Your Experiencing-Self Versus Your Remembering-Self
Harmonizing Joy with your TWO-SELVES
Time: Your Experiencing-self Versus Your Remembering-self
Question: You are anticipating to go on an amazing vacation. Do you imagine it in the form of feeling the experience itself or in the form of the memory you are going to get from it?
Our Experiencing Self and the remembering self both unleash joy differently in terms of their relationship with time.
Experiencing-Self tends to unleash and experience joy in the Now. For example, having a relaxing time at the beach while watching a beautiful sunset. You feel joyful at this moment before the sunset disappears. Remembering-Self unleashes the joy in the later once we think back about what’s happening in the NOW. For example, later on, remembering your relaxing time at the beach while watching that beautiful sunset. You can feel the joy again.
Your experiencing-self only focuses on what is happening at the moment. If you are feeling joyful, it focuses on that joy. If you are feeling pain, it focuses on that pain and nothing else. You are at a party for five hours enjoying, dancing, and chatting with friends, and having a great time at the moment. All of a sudden something goes wrong with the musical set, and you go “Oh great, everything is now ruined! The night is ruined!” At this moment, everything is now ruined for you because your experiencing-self is now feeling this unfortunate situation and you automatically forget all the fun you have had for the past five hours. Your experiencing-self tends to attach what is happening at the moment to everything else.
On the other hand, your Remembering-self is a storyteller, interpreter, and decision-maker. This section is very critical to our joy. It decides how we are going to tell or interpret what has happened in our Experiencing-self or our past – either as a burden or a gift. Either as a blessing, lesson, or curse. This is about our perception of your story. How you decide to present it to others, and the mood in which you decide to narrate and perceive it – angry, sad or joyful.
4 Reminders worth considering to unleash true joy in Time as you overcome this layer:
- Remember to cultivate the habit to harmonize your joy with your two selves. Try not to be quick to generalize one unfortunate situation that happens when you are in your experiencing-self state of unleashing joy. Look for the good, and joy that you have already experienced before the unfortunate situation steps in.
- Remember to recognize that you are the architect, author, teller, and interpreter of your own story, and remembering-self. More Recognition of the good. More gratefulness. Less generalization of an unfortunate situation. Less complaining.
- Remember to allow your Remembering Self to overcome your Experiencing Self during bad situations. If you can’t easily find something appealing to your Remembering Self, then: look at the lessons learned, your change in perspective, your determination for next time as remembering self.
- Remember that the Now Moment has an opportunity for both our experiencing self and remembering self. Your experiencing self can enjoy the moment now, and your remembering-self can always go back to that now moment and relives it. Remember those good old days, and bring those old fun memories to slowly take over the unfortunate now situations. Pick out the beauty in it and convert it into joyful remembering self-moments for you.