To be aware of your hidden attitude towards the temporal categories in our life may be a key for the easiness and success of what you are doing.
There are two ways positive-negative as orientation for the past, present and future (law of polarity)
1) Past-positive
2) Past-negative
3) Present-positive (hedonism)
4) Present-negative (fatalism)
5) Future-positive (goal oriented)
6) Future-negative (transcendentalism, metaphysics)
It seems to me that this usually should depend on the present age compared to the average human life-cycle (being a child or young, being at your 30's , being old etc).
According to psychological studies (see Philip Zimbardo in his TED video
the optimal temporal mix is:
a) High positive opinion for the past
b) Moderate opinion for the present
c) A moderately high positive opinion for the future
Nevertheless it seems to me that at middle or older age the optimal mix might be
a) High positive opinion for the past
b) Moderately high positive opinion for the present
c) Moderately opinion for the future
while for the youth it should be
a) Moderate positive opinion for the past
b) Moderately high positive opinion for the present
c) High positive opinion for the future
Here is another relevant video:http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/laura_carstensen_older_people_are_happier.html
Of course peace of mind and happiness comes also when we feel that we accomplish gradually our true goals. And there minor and major goals in life. We might say that our existence has no other goal than to exist. Or that we may have many different goals, according to the scale of relevance in our existence. But one of the most beautiful and meaning goals in life is to develop more of our soul consciousness. So all other minor goals like social success, money, fame, knowledge , creativity etc are to serve this major goal of developing more of our soul consciousness
