Let's face it, we spend way too much time reminiscing. We hear our friends talking about their day, then we remember that one time that we stayed up all night sitting around a campfire with old friends. "Good times", we think to ourselves. Then we scroll through the 6,000 pictures that we hoard in our camera roll. We obsess over how much skinnier we looked in 2015, or how much fun our 16th birthday was. Reminiscing allows us to escape: to a "better" time, a "better" you, a "better" life. Our brains tend to exaggerate the positive emotions associated with any particular memory. We remember the laughs, hugs, and happiness that our high school years brought. But we never remember the bullying, depression, and tears that came with it.
I'm about to be brutally honest here:
You're not perfect. Neither is your life. It never has been, and it never will be. You have to take the bad with the good, and that's life.
So when you are reminiscing about the "good old days", try not to get to caught up in how "great" things seemed then. We have been overcoming obstacles since we left the womb, and just because those obstacles don't pop up in your memory, doesn't mean your life WAS great.
Life IS great. Here. Today. In the present.
If you keep getting hung up in your memories, you will never be able to make new ones. It's like watching the same movie over and over again. It doesn't matter how great the movie is, eventually you have to move on. Change it up. Watch something new.
Okay, I know life is more complex than binge watching movies, but hopefully you are starting to get my drift.
Get out of your head, and get into the world.
Take a walk, host a campfire, check out a new coffee shop, do a random act of kindness for someone. Get out of your camera roll. Make some new memories. I'm not saying that you need a new family and new friends, I'm saying give them a call. Stop stalking their Instagram wishing you could go back to the "good old middle school days." (I hate to break it to you, but middle school was full of acne, bullying, and self-hate.) Before you waste your time wishing you were in the past, take a step back.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Be present.
You got this.
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