Dr. Paul Conti

Between striving for things and wanting things in the future and living our lives in the future.

Like, you know, this is not okay now.

And like, things are awful now, but I'm going to get there.

You know, that's not...

Okay, right?

Saying, hey, I'm working in the present and there are things I'm working towards that I want in the future.

That's entirely different.

We can do that while still living our lives in the only moments we are alive.

So like we are not alive when we started this podcast.

We are not alive when this podcast finishes.

We're live right now.

And yes, there's a past we can remember and hopefully we continue to move towards the future, but we're alive right now.

And we very often can be confused about that.

And oftentimes if we're worried about the future, what we do is we use fantasy inside of us to project out to a future that scares us or worries us.

And then we take it back inside of us as if it's true, as if that's the truth in the future and we're heading backwards.

towards us.

And we have to be very, very careful that taking care of ourselves and being prudent and striving towards the future is not, it's not a different thing from living life in the present.

And we can really lose that.

And we do it because we're trying to find safety, right?

Just like the person who didn't find approval in the new school thinks, oh, I can't have any friends.