"The Phantom Tenants in Our Minds”
If you want to truly understand anything, look at what it costs you to maintain it.
Often the longer it stays with you, the more burdensome it becomes.
If you think about it constantly, if it consumes the precious moments of your days, then it is robbing you of the ability to be present for other, more important things.
As much as we would like to pretend otherwise, none of us will live forever.
Our lives are short. Time is finite.
How we choose to spend it is the only conversation that really matters.
When we look back sometimes, we come to realize that we have carried something for thirty years that has provided no return whatsoever, yet we continued paying its carrying costs.
Except the currency wasn't dollars.
It was minutes of your life.
Let me take you with me on this one.
Most of us spend the better part of our lives obsessing over things that will eventually come and go.
Material stuff. Vehicles, jewelry, collections, antiques.
Things we think matter in the moment.
We manage our real estate portfolios, worry about market valuations, track retirement accounts, and protect our homes from damage.
I get it, and I agree: these are undeniably important things when kept in perspective.
Oh, and we have all heard this one: “The golden rule of real estate: location, location, location.”
We all own some prime real estate with more value than we realize.
We allow people and, often, situations to occupy this real estate, and those decisions have huge impacts.
You would never let a tenant repeatedly come back and trash a building or destroy a business you spent decades paying for.
Yet we all routinely hand over the most expensive real estate on the planet to a host of different people and experiences with little thought about it.
We allow squatters in, create space for them, and maintain a place for them that provides zero return to us.
All with no eviction plan in place.
The highest-value, highest-stakes real estate in existence isn't a penthouse overlooking a major city, a villa on a pristine coastline, or a booming commercial development.
The most valuable real estate on Earth consists of just two very finite resources that end when you do:
Your time and the space inside your mind.
Think about that for a moment.
Really take a step back and think about the actual value of these finite resources and what they mean to you: what you do with your time and who or what you’re thinking about.
That means anyone or anything you allow to consume your time and inhabit your mind can impact your future.
Time and the space in your mind are unique assets that are not just yours, not something you own that can be bought or sold; they are literally you.
When people, events, random interactions, and things you can no longer control are allowed to live rent-free inside your head, they take up prime square footage and precious time.
You are allowing them to consume resources needed for your own success.
Oh, trust me, I am just as guilty of this as anyone.
I have wasted so many hours replaying things in my head.
“I should have said this, I should have done that, I would do this if I could do it again.”
Guess what, you can’t.
Not really; no matter how much we wish we could, the reality is that there are no do-overs.
The instant that something happens, it is sealed, over, and done with.
So why do these intruders linger? Why do these memories return? Why are they hanging on and seemingly unshakable?
I have no idea what triggers these things to rise back up or why they sometimes explode back into your mind, distracting you during the day, keeping you up at night.
Or how something from thirty years ago can still make you mad and make you clench your teeth.
Over the years, I have learned the hard lesson that most of the things we obsess over are, in reality, probably only important to, and maybe only known to or remembered by, us.
Case in point: Not long ago, I was talking to a friend.
Now we have known each other for forty years or more, so we have decades of history between us.
And as these things often happen, not long before this conversation, I had been thinking about something from the past that had transpired between us.
We were just hanging out, having a beer, killing time, and chatting.
So I brought it up in that casual way that we do with old friends. We feel safer talking, it seems, now that we are all getting older and many years have passed.
You all know what I am talking about, more of a reminiscence than a reliving.
I brought it up with the confidence that I was sure he would remember it; after all, it has stayed with me for decades now.
Not persistently, of course, but rising back up from time to time, entering my thoughts, and disrupting moments of my day for no particular reason, it seemed.
But no! There was not even a flash of memory.
For him, it was not a thing.
Of course, I explained it, went over it, nailed down the time, and discussed other things going on around that same time.
Hitting on points that I was sure would spark memories and bring it all full circle.
Mental crickets from him. Nothing.
So many years had passed, yet this event had not been processed in the same way for him as it had been for me.
He couldn’t even recall the time I was talking about.
I sat with that for a few minutes.
He could see that I was processing the event and was more than a little confused.
Then I got the “damn dude, I don’t remember that, but hey, if it bothered you, I am sorry.”
I realized he genuinely didn't remember and genuinely felt bad for both not remembering and for the fact that it had been bothering me.
That caused a small flood of thoughts all at the same time: relief, disbelief.
I wanted to laugh, but I was a little annoyed at the same time.
