“The best way to predict the future is to create it” – Abraham Lincoln

I first heard this quote a few years back when I was still attending secondary school however I didn’t really understand the true meaning of the quote until recently. I’ve always aimed to get everything set in place so that I’m prepared for the future so that I know exactly when I plan to do things for example: I planned to move out of the family home when I was 26 and put down a house deposit, I planned to fall in love and marry the girl of my dreams by 28 and I had planned that I would eventually have children around my late twenties or early thirties.

It is all well and good having a plan about your future until you start following that plan right down to the details, I only recently discovered that you can’t always follow the plan that you envisioned because eventually you start living to the plan and lose sight of what is happening in the here and the now. I only found this out when I started following my life plan, I was starting to lose focus about what was happening every day and only really taking note of the events that were actively going to effect the big plan that I had already had for my life. If we relate how I was feeling to the famous quote by Abraham Lincoln, I was following a prediction about the future instead of creating the future for myself.

By following a prediction, I had lost focus of what was happening on a daily basis. For example: I had lost focus of my daily job as I was looking towards my job in the future, I had forgotten how it felt to feel loved by my gorgeous girlfriend because I was looking to marriage instead of focusing on how we were both were feeling towards each other at the present time, I stopped treating everyday as different because I was looking beyond all that and only focused on the end result.

To me it felt like I had no control of what I was doing and I just had to sit down and let life lead its course. It eventually got to the point where my energy levels had dropped low as I hadn’t felt like I was actually doing anything towards the future that I had planned for myself.

Several months passed like this until I realised just how much I was focusing on the final result instead of the process taken to get to the end result. Soon after I realised that I was looking at the end result I started to focus on the here and now such as what was happening day to day and how I was feeling every day , as I started to do this I was beginning to realise just how much was happening to me that I wasn’t really aware of such as :

• I have an outstanding apprenticeship which open many different job opportunities
• I have amazing friends who are there to help and support me when I need them
• I’m in a relationship with a gorgeous girl called Emily and she honestly makes me so happy and I love her so much.
• I have grown within myself and developed a greater appreciation for the little things happening in my life.

Since I’ve started to stop predicting my future and started living my life I’ve been able to start appreciating the little things in life and I started to enjoy the here and the now.

Dan

( Dancalvert15@gmail.com )