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Name of author Rick Baker, P.Eng.

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Better you have problems than problems have you

by Rick Baker
On Aug 15, 2016

Hindsight is 20/20...and while hindsight conversations can be annoying, that's not going to stop us from having them. Something in our nature causes us to want to second-guess decisions we have made and action we have taken.

Foresight is an energy-consuming process that often yields unreliable results...but that's not going to stop us from planning for future events. We want to believe in cause and effect, we want to exercise our willpower and we will fight to hold onto a level of control. 

Presence - our ability to be present -  is so rare it seems to be close to an unnatural state of mind...we spend so much time thinking about the past and the future we hardly ever do justice to the present. Of course, we are distracted in the present: the present is chock-full of external stimuli - all changing rapidly.

Hindsight, foresight and presence have one thing in common - Problems. 

Hindsight deals with second guessing past events: with old problems in mind, we ponder the possibilities of better decisions and better actions; we waste time thinking about and sometimes agonizing over what we could have done, what we should have done, etc.

Foresight deals with anticipating problems and creating strategies and tactics for dealing with those problems...we use foresight when we anticipate outcomes, seek solutions and seek opportunities. While we know we cannot accurately predict the future we gain a level of comfort thinking about the 'right things' to do to get to where we want to go.

Presence - our ability to be present - is only as good as our ability to set aside hindsight, set aside foresight, and filter through all the current/present stimuli to find the really important things...the things worthy of our attention and our thoughts. 

And, some of those really important ‘present’ things will be problems...problems we should tend to. It is OK to ‘have’ these important, present-problems  – it is good to ‘have’ and deal with these present-problems. Other problems, especially those from other time zones, are less real and less important and beyond our control – it is not good to let them ‘have’ us.

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