For an instant, I thought,“How the hell can you not remember this?”
Ok, I didn’t think it, I said it. “How the hell can you not remember this?”
After the second, “Hey, man, I don’t remember, but I’m sorry about it. Wished I could turn the clock back, but we can’t, man.”
Then suddenly I felt a little foolish for carrying it all those years.
A simple conversation, a thing I should have dealt with at the time, or at least not allowed so many years to pass.
It really hit me: not even a memory for someone else, a drag on me for years, but now it was cleared away.
I sipped my beer, just letting the thought sink in.
Along with this fuzzy sense of peace came the heavy realization of how much life I had voluntarily given away to a phantom memory, a ghost who wasn't even keeping score.
We enjoyed the rest of the evening, moved on in conversation, and parted ways again with the standard “until next time.”
Afterwards, I spent some quiet days thinking about it.
Not obsessing over anything, just allowing my curiosity some time to examine it.
All the while, I was thinking about how strange it seemed that we set aside precious space and spend our energy allowing the occupation of our mental real estate when, in reality, those people or events aren’t even there.
My old friend hadn’t thought about this event.
Heck, he couldn't even remember it.
Yet a version of him and those five minutes of interaction from decades ago had occupied a little piece of my mind and used up precious minutes of my time.
Not his fault; he was not the squatter.
The memory I created for myself was.
Sometimes nobody is living rent-free in your head. You're maintaining an empty apartment for someone or something that moved out thirty years ago.
That realization had some weight to it, serious weight.
Then, just a few days later, something else came to mind.
That familiar noise that rises up, drowning out everything else for a moment or two, leaving us wondering, “Where did that come from?”
Nothing unusual about it; we all experience this from time to time, it is so common and we are so used to it that we just keep on, moving on.
But this was a little different; this time, I rolled it around, sat with it, and thought about it a bit.
Asking myself why I was holding on to this?
What can I do with this?
Is this in any way, shape, or form important?
Heck, is this person even a part of my life, or important to me at this time?
The short answer to all of those questions was no, no, and a resounding no.
Now, just understanding that fact doesn’t mean the mind will let it go.
That is not how the mind works.
That would be too easy, of course.
But it did allow my focus to be different.
It helped keep the mind from wandering into the normal mode of thinking through all the “what happened, what was said, what could have been, should have been, would have been.”
It helped me to not let it spin once again, over and over, and waste my time rehashing what cannot be changed.
Yes, thinking it through from a different direction certainly allowed me to make sense of it, gain control, and make it go away much faster.
After all, when you don’t manage it then let it go, the alternative is that you voluntarily give away those finite, precious resources we talked about.
Resources that you could otherwise be applying directly to forward momentum in your own life, to learning, to deep growth, to positive moments, and, of course, to peace and love.
(Yes, a nod to 1969.)
We shouldn’t allow the echoes of long-gone critics, others’ expectations, old betrayals, one-off interactions, or toxic projections to camp out in our most valuable locations, popping in as uninvited guests whenever they want.
All they do is blast endless, useless static, drowning out what is and what can be, with what was, and what cannot be changed.
They get so embedded in our lives, becoming more powerful every time we revisit them, every time we allow them to rise to the surface again.
Reclaiming your mental real estate isn’t easy; there are no twelve-step programs, abstract protocols, pills, YouTube tutorials, or online courses that fix it for you.
We will never have all the answers about what’s next, but you can start managing your precious property and putting the eviction plan into use.
You are the one holding the keys.
You can decide who you allow to occupy your mind and use your time.
You can control what baggage to delete. That is how we make room for what’s yet to come.
Room for the things and memories that add value to our lives:
Our kids.
Grandkids.
Friends.
Laughter.
Travel.
And just maybe, nothing at all, just a few moments of peace.
Why give prime space to something that happened thirty years ago when all of this and more is waiting to occupy it and fill it with memories that pay positive dividends?
We have limited time, limited capacity, and the true tragedy would be to waste any of it on things we cannot change, cannot relive, and that add absolutely no value to our life as we move forward.
Take the time to take care of the most expensive real estate you will ever own: You.
I know, this is my normal tagline for signing off, and while it is always true, this time just a little more pronounced:
I write this knowing how truly blessed I am!
If you enjoyed this give these a read!
Soulware™: The Pattern Behind the Person
Whatever “It” Turns Out to Be! Our Mediterranean Journey.
The Debt We Create When We Say “Next Time"
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