Life! By Design_ 6 Steps to an Extraordinary You - Laura Morton [41]
To some degree, we all suffer from addiction to the past. If you’ve been to a high school reunion, you recognized it there, right? You saw the star of your football team, the cool guy everyone wanted to be like, who clearly peaked in high school. Ten, twenty, or more years later, he’s still walking around like the big man on campus.
Or how about the guy who never made much of himself in high school who now has kids of that age whom he vicariously lives through by pushing them to succeed at levels he never did.
I worked with a man who was unable to make the basketball team when he was a kid who now pushes his son to excel in the sport. Because he was living through his child—attending basketball camps, going to other team practices to see what they were up to, spending hours each night on the Internet to review what was happening in the sport—he disconnected from his wife. Obsessed with getting his son to play the game at a level he was never able to, he no longer had the time or desire to give his wife love, attention, affection, or anything else that makes for a quality relationship. As they disconnected, he turned to the Internet to look up old girlfriends and high school buddies, trying to reconnect and share his son’s success as if it were his own. Everything he did was rooted in his past need to be accepted. Eventually, feeling abandoned, his wife had an affair and divorced him. He quickly remarried and repeated the same mistakes because he couldn’t let go of his notion that his life used to be so much better back when, which of course, wasn’t true.
What do these two stories have in common? Both people were resistant to change. They were so mired in who they used to be that they never evolved into something more. They’re stuck in the past, so they can’t become present in the here and now, let alone think about creating an exciting future.
Do you know someone who is stuck in the past? Is there an area of your life where you suffer from this addiction?
There’s a line in Fiddler on the Roof where someone asks, “Why do we play the violin on the roof?” The answer was one word, “Tradition!” Great theory, but not all traditions are good. You can tell your children not to drink alcohol, but if they grow up watching their mom and dad throw back a few beers or glasses of wine every night, that is what they see and experience and are programmed to believe is the way things should be. If you grew up in a family where loud arguing and physical or mental abuse were everyday occurrences, chances are your home today is similar to the one you grew up in. We are all products of our past and present environment; however, it is our past experiences that shape our core values and ultimately who we become.
When you think about your past, where is there resistance? Are you happy with how you’re operating, viewing everything from the past versus from a clean slate, looking forward?
When you look back on your life, what events do you recall having a tremendous impact on how your future was shaped?
Where in your life do you still feel a negative emotional tug? Perhaps you long for an ex-lover, have unresolved issues with your family, or live with regret for past actions. Whatever it is, my advice is to get it cleaned up.
Cleaning up the past is the simple act of facing it. You’ve got to fully recognize that if you stay on this path, you will likely continue to go through life miserable. This is the course you’re on if