Being stuck in the past can be painful and prevent our lives from moving forward. Life is always moving forward, but by staying in the past, you’ll miss all the wonderful opportunities right in front of you. However, sometimes these memories are out of our control. We want to not be obsessed with our past but the memories reappear unexpectedly and the emotional response is strong and reactive.
Below are 12 strategies to help you deal with not being stuck in the past. These strategies can help you see memories for what they are and to move forward in your own life.
- Make the choice to not be stuck in the past. Until you can make a commitment to let go of the past, not much will change. Without making the choice, you risk sabotaging your own efforts. When things go wrong or you encounter obstacles, you’ll cope by re-living the past, getting stuck in the details of what happened and trying to analyze everything that happened.
- Accept the past. No amount of thinking about what happened can change the past. All that matters is this present moment. To focus on what you can do now, accept that the past happened and that nothing about your past can be changed. However, your negative emotions about the past are having an impact on who you are now and the important relationships that you maintain. Something needs to change.
- Be patient with your emotions. You can’t control how strongly you feel about things that have happened to you. Sometimes pain will stick with you for days while other times negative emotions can stick with you for months. Even emotions that we haven’t felt about an event for years can crop back up in unexpected ways. Allow yourself to feel your emotions and deal with them as long as they stay.
- Get out of the fantasy. One reason that many of us get stuck in the past is we hold onto illusions or romanticize the past. You mull over the fact that if you hadn’t done something you might be quite a bit wealthier now or you wouldn’t be in debt. An ex-partner seems like your true love even though they have moved on, re-married and are living their lives. You had such a wonderful time a decade ago that you yearn to live that time again. Sometimes the truth is so scary, that we want to believe in the fantasy. It feels easier to have unrealistic hope and drown in self-pity rather than move on and focus on the steps you can take now. Accept your past and the reality of the past.
- Look at your past from a different angle. You wouldn’t be the person you are without your past. Instead of viewing your past through the eyes of the person that you were during that time, view the past from the person you are now. Recently I found some old emails written to an old friend that I’d lost touch with years ago. I re-read the emails and it completely re-shaped my memories of a certain event. My memories of how I viewed that person were shaped by how I felt when I was that age. I was also a different person in the past. I was more insecure, unsure of myself, had low self-worth and had a habit of holding onto toxic friendships. Before seeing those emails, I had remembered someone who was a great friend to me and I had felt some guilt because I thought I had treated them badly. When I re-read a couple of emails I realized that I had been in a manipulative friendship. Sure, I had made some mistakes but I also did not lose a good friend. I had lost someone who was dealing with depression, insecurity, took their negative emotions out on me and was manipulative. Now that I’m more self-aware I can realize what kind of friendship that was. When you re-visit memories, don’t view them from the person you were in the past but view them from the person you are now. Always viewing your ex as someone you deeply loved and who meant the world to you, may prevent you from realizing that a person who seemed right for you in the past, is not right for you anymore. Focusing on the fact that you owned your own business once, and how happy that always made you will make you miss opportunities right in front of you. These opportunities may not be owning your own business again but could provide you with more happiness and meaning than you ever could imagine. Life changes and we change constantly. View your past with a new angle and you may realize that there are better opportunities out there that are more compatible to who you are now.
- You give power to your memories. Memories on their own are not a bad thing. If anything, memories are necessary to not allow us to repeat our mistakes, appreciate the things we have, get an idea of how we have grown and so much more. The problem with living in the past, is that memories can elicit strong emotional reactions from us. By reacting strongly to these memories, you are giving more power to the memory. When I was deeply hurt by an ex-partner, I was stuck living in the past without realizing it. I felt like I needed an apology and I kept thinking about all the things I should have done. By investing so much emotion into these memories, I didn’t invest emotion into the present moment and prevented myself from moving on. As I learned to work through my emotions and cope with my feelings, the memories didn’t trigger such strong emotions anymore. Yes, the memory is a sad one, but my emotions towards these memories don’t hurt me anymore. In other words, I can acknowledge what happened but I’m putting the focus into how I’m living my life now. Negative emotions aren’t the only type of emotions that give power to memories. Holding onto past successes and constantly chasing that feeling of winning and succeeding can keep you living in the past. Before you know it, your life will turn into trying to be the best or always needing to have fun. You’ll end up neglecting what you actually value in your life by chasing after old dreams. Do note that there’s nothing wrong with having a healthy competitive attitude but there’s nothing bad with having someone else succeed or failing at times. There will be many things you will succeed at in life and there will also be times where you need to learn and enjoy the successes of others.
