Don’t Forclose on Your Own Future

Ever tried to predict your own future, let alone the future of politics or economics or our shared future? Guessing outcomes has become something of a risky bet the past few years, both in the personal and global. The truth is it has always been a fool’s errand at best and neurotic rabbit hole at worst.

Today, it’s impossible to even want to predict the future of things like politics, economics, seasonal and a-seasonal fires, floods, housing markets, job markets, safety in schools, and basically anything else you might be curious about.

I’m seeing this trickle down into my work with clients and friends. Everyone - me included - is trying to predict the future of our friendships, our romances, our children’s lives, our health, our fears, our failures, and anything else we want to hold onto in the face of so much uncertainty.

The other thing about us humans trying to predict the future is that we usually predict the worst thing. This has been very evident in my client sessions. People are almost only preparing for the friendship to go sour and dry up, the romance to end, the job to get worse, the car to die, and the pets to run away and get hit by trucks going too fast on slow streets. I’m sure you’ve got your own list.

The hard truth is that all those things might happen. The other truth is that Spirit might have other plans for you. More on that in a moment. You see, we’re wired as humans to expect the worst so we can prepare for the worst and not die when it happens. This is really really applicable to things like being hunted by wild animals, weather that threatens human life like snow and heat, or a food source drying up and us starving to death.

Unfortunately, the human mind has a hard time telling the difference between tigers in the forest and our friend not texting back for a few days. Both make us feel like we’re going to die, thus prompting the brain to imagine the worst (“The friendship is over because I’m unloveable!”) and start preparing for it (“I’ll ghost this friendship so I don’t have to have the truth confirmed by someone outside of me.”).

I call this practice of preparing for the worst future tripping. My friend Marlee calls it rehearsing, specifically for a play that may never happen with characters that probably don’t even exist. The result is that I’m taken out of the present, and begin living fully in a future that doesn’t even exist. In other words, I forclose prematurely on the future that does exist, the future that I create by staying in the present moment, connecting directly with Spirit and all Her rich possibilities, and taking the next right action based on what’s right in front of me.

I’m writing all this today because I feel like all my clients this week need the reminder not to forclose on the future Spirit has waiting for us. I remind them (and let’s be honest, myself) that more shall be revealed, that Spirit is still speaking, that we don’t actually know what’s going on with the other side of our fear equation, we don’t actually know what our lover or friend or boss is going through.

I remind my clients that we each have the right to advocate for what we want and need, that we can say things with both power and kindness, that Spirit always hears and answers our prayers even if other people never do. So whatever your greatest fear about the future is right now, remind yourself that it’s not yet truth. Remind yourself that you are actually always in your body which is actually always in present time. Remind yourself that present-time-you is an unbelievably wealthy and powerful being with great capactity to take action now, today, and here to co-create the future that Spirit has planned for you.

And always remind yourself that every possible future arising out of your present moment is a miracle, is a future full of joy and love, is a future filled with companionship, romance, and the beautiful golden path of your sacred road.

I know all this is a tall order as we look around the world and our personal lives. But just imagine what things will be like with a planet full of beings who refuse to forclose on their hopes and dreams, who partner with Spirit every day to keep open the fields of possibilities and miracles, and who live as if we’re all headed somewhere more beautiful and powerful than we could ever imagine with our tiger-scared brains. How do we do this?

By living from our hearts; that place within each of us where all possibilites are always alive, where Spirit dwells eternally, and where we create from the truth of our miraculous beings. I’ll meet you there.

In Spirit,

Cindy