Live Like There's No Yesterday , livre ebook

Cover
Endorsements
“Need to say goodbye to the past? Need a fresh perspective on your present? You need the hope in these pages! You will be more courageous and you will see how living now will change your future.”
Gregory L. Jantz, PhD , founder, The Center • A Place for HOPE
“Love the book! Dr. Westfall has laid out a winning formula for vibrant living that draws on the experience of counseling thousands of folks . . . combined with sage advice from theological and mental health experts.”
Jake Moe , cofounder, Powder magazine
“As a family doctor treating thousands of patients over thirty years, I have come to realize the inevitable truth: all of us struggle with our past, our failures, our regrets, and our shame. Not moving forward is the seed of depression and anxiety. We become stuck. Westfall offers a mountain of experience with sage advice entwined with wit and biblical texts. He has us reexamine the concepts of positive and negative thinking patterns, giving a benefit and risk analysis of each mindset. He humbly exposes the futility of personal misery, blaming others, and focusing on past trauma by relating his own stories. Finally, he gives us five poignant and enlightening steps toward what he terms as ‘planning your past.’ I recommend this read for anyone who is entrenched in the past but looking to move forward while reading insightful advice, enjoying humorous anecdotes, and discovering biblically based solutions.”
David Spiro, MD
Half Title Page
Books by John F. Westfall
Getting Past What You’ll Never Get Over
I Didn’t Sign Up for This
Coloring Outside the Lines
Enough Is Enough: Grace for the Restless Heart
Title Page
Copyright Page
© 2021 by John Westfall
Published by Revell
a division of Baker Publishing Group
PO Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.revellbooks.com
Ebook edition created 2021
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4934-3048-2
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™
Scripture quotations labeled ESV are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ESV Text Edition: 2016
Scripture quotations labeled NASB are from the New American Standard Bible® (NASB), copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. www.Lockman.org
To protect the privacy of those who have shared their stories with the author, some details and names have been changed.
Dedication
This book is dedicated to the memory of my friend Jane Knickerbocker. She loomed large in our family, where she was called Auntie Mame. A lifetime of abuse, trauma, depression, and anxiety couldn’t squelch her love of Jesus and her passion to nurture and encourage those who struggled both in faith and in life. I believe she was the most honest, negative optimist I’ve ever known.
Contents
Cover 1
Endorsements 2
Half Title Page 3
Books by John F. Westfall 4
Title Page 5
Copyright Page 6
Dedication 7
Acknowledgments 11
1. What If There Was No Yesterday? 13
2. Fuhgeddaboudit! There’s No Future in the Past 21
3. It’s All about Freedom 31
4. The Power of (Positive/Negative) Thinking 47
5. Binocular Vision—Seeing with 20/20 Distortion 59
6. How to Make Yourself Miserable 73
7. Why Am I Worrying about Worrying? 91
8. Living beyond Past Trauma 107
9. It Takes Ten “Atta-Boys” to Make Up for Every “You Jerk” 121
10. What We Need to Know to Live Like There’s No Yesterday 133
11. The Power to Change 155
12. Plan Your Past Today 173
13. Renewed Mind = Transformed Life 185
Notes 197
About the Author 203
Back Ads 205
Back Cover 208
Acknowledgments
Writing may sometimes feel like a lonely exercise, but I’m very aware that I’m never alone. I’m grateful for the many friends who have hung in with me through the ages and stages of life. Thank you for sharing the gift of your stories, wisdom, and encouragement.
Whether in printed words or unspoken influence, Eileen Westfall has lived most of this book over the fifty years we have been married. In addition to having the same birthday, we have also shared a lifetime of joy and sorrow, sickness and health, and richer and poorer. Since we were labeled the couple least likely to stay married one year, I guess we proved them wrong.
Damian Westfall, our son, has kept pushing me to not give up writing and living. He is a prolific author and a courageous trauma survivor, as well as a researcher for this book. I’m proud of him and grateful to be his dad.
