How to Stop the Past From Dictating Your Future

Sometimes it’s nice to savour old memories, memories from your childhood, maybe spending time with your friends at school or visiting your grandmother. The past is a nice place to visit, but would you want to live there? The truth is that if you stay in the past, you will never go forward, never progress.

Memories versus Experiences

Both good and bad memories can slow us down. Good memories are like hammocks. We rest in them and reminisce about how good life used to be, but people’s memories are not accurate. Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman has studied memory and found that people are good at remembering change, but not so good at remembering every day mundane activities. Hence holidays create memories because we are confronted with change and lots of new experiences. Dr Kahneman also said that we are more inclined to remember what happened at the end of an experience and our feelings at the time, but this is rarely a faithful representation of a place or time. Memories are shaped by perceptions more than actual experiences. For example, if you went to a friend’s place and had a fabulous dinner, but at the end of the night your friend spilt hot coffee on you, you would probably have an ambiguous memory of the evening and even forget about the great food and conversation. The memory is your perception rather than the sum total of the experience. Your memories may not be as accurate as you think. When we return to places we remember from childhood, they are often very different from our memory. Why – because we remember a perception, not reality. It is too easy to sit around and the good old days when the cost of living was cheap and people were honest. But have you considered the possibility that your life now is better than it’s ever been? Don’t spend too much time being nostalgic for the good old days, instead turn today in a ‘good old day’.

Learning from the Past

Living in the past is also dangerous, if we dwell on unhappy memories. Bad memories are like chains that hold us back. Too many people tell me that they can’t succeed because of their past. They came from a dysfunctional family and that’s what has shaped them. Every one’s family is dysfunctional in some way – it’s just a question of degree. In every family there is death, divorces, disappointment, failure and loss. We are all victims of dysfunction, but successful people have discovered how to learn from their tragedies. Pain can teach you much more than joy! The writer William Arthur Ward said adversity causes some men to break, others to break records.
If you want to come out from under the shadow of the past, learn from negative experiences but don’t dwell on them. Understand your past, but do not live in your past. If there is a particular incident you are having trouble letting go of, try a forensic approach. Write down exactly what happened – stick to the facts. Write down how you felt at the time. Finally write down if there is anything you learned and how you could use this information to empower yourself in the future. Now tear up your notes, flush them down the toilet and leave your past in the past. If you are still feeling pain, you may need to talk to someone. You might start with a close friend, but if those feelings are still creeping up on you see your doctor and get professional help.

Stop the Blame Game

It is impossible to leave the past behind if you are still playing the blame gain – blaming other people for your problems. Accept right now that you and only YOU are the master of your destiny. The truth is that people will disappoint you, but being constantly angry with others ultimately prevents you from moving forward. Blaming other people for our problems gives them power and control over us. It is much more liberating to forgive them and then leave them in the past.

Focus on Where You Want to Go

Make a conscious effort to disconnect from negative experiences of your past. Whenever you find these memories creeping back into your thoughts, distract yourself. Do some exercise, go to the movies, focus on work that needs to be done. Alternatively write down everything you have to be grateful for. All of us should set time aside in their day to focus on our blessings. That is essential to developing a positive outlook.

Your focus must be on where you want to go, not where you have been. When you are driving your car, do you spend most of your time looking through the front window or the rear-vision mirror? You look through the windscreen! If you spent most of your time while driving looking in the rear-view mirror you would crash! The same if true of life – if you spend all your time looking at the past you will crash and burn!

It is essential to break free of unhappy and limiting memories. Have you ever seen a circus elephant pegged to the ground? The elephant is easily strong enough to tear that peg out of the ground and crush all of the circus tents. What keeps it there? An elephant never forgets. It remembers being a tiny calf tethered to the ground. When it was little, it tugged and tugged and tugged but could not free itself. Now it has grown into a huge bull, but it’s captured by a self-limiting memory.

Become and Emotional Phoenix

Is the same true for you? Are you prepared to bury your past or will you keep resurrecting it? Here is an exercise for you. Write down the most painful memories of your life and then burn that piece of paper. Be an emotional phoenix. Rise from the ashes of your past. It’s no good to live with past hurts. No, we have to learn from them, leave them behind and journey into the future. Your future lies in the funeral pyre of your past.

One of my key philosophies is that your life will go in the direction of your focus. Are you focused on prospering or past disappointments? You will gravitate towards your most dominating thought. You cannot have two thoughts at once. You will not succeed and flourish if you can’t escape the darkness of your past.

We have all made mistakes, present company included, but we cannot let those mistakes define us or our future.