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Here's a great story about a professor who is giving his last lecture because he has pancreatic cancer and has been given only weeks to live.

His message is wonderful! But don't wait until you have weeks to live to start putting it into practice!

I have a question for you.

If you are not living "in the moment", just when are you living? This is not a trick question, nor is it a rhetorical question. Think about your answer carefully.

As I see it, there are three times: past, present and future. I believe that while it is important to think about the past and the future, it is very dangerous to LIVE in either of these times.

So far, scientists have said that time travel is impossible. Yet I know someone who does it on a regular basis! She is able to instantly return to a past time, in the blink of an eye. If the wrong name is mentioned or a painful subject is raised, this person is able to instantly transport herself back to the moment when the pain and anger were fresh. Her entire demeanor changes and it is as though she is back reliving the entire event. She can instantly ruin a great mood in the present just by thinking of some issues that are long past.

If you want to live a life that is fearless, I urge you to learn the lessons that your past has to teach and then move beyond them into the present! Keep the lessons (because you can use those in the present), but leave the circumstances that brought you those lessons - they are relics of the past and can serve no useful purpose in the present.

So what about the future? Living in the future has its own dangers. I'd like to point to three of them.

1. We might never start living. In my book, I wrote about "The Once Trap". Too often we are waiting for something to happen before we allow ourselves to start living.
"Once I get the promotion..."
"Once I finish MBA..."
"Once I weigh a certain amount..."

We can get caught up in "the once trap" and forget that ONCE is exactly how many times today comes around! We need to be mindful of this and make the most of every moment that we have.

2. We can be so goal-oriented that we don't take time to appreciate what we've already achieved. Consider a dieter who obsesses so much over losing the last five pounds that they forget to rejoice over how much they've already lost.

3. What happens to you when you achieve your goals? In his autobiography, astronaut Buzz Aldrin said that after walking on the moon, everything else in life seemed insignificant. This is clearly a person who was so focused on one goal for so long, that he forgot that simply walking on THIS planet each day is a tremendously significant achievement.

You're here now. So BE NOW!

Labels: fears, goals, motivational speaker, once trap, past, Power of Mortality™, Power of Now, time travel