

What a waste of energy and emotion when we seize and squeeze everything we can out of a past situation in our life. What it can do is rob us of joy or fill us with pride depending of what happened and neither of those responses build value into our life.

Now the truth is we only have control of our present but a future moment can bring hope, excitement and challenge into our present. It can help in making the decisions that need to be made today and helping in living through the sacrifices that need to be made in order to reach that moment.

For an example, I live for the future moment when one day I step on my scale and it says 199 lbs. Every day that I get up and head out to walk is controlled by that future moment. Every time I decide at Starbucks against that pastry instead of the oatmeal is controlled by the future moment when I see 199 lbs. on that scale.

Now there is another time I remember and that was when I got on the scale and it said 260 lbs. Yes that motivated me to start but it doesn’t really keep me motivated to keep going. There was a time that I lost 15 lbs. and I could have said good job and stopped but I for my health needed to do more. The seeing 199 lbs. keeps me going.

So what about you? What moment is driving you? Is it one in the future or one in the past?

Why don’t you chose one in your future?

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