A planning system should help you process the past.
To be fully present means your attention is not in the past or the future.
It’s in the now.
But the past can distract you from the now.
Unless you process it in a healthy way.
Until you do that, the past will rear it’s ugly (or beautiful) head.
Bad things in your past – trauma, embarrassment, failure – the distractions from those are easier to understand. We dwell on the failures, relive the trauma, and continue to be embarrassed. Some can spend hours, days, even years, considering how they might have acted differently.
And because they are in the past, they aren’t in the present.
Likewise, we all know of those who relive their glory days – the good times – while neglecting the here and now. Even my ten year old commented on how awesome fourth grade was last year. He hasn’t clicked with his new classmates this year and is still living in the past, at least a little bit.
But if you process the past, you can, literally, put it behind you.
Your subconscious will only let you do that if it trusts that you’re ready to move forward having learned the lessons that the past has for you.
Because there are lessons in both the good times and the bad. In the trauma and embarrassment as well as the glory days.
A good planning system will help you do that.
No, it won’t do it for you.
You’ll still need to write the journal entries, talk through the challenges you experienced, and make plans to change.
But it will remind you.
Part of daily planning should include going through your plans for the last day.
Consider what worked. What didn’t.
When you plan the week, look back a week.
Plan the year? Look back a year.
Use your system to build a habit of journaling regularly. At least some of the time, write to understand your own past, how it has shaped you, and what you can learn from it.
As you do all this, it will be easier to leave the past where it belongs: behind you.
And when you do, it will be easier to face the future.