From the author: You live as if “backward forward” - because your face is turned to your past. It takes over you. You make today's decisions based on past experiences and fail to see new opportunities. Your past turns into a heavy burden that does not allow you to react quickly and flexibly; it becomes your blinders, narrowing your field of perception to narrow, hackneyed stereotypes. What do you usually do with your past? With everything that exists - successes and achievements, failures and defeats, sadness and joy, grievances and gratitude, hatred and love, envy and admiration? Perhaps you are lovingly sorting through your memories, enjoying some and grieving about others. Perhaps you turn to him solely in search of excuses for current failures. Or - for inspiration for future victories. Or maybe you just dumped all your memories in a dark closet, locked it and... think that it doesn’t exist. Picture - Remedios Varo In all these cases, you find yourself a slave to your past, alas. You live as if “backward forward” - because your face is turned to your past. It takes over you. You make today's decisions based on past experiences and fail to see new opportunities. Your past turns into a heavy burden that does not allow you to react quickly and flexibly; it becomes your blinders, narrowing your field of perception to narrow, hackneyed stereotypes. How to turn your past from a heavy burden into a reliable foundation? How to turn your face to the present and look into the future without fears and illusions? Many psychological practices invite you to return to particularly vivid memories and sort them out piece by piece, laugh at them, look at them from the height of your past years... That is, in essence, to devalue your past experience. Yes, in this way you can get rid of your fears and complexes (although not always), but... is it worth treating your past this way? After all, this is part of your life, your history. Isn’t it a pity? Perhaps it’s better not to throw your memories into a landfill, but... to set up a museum? You can always return there, wander through the halls of your memory, indulge in memories, laugh or be sad... Well, besides, these memories of yours will be interesting not only to you! After all, visitors come to the museum and give excursions! But for this, your memories must be aesthetically designed, laid out on stands and hung on the walls in spacious halls, equipped with signs with explanations, and the halls themselves must be reliably guarded from uninvited guests and ill-mannered visitors. Well and you yourself will be able to calmly live your life... your real life - create the future, enjoying every present moment. Yes, for this you need to do something with your memories... so that they stop tormenting you, drawing strength from you, but on the contrary - inspired, or simply evoked a warm smile. This work with memories corresponds to the classical scheme of a magical action: cleansing - filling (with new content) - setting up protection. Every element is important here. Until you cleanse yourself of the old, the new will not come. If you don’t fill the vacated space with what is valuable and desirable to you, it will be filled with whatever is at hand, usually with something very similar to the past, and not in the best moments. Well, if you don’t put up protection, the sprouts of the new will quickly be trampled by random passers-by or mangled an inexorable element. Okay, but how to do this? - you ask. Here is a simple practice that will help you with this: 1. Set a timer for 5 minutes. Close your eyes and watch your breathing. Your thoughts will periodically be distracted by something else - this is normal and natural, just return them each time to your breathing and continue to observe it.2. At the timer signal, open your eyes and remember - what was your attention most often distracted by? It doesn’t matter whether it’s a distant memory or a very recent one. Fix in your mind the first thing that comes to mind.3. Now take a notepad and pen, or open any text file. Set the timer for 10