Some people swear that imagining your future as a narrative, immersing yourself in it, can help you achieve your goals or illuminate flaws with your current plan.
And yet others swear this kind of thinking -- allowing ourselves to mentally reap the benefits of out labor before we actually complete it -- is harmful and satiates us to the point where we don't bother to achieve our goals because the rewards we seek are just an imaginative narrative away.
I find that each mentality suits different career paths and different people; there is no one correct answer.
But as for immersing yourself in past guilt...I find that this happens to me, and my rationality is that I deserve the guilt from my failures and misdeeds. That if I "live in the now" I am doing a disservice to those I may have wronged (even though they may have completely forgotten whatever it was by now and moved on).
I have trouble escaping this negative, self-hating mentality despite knowing it is folly.
It's easy for me to forgive myself for dropping the ball here and there, for missing opportunity, because I understand the power of negative vs positive thought loops. But it feels so selfish when I apply this mentality to my transgressions upon others. What do.
