Walk out of your history!

Are we wasting our present and putting our future in jeopardy crying over the past? And when do we let off of the past and move ahead?

I know of someone who terms everything in her past as ‘bad’ and has become a self declared victim of her past. She has perhaps not realized it yet, but she has alienated everyone who should have been close to her with her blame games. And most importantly she has put her future on hold simply because she can’t let of off the ‘tragedies’ of the past.

Personally, I always believed things happen in life for a reason- even your worst experiences are in fact your best teachers. Or at least you should make them your best teachers. Learn, grow and evolve. There is nothing worse in life than self pity. The more you hold onto them, the more they pull you down, stunting your growth and choking everything good out of you. Let go and see how you heal and feel.

I remember as a child whenever I complained about life being unfair to me for silly things as all children do, a close friend instead of empathizing/ sympathizing with me, like all friends should, would tell me the worst and barbaric stories of life being cruel to someone he knows.

I strongly suspect now, he made most of them up, but it did make me realize that my ‘tragic’ stories where actually insignificant in the larger picture and it made me appreciate my life more. He also threw in a little success story of someone overcoming adversity and made me believe that I had the power to turn my life around instead of just being a victim of circumstances.

I read somewhere, getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward.

In my earlier post ‘Love you to death’, I had mentioned about a friend Anna, going through a bad marriage. She suffered alone for many many years and very recently she let go. She let go of her husband, her marriage, all the pain, the blame games, and everything that was pulling her life down. Today, she has found love again, got married this weekend and after a very long time I saw a genuine smile on her face. Kudos to her!

Happiness begins with you ‘wanting’ to be happy. Growth only happens when you ‘want’ to grow. At the end of the day, the only person who can make or break your life is you!

The strength of character is when you move on and move so far away that when you look back, nothing else matters.

If you missed a career opportunity, find another one and do everything you can to succeed in that field so that when you look back you don’t regret missing the first one at all.

If you failed a test, excel in the next one and the one after that and the following one, so that your ‘failed’ test has no significance in your life.

If you had a bad relationship, abandon it and find one where you are loved, respected and cherished and see the scars slowly disappear.

If you had a lonely childhood, have many friends and build a life for yourself that involves having people not just around you, but people ‘wanting’ to be around you.

If you think you were not treated well, treat others like you would expect them to treat you and see the turnaround in your life. You will have many friends and family wanting to do everything for you, but if you are going to be nasty to them because you think its payback time, you will find yourself alone! And then you can only blame yourself.

So back to my earlier question, when do we let go of our past? And the answer is NOW! Stand up and walk out of your history.