This post was originally published on this site
How do you feel when you think about your past?
Chances are you’re going to have both negative and positive emotions that come up when you think about your past. Positive emotions such as happiness, love and joy tied to the most precious times of your childhood, and negative emotions from any rejection and failure you may have faced as you grew up and started putting yourself in different, and sometimes, uncomfortable situations. Whether you believe your past was easy or tough, it is a part of your life that you will never be able to erase. A part of your life that you can begin attaching new and positive meaning to so that it never becomes an excuse or a reason to feel sad, to feel disadvantaged in any way or to feel like you can’t achieve your dreams and live the life you truly deserve to.
So, if you’re ready to truly put a positive twist on your past, to learn the lessons and to use it to shape your most extraordinary life, these are the things you’re going to have to STOP doing immediately. Ready? I sure am!
1. Block it out and act like it never happened
We all operate from two minds, a subconscious mind and a conscious mind. The subconscious mind makes up 97% of our mind. It is a massive memory bank, storing everything that has ever happened to you and the meaning or emotion you attached to it. Whilst it may seem less painful to block out parts of the past, the negative emotions you experienced or beliefs that you formed around those incidences are stored in your subconscious mind and will hold you back until you change them. For example, failing academically could lead to the belief that it’s hard to succeed and you’ll never make it, until that belief is changed. This requires awareness and a willingness to look into your past and see what limiting beliefs you formed.
2. Justify why you’re not where you want to be because if it
Excuses prevent you from moving forward. Most of the time excuses are used as a reason to justify why you’re not taking action. When someone says ‘I can’t’ it most likely means ‘I won’t’. Excuses are a choice. A choice based on what you think you can’t have, do or be. A choice you make after an event in your life made you believe otherwise. Your excuses are not you, but it is your responsibility to decide when to stop making excuses. Remember, the past has no hold on today. Start where you are now, with what you have now to change how your story ends. Take back your power and decide to stop giving it away to your excuses. That’s where transformation begins, that’s when you unleash the genius within you and that’s when the past no longer has a hold on you.
3. Ask ‘why?’
Questioning why something happened when and the way it did, will send you down an endless road of confusion, inner conflict and chaos. I guess we’ll never know the real answers no matter how much we ask the question ‘why?’ Everything happens for a reason, exactly the way it was supposed to, when it was supposed to, and all for our highest good. If we can find a way to be at a peace with that, and be okay with the not knowing, we’d have a much better chance of attaining the inner peace we so deeply desire to have. Remember, the past is a place of reference, not residence.
4. Talk about it (too much)
Decide to quit retelling the story, to quit living in a place that only exists in your mind, because you choose for it to be there. By recalling incidents of the past, you bring those feelings back to life and put yourself into the same situation again. You are only allowed to talk about the past with the intention of attaching a better meaning to it or learning from it. Sometimes all you need is a journal and a pen to deconstruct the experience and bring light to the learning.
– Saajidah Esat
Contributing Writer | Health & Happiness Enthusiast
Connect with Saajidah:
Instagram | Twitter | Facebook
Click here to have daily inspiration and news articles sent straight to your inbox.