Living in the past and obsessively comparing ourselves to others are two of the biggest sneaky drainers of our happiness. There are times where our bitter past can rear its ugly head in the middle of a seemingly normal day and before we know it, our mind is caught in a loop. For better or worse, this older version of you is now a part of you and every time we press the mental rewind button, we drain some of the mind power we could use to shape the present moment.
Then, we wonder why we are so unsatisfied in the now. Instead of this unfruitful thing, we should recognize that the past cannot be changed and the only thing at stake is the present which determines the future.
The same goes for the habit of watching the life of other people. We see their snapshot Social media moments and successes, and we compare them to the miserable life we live and the mess we're enduring. Don't be deceived, most of the images are well edited to make you impressed.
Sadly we could lose track of time just wishing we could put ourselves into that moment and become them, blinding ourselves to the fact that they also trying to figure out their life and they have struggles they won't tell you.
If your mind is stuck elsewhere, either in the past or in another person's life, you can't experience the joy of the moment so please at all cost, stop holding on to the past.
Why do some people live in the past though? It's simply because they feel it was better than the present, there could be many other reasons, but the bottom line is, that we feel that the present is not good enough. If it ain't, work on it rather than coping.