I’m grateful for the input and help of David Pardee, John Langham, Pam Proske, Bob Marlowe, Gary Winkelman, David Meharg, Sheila and Walt Gustafson, Daniel Castillo, Diane Rocha, and David Doherty.
I’m also thankful for the insight and assistance of Rachel McRae, who guided me with her gentle persistence and editing skills at Revell Books.
1 What If There Was No Yesterday?
It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then. — Lewis Carroll
The sign on the hallway wall said, “Live Like There’s No Tomorrow!” I could hardly resist the urge to pull out a marking pen, cross out the word Tomorrow , and scribble under it “Yesterday!” I don’t even remember what made me almost turn into an older version of an urban tagger, spraying graffiti and messages on our city walls. That afternoon I managed to control my impulse, but it got me thinking about what could happen if we learned to live like there’s no yesterday.
Letting Go of Looking Back
Tomorrow was never much of an issue for me. I didn’t worry or feel anxious about what was just up ahead. I wouldn’t even know how to regret the future, since I hadn’t messed it up yet. In fact, I rather liked the idea of the future because I’d get a fresh start. I guess I just didn’t want to live like there was no tomorrow. Anyway, if today was all we had, and there wasn’t going to be a tomorrow, I didn’t know where hope would come from.
Yesterday , on the other hand, is definitely something I could live without. There have been times I dwelled in the past or looked back with both longing and regret. Sometimes the past haunted me, held me, or defined, limited, and frustrated me. Of course, the past also held victories, celebrations, and happy memories. But it seemed like I needed to dig around to find them in the pile of broken dreams and hurt feelings.
If our goal is to live each day with freedom and joy, we have a chance to learn from our past experiences without allowing them to interfere with the happiness and confidence that come from living intentionally today.
A lot has been said, thought, written, and sung about yesterday. After all, according to the Beatles, isn’t it a place where all our troubles appear to be far away? If so, why wouldn’t we want to dwell in the past?
I’ve probably spent way too much time looking over my shoulder, ruminating on things that have happened, or didn’t happen, in my past. It’s not like I mean to do it, but those yesterdays creep up on me and pretty soon the memories that get rekindled start burning bright, and it’s hard to turn away.
Dwelling in the past isn’t limited to recalling painful, negative experiences or memories. We can also focus on good things, celebrations, past experiences, and achievements, and even though they’re positive, they can still keep us from experiencing the joy and freedom of today.
As a kid in Sunday school, I heard one Bible story that scared the stew out of me. It was the account of Abraham’s relative Lot, who is told to take his family and flee their home before an impending disaster. They were warned not to look back as they ran for their lives to the nearby mountains. Everything was going along well, we were told, until we hit the verse, “But Lot’s wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt” (Gen. 19:26). I certainly had no desire to become a pillar of salt, much less a shaker or even a pinch of salt, so I spent my childhood trying not to get caught looking back.
Perhaps I was more like Lot’s wife than I thought, because in spite of my childish sense of dread, I spent much of my life looking in proverbial rearview mirrors, remembering and ruminating on yesterday. Isn’t it part of our human nature to see a “Wet Paint” sign and instinctively reach out to touch the paint to test if it’s really wet? Is it even possible to hear the words “Don’t turn around” without immediately turning to see why we aren’t supposed to look back?
The Bible gives some pretty clear direction when it comes to how we deal with yesterday: “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past” (Isa. 43:18). I admit it would be so much easier if I just did what that verse tells us to do.
Part of my problem might be that even after accepting the implications of that verse, and intentionally choosing to do as it says, I get bogged down—because right away I start thinking about the past in order to grasp what things are most important for me to forget. Like trying not to think of pink elephants, I end up dwelling on the past even as I try not to let it cross my mind.
There is no end to the books, articles, TED Talks, sermons, and blogs encouraging us to focus on the now and forget about the past. You’d