more than ten years with a plastic heart valve, I now see it as my greatest strength, ever reminding me to be thankful, and to make the most of life while I can. I have traveled extensively throughout Europe and the United States, and enjoy long-distance treks through the wilderness. As of the time we wrote this book, I am climbing mountains for fun, and have ascended more than 25 peaks over 14,000 feet. I even hiked over 41 miles of the Colorado Trail in a single day (my personal best) ten years after the operation. As for the heart valve, it still offers its limitations, and will need to be replaced again in the coming years. However, my focus isn’t on limitations anymore, it is on possibility.
As I have come to believe through my journey in life, I am just a guy who wakes up every morning with 24 hours to spend on anything I want. While I am by no means an expert at living, I have learned to live very differently than I did as a young Private First Class. The important lesson here is that my open-heart surgery, and the subsequent adversity, forced me to erase what I had envisioned of my future, and leave my past behind. I was a changed person with an evolving identity, and I was focused on the present... for that was all I could manage at the time.
- Travis R. Slone
We chose this story to kick of the By Example experience because, in many ways, it touches on all twelve of the personal missions that you will encounter along the way. First and foremost, you must begin where you are, and work with what you have.
Travis’ story brings to mind the words of Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist and holocaust survivor who once wrote,
“When we are no longer able to change our situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
By changing ourselves, we agree to participate in the natural processes within the Universe, rather than fight a losing battle against them.
To this point, Marsha Linehan coined the term Radical Acceptance, which describes a decision to be where we are, and to accept our circumstances without judgment. For in doing so, we agree to seek understanding rather than blame, and to be the change that we wish to see.
As you begin this individual journey in search of true satisfaction with your own life, it is important to begin where you are by acknowledging the reality of your own unique situation. This includes, but is not limited to, your environment, experience, resources, personality, strengths, challenges, and so on. Not so much what you imagine these things to be, but what actually is. It is time to face the facts, and to tell yourself the truth.
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE SELF
One way to begin this journey is by imagining that you have three selves, the most useful of which exists in the ‘here and now.’ However, each self can serve a useful purpose as you strive to become the best human being that you can be. These three selves are your PAST self, your PRESENT self, and your FUTURE self. By allowing your past or future self to dominate your life, or your mind, you may be reducing the potential life-altering power of the present moment.
Your Past Self
First, there is your PAST self. This part of you is made up of memories, some better than others, but all of which are about meaningful experiences in your previous life. Your past self has lived… for better or worse… and died, so to speak. To sum it up even more concisely, it was what it was.
As you consider your past self, regrets may come to mind. You may wish that you had done some things differently, or you may think you should have known better than to make certain choices. However, research indicates that people generally make the choice that they feel is best given what they knew at that time. This is called the hindsight bias in psychology, and it’s an important thing to consider when thinking about your PAST self. Simply put, we know things now that we didn’t know then, and that new information has forever changed the way we view past events.
As we have said before, the point of this mission is to begin where you are with what you have now and work from there. This will require some level of acceptance of what has already occurred. Not that your PAST self was good enough, but that it is good enough for now.
Although your past experiences have come and gone, this does not mean that the past is not important. In fact, the past exerts strong influence on your present thinking, decision-making, and behavior. Past choices or actions may influence the way others act toward you, or the environment in which you currently work and live.
One awesome thing about your PAST self, is that you add to it with each new choice and every new experience. In other words, you can change your PAST self by doing things differently today, for today will soon become yesterday, and your PAST self will continue to evolve as time goes on. While you can’t change what has already happened, you can always create positive meaning for why you have survived this long.
Our past exists in the form of memories, which serve a basic biological purpose: survival. If left unquestioned, our thoughts and beliefs about these memories of the past can become quite troublesome. Therefore, it is important to try and remember that our past does not typically make us do anything. We can always use the present moment, the moment of opportunity, to think and act more appropriately. Before this can be done, however, we must begin where we are by developing awareness of what is, defining what we wish to change, and discovering a motivation to accomplish that change.
The present moment holds the answer to both a hopeful future, and satisfaction with your past.
In summary, though you should always strive to create healthy meaning of your previous life experiences, you can do so only by altering your thinking in the present and making healthy choices today, for that is where all change takes place. Basically, if you wish to be different, then you should do something different right now, with your PRESENT self.
Your Present Self
Let’s get right to the point here… your PRESENT self is a gold mine of opportunity. Regardless of how proud or disappointed you are with your past life; nothing on Earth is more valuable than the present, nor is any resource more powerful. This cannot be overstated.
The present moment holds the answer to both a hopeful future, and satisfaction with your past. On the other hand, it can be a constant source of failure, and regret when used unwisely. Either way, it is up to you, the owner of this resource, to use it as you wish. In this way, you are responsible for your own response to Life.
For example, if you desire for your life to be different, you can use the present moment to read this book, as you are doing right now. Once you are done reading, you can use the present moment to take some action or behave in a way that might lead to the life you desire. Then, after a while, you may spend a present moment appreciating the life that you now have. This is the power of managing your time wisely, and focusing your mental and physical energy on the present, rather than the past and future.
As your life moves on, and you spend each moment in a purposeful and reasonable way, those moments get added on to your past, and you are given another present moment to spend. Though at first, your past may have been regretful, or sad, it becomes more positive with each passing second of time well spent.
Consequently,
