Hi,
I’m Sam,
It's intriguing living life in
retrospect and it’s also an eye-opener for me. It is very easy for me to gloss
over moments as they happen and it happens to someone like me who tries as much
as possible to live in the moment. I love sitting alone, listening to music
playing in my ear, the bass almost vibrating my brain, and then taking myself
back to past moments I may have overlooked. And the weird thing is that the
moments I go back to almost always have nothing to do with what is happening
around me in the present.
Sometimes I try to think back to little
prideful moments around me and I ask myself what little things am I proud of. I
always end up listing things as little as being about to finish 2 or more
chapters of a book despite having a chaotic day that the old me would rather
use as an excuse not to read, or stay hydrated, I even had to buy myself a big
water bottle to help me always achieve my goal of staying hydrated or keeping
my space organized and clean and pointing out these things to myself makes me happy with myself and I pat myself on the back and say well done. I have also realized that retrospective living helps me stay disciplined
and not in a way of remembering the times that I wasn't disciplined enough or not do what I should've done but especially focusing on the times that I
should've used a legitimate excuse not to do something but I did them which
gives me a reason to stay disciplined.
I think it is normal to take pride in
consistency. If you find it difficult to stay consistent on something, to the
point that things don't even need to get hard before you find yourself making
up excuses and missing in action, you will know that it is a huge thing to
celebrate being consistent. There's this self loathe no matter how much or
little that comes over you when you realize that you shouldn't have dropped the
ball and you also realize that when you lose that consistency it can be likened
to stopping in the middle of a race to do anything other than trying to get to
the finish line. The finish line hasn't moved but because you've decided to
focus on other things instead of running to get to the finish line, you've
delayed yourself and when you realize that all you have to do is start running
and focus on running the finish line comes back in view.
The old me will not even wait for
things to get hard before making up excuses to get out of doing things. I just
go on the journey in my mind and if I encounter any slight difficult moment
while picturing the journey in my mind, it's more than enough reason for me to
cancel the whole thing and as such stop myself from growing and getting the
much-needed experience and lesson that journey would've thought me. I decided
to actively stop myself from self-sabotage, I started talking to my friends and
I would mention to them how I wanted to do something, and once the opportunity
presented itself, I fought with myself and ended up not making the most of that
opportunity. In my retrospective living, I find out after much calculation,
where I should've been and where I am considering the number of opportunities
that have come my way which I didn't utilize properly is not encouraging to say
the least. So it makes me the happiest person in the room now that I have
created a distance between myself and self-sabotage, imposter syndrome, and
their likes. I can brag about my consistency and I now derive so much joy with
each journey that comes and what I stand to learn from each opportunity.
The realization that greatness
doesn't always require an audience helps me appreciate the little things of
life and also helps me derive so much joy from them. Some people are born to
exist loudly but even in their shiny, loud existence, believe me when I say
they have little things to take so much pride in. It's easy to lose focus on
the little things to take pride in while focusing on what someone else is proud
of, all you have to do is bring yourself back to the focus and live life in the
big moments as well as on little mundane, fleeting moments and equating them
with the same attention and pride.
"That the more you engage in the art of doing, the more you practice the art of becoming, giving rise to new versions of yourself that you never imagine could exist."
Yvonne Ogwulu