Let’s break down what the past and future really are.
The past?
It’s nothing but a collection of memories stored in your mind. Fragments of sensory data—bits and pieces of moments—reconstructed every time you think about them.
And the future?
It doesn’t exist anywhere except in your imagination. It’s a mental projection of what you expect or fear will come next. Both are created solely by your brain and shaped by what you’ve already experienced or expect to experience.
According to neuroscience, your mind is wired to remember and predict based only on what it knows. Your brain fills in the blanks from memories, expectations, and familiar emotions to create what you call “the past” and “the future.”
The truth?
Both are imaginary. Your memories are partial, subjective, and ever-changing, and your future is a projection shaped by whatever you’re choosing to feel, believe, and focus on right now.
If you're grieving and feel that the pain will never end, that’s your mind projecting your current feelings into the future, creating an illusion that this is your permanent reality. It’s easy to believe because it’s all you can see—right now. I know because I did this myself.
For nearly five years, I allowed grief to control my every thought, feeling, and belief about life, the future, and myself. I chose to focus on the pain, telling myself it would always be this way, and so my brain created that experience for me, it had no choice.
I was trapped, not because grief is an endless prison but because I believed it was. My thoughts about the future were only echoes of the pain I chose to carry and ruminate on every day.
When you cling to grief or any limiting belief, your brain takes that and feeds it back to you. It can’t show you a reality that you won’t even allow yourself to imagine.
The only real moment is now, and it’s only in the now that you have the power to shift your focus, to rewrite your narrative, to decide how you want to feel moving forward.
So ask yourself:
What are you choosing to believe about your past?
What future are you imagining? Is it based on your pain, fears, past trauma, diagnoses, or regrets?
And most importantly, is that what you really want to experience?
Your present beliefs are crafting your future, one thought at a time.
Maybe it’s time to let go of the illusions and create the reality you actually desire.
