Episode 135: How to create a new future

Aili Kuutan: Are you building a new future, or are you recreating the past?

Aili Kuutan: You're listening to pure light where we explore how you can believe in yourself and be happy with who you are. My name is Aili. I'm a coach, writer, and yoga and meditation teacher. This is episode 135.

Aili Kuutan: Towards the end of the last episode, I said that you can't create a new future by continuing to operate under the same assumptions as the past, and also, that you can't continue to repeat the same decisions and habits of the past and expect to create a different future.

Aili Kuutan: So in this episode, I wanted to dig into that more and talk about how to create a new future because every choice you make is contributing to your future in some way. For example, what you put into your body today is going to affect how your body feels after you eat it, and as your system processes it. How much sleep you get is going to impact how you feel tomorrow. And both of those will probably impact your mood as well. The things you decide to do today for your career are also going to create how things are set up for you tomorrow. Whether that's looking for a new job, or doing your job, or doing something to start a business, or whatever it may be.

Aili Kuutan: And I know this seems really obvious, but I think it's also really easy to forget this in a way. And the reason it's easy to forget this is because most human beings operate on autopilot 50% of the time. And when you're on autopilot, your choices don't seem like choices. You may not even notice the choices you're making because the choices are basically habits that have been established at some point in the past.

Aili Kuutan: So they happen automatically without thinking and without intentionality. It's almost like things just happen. And then later you realize what happened and you have to deal with the consequences. Or to put it another way, you're acting by default instead of by design. So in order to build a new future and stop recreating the past, you need to break the pattern of repeating the same decisions, which requires new awareness. It requires more presence in the moment and less automatic decisions based on what you've done in the past. Einstein said, "No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it." When you infuse awareness into your decisions, you can actually make new decisions that allow the future to be independent of the past. You stop recreating the past and start building a new future. And if you're like, how do I do that? How do I bring more awareness to my decisions?

Aili Kuutan: There are a couple of things that I'd suggest. One is to do whatever you need to do to be more present in the moment. So less in your head, with more capacity to pay attention to what's going on as it's happening. I've talked about ways to do that in past episodes, by for example, paying attention to the breath and getting into your body, instead of being in your head. I'll include links to those in the show notes for this episode, if you want to go back and listen to them because that'll help with increasing awareness in the moment.

Aili Kuutan: And then the other big thing is this: it's building awareness around how you're contributing to the results that you're getting. So ask yourself the question, how have I been contributing to this? And I don't just mean in terms of your actions, although that's definitely a part of it. Some of those actions may be on autopilot and some of them may not be. All of them are worth looking at, but I also mean looking at this in terms of looking at the beliefs that fuel the actions so that you can take responsibility for those as well. Like if you were to look at the actions you take or don't take, what assumptions are you operating under? Are those assumptions serving you? Do you want to keep operating under the same assumptions, or are you willing to consider operating under new assumptions?

Aili Kuutan: And I'll give you an example. When I was overweight in my twenties, I tried over and over again to lose weight with different diets. And even when I was successful, I would lose weight and then I would gain it back. Eventually when I was in that cycle of dieting, losing weight, and then gaining it back, there were some assumptions that were fuelling my actions.

Aili Kuutan: Actually, there were probably a lot of assumptions. So assumptions like: I need to find the perfect diet and follow it perfectly. I need to try harder. I need to restrict my eating. And so the repercussions of some of those assumptions were that like I was very all or nothing in my approach, it felt like I had to force myself to be better in order to make anything happen, so it felt really hard. And I came up with a lot of rules about what I should, and shouldn't be eating. And there were probably even more assumptions than the ones that I've listed here. So let's take a look at that first one that I need to find the perfect diet and follow it perfectly and how that was contributing to keeping things the way that they were, stuck in that cycle. So the assumption that I needed to find the perfect diet meant that I was constantly searching for it instead of taking responsibility for what I was putting into my body and how it was making me feel. It was something to blame for the fact that things weren't working and having that thing to blame prevented me from fully taking responsibility for my actions.

Aili Kuutan: And it also gave me an excuse to keep delaying eating better because it was like, "Oh, I haven't found the right diet yet, so it's okay if I keep eating whatever I want." So I was contributing to staying stuck in that cycle in that way, by blaming something that I hadn't found yet and then using that as a reason to keep making poor choices, instead of fully taking responsibility for those choices and choosing to do whatever I could, like, for example, eating more vegetables. And then the other thing that kept me stuck was using instances where screwed up as reasons to keep eating badly. That also kept me stuck in that vicious cycle. So in order to change this, I had to become aware in the moment when I was blaming the fact that I didn't have the perfect diet. I had to pay attention and notice when I was doing that so that I could take responsibility for making better decisions and make a different choice in that moment.

Aili Kuutan: So that instead of waiting for a fantasy future, where I had the perfect diet, I can make better choices right now. And so that instead of using one bad choice to fuel many, many more, I could accept what happened, forgive myself, and be willing to begin again with making better choices, instead of making things exponentially worse by using one bad decision to fuel the next and the next and the next.

Aili Kuutan: The power to create a new future lies in every choice you make. Creating the future you want happens when you make the decisions that support it. You can build a new future and stop recreating the past when you act with awareness, take responsibility for the beliefs that are fuelling your actions, and are willing to operate under new assumptions. More to come on, this stay tuned. And if you want to get the links to those other episodes that I mentioned earlier, go to purelightpodcast.com. You'll find them in the show notes for this episode, which is episode 135.

Aili Kuutan: Thanks so much for listening. Until next time, may you be guided by your light.