This week's affirmation:

With love,
I choose
To focus on the present.
With gratitude
And faith
I could fly right now.
- SatiLife.

I love this affirmation because of it's focus on the present. It's sooooo easy to get caught up in the past... in particular (at least for me), expecting what happened in the past to be an indicator of what will happen in the future. Looking back at the past for its lessons is important, but there is definitely a point where looking back stops being didactic and becomes restrictive - limiting us from reaching our full potential in the here and now because we aren't open to experiencing anything but the kinds of situations and experiences that have passed.

The sankofa, an Adinkra symbol.

For the past two years of my life, I've been doing a lot of what the sankofa represents: to bring the good things from the past (the lessons) to help me in the present and the future. Very recently I realized I reached a point where I was doing TOO much looking back and thus lived in my past. It was an important for me to do this looking back - it was a phase of serious introspection that I needed - but that phase has officially passed, with its own lessons to be used in my here-and-now. I don't think I'll ever completely stop looking back at my past for its lessons but I'm now concerned with living in the NOW.

It's come to my attention that my potential in the here-and-now is really, truly, limitless and I've been limiting myself with what I once thought were big dreams. Here is a good example of what living in the past can do to you. Living in the past had me still in the mindset that the goals I once set for myself were SO far away and thus were BIG... meanwhile, when I was brought back to reality and the present (via a very enlightening conversation I had earlier this week) it was noted that my dreams are very close to becoming reality. So they're still worthy of attaining and they're just as important as they were in the past - but they aren't so grandiose considering my proximity to accomplishing them. All of this means that I need to keep focused on those goals and to DREAM BIG once more....

And so I've been doing just that. Saying the affirmation helps - especially in the midst of moving and stretching and pushing myself during a SatiLife class. More on those SatiLife classes later. I'll just say for now that I am so unbelievably glad that I'm taking them.

So say the affirmation, see how it makes you feel and really think about what it's saying (in particular, note what I bolded in the affirmation because they are all very important). Also consider this: When you think of your present and future, do you think of it more in terms of what has already happened? Or do you consider it more with the mindset that any and all things are possible?

More and more I feel like I could fly right now.