- Be accountable. Getting stuck in the past can often make us feel like victims or like life is out of our control. You might find yourself blaming your unhappy memories on your parents, friends, ex partners and coworkers. Everyone seems against you. You might view people or things as obstacles to your successes. You blame your family and other people as the reasons that you can’t travel and enjoy life the way you used to. When you allow yourself to be the victim, you don’t take control of your life. You fail at empowering yourself to take action as a result. Being accountable can be challenging but you have to do it to move on. When getting over the pain of my past, I had to accept that I had some unhealthy habits and beliefs that allowed me to keep making mistakes repeatedly. To make my life better, I had to empower myself to make changes in my life so that I wouldn’t allow those mistakes to reoccur again.
- You aren’t weak by NOT being stuck in the past. Many of us have dealt with incorrect beliefs about being stuck in the past. We believe that forgiving and letting go of the past is approving of someone’s bad behavior and letting them off easily. You use the pain you feel to justify why you should be stuck in the past. Or you feel that not constantly thinking about your past successes will prevent you from having future successes in your life. These inaccurate beliefs encourage you to stay stuck in the past and only have the side effect of making you feel worse. Letting go of the past doesn’t mean that you are happy with what happened, but that you accept what happened and are ready to move forward. Acceptance doesn’t mean that you are weak but means that you are a strong person who is actively working to make your life better, happier and worthwhile.
- Cope with unresolved feelings. If you are struggling with regret and strong negative emotions, then you will need to find a mechanism for coping with these intense feelings. During a horrible breakup, I developed the habit of writing poetry. This was a way for me to put my energy into coping with my feelings and not into the past. By writing out my emotions in constructive ways, I was able to allow myself to move on, deal with my feelings and spend less time thinking about the past. Everyone has different techniques that work for them. Try doing different things when you find yourself tempted into being lost in your thoughts. You don’t have to avoid your thoughts, but find a way to cope with the emotions. Do something that relaxes you so that you can overcome your feelings. If you are suffering with intense emotions, then therapy may be an option. Try going to a couple of therapy sessions to see if therapy is right for you when coping with your emotions.
- Avoid triggers. Trying to not live in the past is not as easy when there are constant triggers happening to remind us of the past. The good news is that typically these triggers are in your control. During a painful breakup, I had to quit social media for almost 2 months. Quitting social media was certainly not easy, but the emotional responses dimmed significantly once I cut it out of my life. Another thing I had to do was to stop talking about the past. Sharing stories about what happened was allowing myself to re-live it. There is always a time to vent with trusted friends, but after awhile, I found myself talking about the same thing to different people unnecessarily. If you have a habit of talking about your past to anyone who will listen, then try to stop. Even if there’s an occasion where you need to talk about your past, you can be brief and omit the details. There’s nothing wrong with venting to trusted friends, but after you are done venting, you need to start the process of not talking about what happened anymore. Take whatever necessary steps you have to take which may include not looking at social media, being around different people and exercising self-control when wanting to discuss what happened.
- Meet new people and do different things. A great way to propel you out of the past, is to focus on doing different things you’ve always wanted to try but kept yourself from doing. Instead of reading another article about how to get your ex back, sign up for that dance class you’ve always wanted to take. Instead of hanging out with the same people who like to gossip and remind you of all the ways people have hurt you in the past, get out there and meet new people. Instead of staring at your old trophies, join a hiking group. As you surround yourself with new people, you can focus on creating new experiences. You minimize your chances of growing by doing the same thing and hanging with the same people. Do something different and see how you will change as a result!
- Embrace new perspectives. Fears from the past can keep you holding onto old views. You might view what you did in the past as the only pathway to having happiness and meaning in your life. Old views may be holding you back from living an authentic life. If your relationship is having trouble, try to not go back into the old insecurities and tactics that didn’t work and caused more harm than good. Keeping the same perspective that if your ex hurt you, this new person will too can sabotage your current relationship. Take the opportunity to have a new perspective and try something different. Instead of pushing your partner away, focus on trying to communicate with your partner. If you find yourself becoming needy and desperate for attention, bring your focus back on your internal needs and look for ways to increase your own happiness without relying on someone else to do that for you. The same goes with successes in life. Believing that you can only have success and happiness in your life from the things that gave you that years ago, may not work for you now. Instead of holding onto past methods of gaining success, try something new and different. The change doesn’t have to be drastic either. Perhaps you need to learn new techniques, strengthen your skills, network with new people or take advantage of different opportunities. Embracing a new perspective on life, will help you to avoid trying to repeat your past and instead work on living a life that may have better, happier and more powerful effects in your life.
Our lives are linear and it is important to embrace the present moment and to accept the past. All of us make mistakes, have been through hurtful experiences and have experienced failure. Many of us chose the wrong partners. Many of us make poor choices that badly affect other people. We all have our share of success and fortune. Life is what you make of it and although emotions can have strong impact on us, we don’t need to allow our emotions about the past influence how we live today. You can form new positive memories now. Go experience the world today so that you’ll never run out of amazing memories to hold onto and can always remind yourself that life goes on.