How Do You Create a Life You'll Look Forward to Looking Back On?

How Do You Create a Life You'll Look Forward to Looking Back On?

Sunday afternoon. Just finished lunch. Braai. Now sitting with a glass of red wine and noise-canceling headphones. Music playing.

The kind of afternoon where thoughts move without asking permission.

I'm thinking about my trip coming up tomorrow. Amsterdam, Turkey, safari. With a client I'm looking forward to spending time with. The conversations we'll have. The laughs. The real moments that happen when you're away from everything else and just present.

That's what I'm looking forward to most. Not the places, though they'll be incredible. The unscripted version of connection that only happens when you step out of normal life together.

But then the music shifts and I'm somewhere else. Back in time. Recent past. Long ago past. Moments I haven't thought about in years suddenly right here in my living room.

Some regrets. Some smiles. Some both at the same time.

Then forward again. Plans forming. Dreams that might be possible. Ideas that feel too big and also exactly right. Is it possible? What if?

This is what silence and music do. Transport you. Forward and back. Through time that's already happened and time that might happen. Through versions of yourself that existed and versions that might exist.

It's a rollercoaster when you let it be. Emotions you didn't know you were carrying. Feelings you've been too busy to notice. All of it surfacing when you finally stop moving and just sit.

I don't do this enough. Create space for thoughts to move without direction. Let myself be pulled backward and forward without resisting.

The noise-canceling headphones help. Not because they block everything out. Because they make space for what's inside to get louder than what's outside.

And right now what's inside is this question I can't quite shake.

How do you actually do it? Build something worth remembering?

Not the Instagram version. The real one. The life that in ten years or twenty years or on some other Sunday afternoon with wine and music, you'll think back on and feel something other than regret.

I think it has something to do with showing up for the moments that ask you to be present. The conversations that matter. The times you stepped away from normal and let yourself actually be there.

The trip coming up feels like that. Like the kind of experience future me will be glad I said yes to.

But also the regrets I'm feeling right now, sitting here with music pulling me backward. Those matter too. Because they're information about what I don't want more of. What I'm learning. What version of myself I'm trying to move away from.

You can't build a future worth looking back on if you're not willing to look at the past honestly. To see what worked and what didn't. What you want more of and what you're done with.

The music creates space for all of it at once. Past, present, future. Regret and hope. What was and what might be.

And somewhere in the middle is now. This Sunday afternoon. This glass of wine. This moment of just sitting with all of it without needing to fix anything or figure anything out.

Just being here with the full weight of what it means to have lived enough to have regrets and enough to have dreams. To know both what you're moving away from and what you're moving toward.

I don't have an answer about how to create a life worth looking back on. Still building it. Still learning what matters and what doesn't. Still making mistakes and having moments of clarity.

But I think it starts here. In the quiet. With the music. Letting yourself be transported forward and back. Feeling all of it. Not running from it. Not drowning in it.

Just acknowledging that this is what it means to be alive. To carry a past and build a future and try to be present for the now in between.

The trip is coming. The real moments will happen. And someday I'll look back on this too. This Sunday afternoon with wine and music and thoughts moving without permission.

And I think that's enough. To be here. To let it all exist. To trust that the life worth looking back on is being built in moments exactly like this.

When you stop running and just sit with all of it. The whole messy, beautiful, complicated experience of being human.

That's it for this week.

Not sure where that came from. Just what happens when you put on noise-canceling headphones on a Sunday afternoon and let yourself think.

I'm in a great space right now. The trip ahead. End of the year approaching. Next year full of possibilities and also some fear about what's ahead. Amazing conversations happening. And there's not a single bad vibe in any of it.

Just Sunday afternoon thoughts. Wine. Music. And whatever comes with letting yourself feel all of it at once.

What's on your mind on a quite Sunday afternoon? Let me know.

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Have a great week and stay safe.

And as always, don't forget to be awesome.