If you were given the opportunity to live this life all over again, would you do it? Why? Is it because of your experience and your state of mind right now? Is it because of your experiences in life that led you to now? Is it because of the experiences that you believe now is leading you to in the near or distant future?
If you could change your life as it is right now, would you do it? If you would, what would you change?
If you could change your past, would you do it? If you would, what would you change? Would you be a different person now if that had happened differently? How would you be different?
If you could change the future from what you envision happening for yourself, would you do it? If you would, what is stopping you?
You are the person you are now because of how you have dealt with obstacles in your past—because of the choices that you’ve made in reacting to, or in proactively responding to, everything that has come into your life. And the choices that you are making now—with the thoughts that you are thinking, and the feelings that you are giving rise to with those thoughts, and the inclinations that you are giving rise to with those feelings, and the words and actions that you are giving rise to with those inclinations—are determining the shape of your future.
If you don’t like where you’ve been or where you are, learn through contrast from it where you’d like to be, and focus your attention and your energy on that—on making that your reality. In this way, you can bring yourself to a point where you are able to realize that you could only be where you are now because of where you’ve been, and you will be grateful for where you’ve been because of this.
This moment is one step on the path toward where you will be. Do you like where you are headed? Do you like the future you envision for yourself? You are shaping it with those thoughts and feelings that regard it. You are in control of the form that it ultimately takes. The next present moment will contain what it does because you have given the energy of your attention to those things in this moment. And your life will only seem out of your hands if you give rise to this reality with your beliefs—or merely with your doubts in your own awesome power.
Make this life something that you’d love to live all over again if given the opportunity. And live it now fully—with your attention focused here—so that you can take it all in, and so that if you aren’t given the opportunity to live it again, you will know that you lived it well.