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Reflections from the Porch

Reflections from the Porch

Last updated on: June 1, 2015 at 1:00 pm by Rick Hanson

Reflections from the Porch 2015-06-01T13:00:45-07:00 Rick Hanson

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This is the fourth post in the series on Your Precious Life. Here’s Part One, Part Two, and Part Three. In it we’ll look back on our lives from a perspective set many years in the future.

We’ll start by imagining that you are sitting on a porch somewhere, on your rocking chair, very old but with your wits still about you. From that vantage point in the future, you will be reflecting about your life: the good things about it, and how you had stood up for yourself, and been for yourself.

In other words you will be imagining, today, what you hope and intend will have happened in the rest of your life, as you look back on it from a point in the future.

Just take whatever you get. It’s alright.

Let’s begin.

Relax. If you can, locate or call to mind a sense of well-being, of simple calm, peacefulness, maybe happiness.

Get a sense of sitting comfortably somewhere many years from now, let’s say in your 90’s, with your mind intact, but being very, very old.

Make it concrete for yourself: a comfortable location, maybe a porch . . . a comfortable chair . . . maybe a sense of other people around . . . perhaps a sense of vistas before you, like a view down a long valley below.

Imagine feeling quite good, happy, contented . . . pleased with your life.

From that place, that porch perhaps, reflect back on your life.

To guide your reflections, here are some questions to consider, but you can focus in your own way, if you like. And whatever answers come to you about the questions are fine.

Looking back from your 90’s, what will you be happy about, regarding your life?

What will you feel grateful for?

What will you feel has been important in your life?

What will you be glad you had been for?

In what ways will you be glad that you had acted like your own life mattered . . . that your happiness mattered?

In what ways will you be glad that you had been on your own side?

See if you can find your way to an ever-growing sense of peace and wisdom.

How would you change your life today if your goal was to be kind to your future self?

The post Reflections from the Porch appeared first on Dr. Rick Hanson.

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