What matters more, the past, present, or future?
It’s easy to think that the only time that matters is “now.” There are books written about the idea, such as The Power Of Now, Start Here, Mindfulness, etc. These books and ideas in general are great, but we can’t neglect the fact that our past and future are crucial parts of the puzzle too.
The past is over, that much is obvious. But does that mean we should forget about it because we are solely focusing on the present? Not so much. It’s easy to get stuck in our memories reliving all of our past failures and blunders. Maybe you’re stuck thinking about the deadlift you missed, or that bench press that got stuck on your chest. Maybe it’s when you discovered that your childhood hamster, Nibbles, didn’t actually run away to summer camp like your parents said. Regardless of what moment we are fixed on in the past, we can’t stay there because that’s not where life happens.
“The past has to be viewed as a springboard to the future…find the lesson and move on.” – Mike Smith
Along the same vein, we can’t get so absorbed in setting goals for the future and planning our perfect tomorrow, that we don’t take steps in the present to get there. Often, we get to our desired future by taking events from our past, mining the lessons we can from them, and taking action in the present to move us towards our future. It’s crucial for us to plan out where we want to go in our fitness journey (and our life in general). We all need something to strive for that forces us to grow and become better humans, if that’s the path we choose to follow. If we don’t have an idea of where we’re trying to go though, then are actions aren’t as impactful as they could be. A line from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland comes to mind, which goes:
“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.”
“I don’t much care where –”
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.”
If I was trying to become, oh, I don’t know, the best tuba player in the world, then I better practice playing the tuba. If my primary action to improve my tubing playing was going for long runs, then my present actions would not get me to my desired future. Similarly, if my goal was deadlifting a smorgasbord of weight, then it would probably benefit me to perform deadlifts in training.
That brings us to the present moment, which is where our power comes from. The present is where we can take action. It’s where we can make choices that have been influenced by our past, which then craft the futures we crave. There is power in the now, because it’s our chance to choose what we want from life. We can choose, at this present moment, to go to the gym or not. If we’re currently cutting down weight on a diet, then we can choose to make healthy choices, or to binge on half a dozen donuts from Dunkin’ Donuts (not that I’m speaking from past experience years and years ago…)
A friend of mine (yes, I do have one of those), who I shall call Jedidiah, started having knee issues while squatting. He quickly fell into a funk with his mood because squatting was one of his favorite activities, and now, he couldn’t do so without issues. Jedidiah was stuck thinking of what his knee “should feel like” (past), and couldn’t take steps in the present to make it better. Once he learned of The Three Times he was able to shift his thinking in a beneficial way.
Instead of viewing his knee discomfort when squatting as an obstacle, he tried to look at it as a lesson he could learn from. Jedidiah realized that his squat technique could use some work and that maybe the poor technique was to cause for the knee discomfort. He wasn’t putting himself in the best position to be successful. One of his biggest goals for the future was to squat pain free, so he knew he had to take steps in the present to create that future. Jedidiah decided that it would be best to get some coaching and started taking the steps necessary to learn better form.
Getting stuck in the past is no good. We can’t do anything there because whatever happened has already happened. As the quote said earlier: “find the lesson and move on.” On the contrary, projecting our thoughts forward to where we want to go is huge, since we need something to strive for. It’s not a “this one or that one” scenario though. Ideally, we should learn from our past, strive for the future we want, all the while taking the necessary steps to get there.
P.S. To give credit where it’s due, I took the title of “The Three Times” from Mike Smith in You Win In The Locker Room First, and used that as inspiration for this post.