Life! By Design_ 6 Steps to an Extraordinary You - Laura Morton [42]
If you are still holding on to the day you were fired, were rejected by a lover, did something wrong, had something wrong done to you, were hurt by someone, or made a terrible mistake, you’re haunted by those memories and are addicted to the past. If you think you’re unhappy now, think about your life ten years from now if you choose to do nothing and remain the same. Now amplify those feelings times twenty years. Knowing what you know about your past, are you willing to let it go and work toward planning a better future?
Star athletes are trained to let go of a loss the second a game is over so they can move forward and into their next game, match, tournament, or competition without bringing their mistakes with them. Imagine the discipline it takes to let go of those errors and not carry them forward. Granted, the athletes can go back and review the errors they made, but they cannot hold on to the emotion of the loss or they will lose their competitive edge. The past is behind them. All they can do is look forward to doing better in the future.
Addiction to the past most often shows up in how it negatively impacts people’s relationships. Someone who suffers from this addiction will carry forward every fight, every mistake, every hurt feeling, and all of the other negative stuff that happens in relationships.
I know a woman who spent most of her married life with a man who avoided coming home at night and spent most of his time drinking with his friends. One day she woke up and decided she no longer wanted to live that way. She told her husband, “I’ve been with you for more than a decade. We can either make it great from here on out or we can go our separate ways.”
I found her courage powerful and inspiring because she was willing to let go of all her anger and resentment from the past for a chance at a wonderful future with the man she had fallen in love with. The alternative would have been to suffer through the rest of her life living exactly the way she’d been—miserable and alone.
If your happiness isn’t a good enough reason to let go of your past, think about your family, your spouse, partner, boyfriend, girlfriend, children, and friends. How have the events from your past impacted them? How you behave and act is what your kids will grow up emulating. By continuing to hold on to the past, not only are you destroying your own life, you are crushing the lives of all those around you. Whether you are the leader of your family as a husband or wife, or as a twenty-five-year-old single guy or girl hanging out with your friends, every one of us has our own moments of leadership. If you choose to go down a path being stuck in how your life used to be, the people around you will go down that path too. You’ll be leading them to the deck of the Titanic if you choose to live in the past. You can choose to go down with the ship, or you can grab a lifeboat, load it up with your loved ones, and say, “Let’s go create something new,” and get over it together.
Getting over it isn’t about forgetting. It is about accepting things for what they are. It’s about coming to an understanding that what already happened doesn’t need to be part of your present or future. The only way I know to reconcile the past is to confront all your areas of resistance. With loved ones addicted to the past, have conversations that start with you saying, “You need to resolve something,” and then have the courage to honestly speak what’s on your mind.
You can write a letter or an email to that person. Some people choose to actually send their letters, while others write them just to express their feelings and get their emotions off their chests. If you don’t want to send the letter, burn it. Light it on fire