Letting go of the past can be a challenge. You might be spending far too much time thinking about what could have been, past decisions or how your life might have turned out differently. Holding onto the past prevents us from moving forward. Instead of living your life and making positive changes, you spend far too much time living in the past.
Letting go of the past is essential to living a healthy and happy lifestyle. Below are some great reasons you should let go of the past.
- You can let go of feeling like your life should be different. Thinking too much about the past can make you unnecessarily unhappy with the present. You might dwell on the things not going right in your life, rather than appreciating the amazing things happening in your life. Also, when you let go of wishing things were different, you can focus on proactively creating a life you are happy about.
- You let go of bitterness. Resentment does nothing but hurt your life and your relationships. You literally cheat yourself of happiness by holding onto painful and toxic memories. Don’t allow a bad situation to hurt you anymore. Leave the past in the past, and focus on building a life filled with joy and peace.
- You let go of other negative emotions. Painful memories hurt to think about. Even when you feel like you are moving forward, letting yourself dwell on the past can quickly make you angry, depressed, sad or disappointed. It’s natural to think about the past every so often, but living in the past will keep you in this cycle of sadness.
- You can let go of regrets. Dwelling on the mistakes you made does nothing but hurt you. Everyone makes mistakes and has regrets, but you don’t have to live with regret for the rest of your life. Letting go of the past allows you to release the regrets, and create a future where you have learned from your mistakes and can make better choices.
- You can forgive. Instead of allowing arguments, mistakes and things that happened years ago continue to make you feel vengeful, you can focus on forgiveness. Who knows, you might even begin to rebuild and strengthen relationships in the past that were toxic. Regardless, you will be able to make yourself stronger, resilient and happier by forgiving.
- You can have more energy for other things in your life. Living in the past saps your energy and time. You might spend hours every day or week thinking about the past. This doesn’t leave much time and energy for you to be present in your relationships, invest into your passion and take good care of your health and happiness.
- You can move forward. Living in the past, keeps you from moving forward. You might take steps forward, but the moment you dwell on the past, the more steps you take backward. Letting go of the past allows you to continue forth on your journey.
Fortunately, you can move forward. There are great habits you can cultivate today to start the process of unburdening yourself from the past.
Understand what happened. Rethink on the situation and understand your interpretations of the events. This is not the time to dwell on the event or try to figure out what’s right and wrong about the situation. Instead, just focus on understanding the situation. For instance, maybe you didn’t save enough money in the past. At the time, you made that decision because you thought money wouldn’t run out or didn’t anticipate you would lose your job. Understand what happened and go from there.
Understanding something doesn’t mean that you cast judgment on yourself or others. It also doesn’t mean that you agree with what happened. Maybe you were in a toxic relationship where your ex treated you terribly. Understanding what happened, based on the information you know, doesn’t mean that you are trying to find logic in the way someone treated you. Instead, seeking understanding allows you to acknowledge what happened and realize that this happened and there’s nothing more you can do to change the situation.
Lastly, understanding can lead you to a place where you don’t understand and that’s okay. You may never know why your ex cheated you, why you were made redundant or why an argument happened that caused conflict in an important friendship.
You may never know the details or find logic in what happened. As much as you analyse and try to seek understanding, you will draw up more questions in the process. Part of seeking understanding, is realizing that there are only some parts of the story you will know and that’s fine. There is no sense looking for information that is not there. Now is the time to move on and let go.
Accept the situation. A huge part of letting go of the past, is being able to accept what happened. You might be feeling angry, betrayed, resentful or downright disappointed about what happened. It’s okay to have those emotions, but nothing can change what happened. No amount of overthinking and reminiscing about the past can change what happened.
Give yourself time to fully accept the situation. You will know you have accepted what happened when you feel a sense of calmness and closure about what happened. You are done trying to understand every detail and are ready to invest more of your energy into other things happening right now in your life.
Accept people for who they are. You cannot change someone or reason with them. You can only change yourself and how you react to a situation. In this moment, this is how that person is and that’s okay. Accept that.
Acceptance is necessary for you to let go of the past. You cannot move forward until you are ready to let the past remain in the past. Again, this process can take a good deal of time so be patient with yourself as you stop clinging to what happened and reach for the unknown and exciting future ahead.
Take responsibility for your feelings. You are not a victim. You are not unlucky. People do understand what you are going through. Bad things do not happen to you simply because you were born. You are not alone.
Take ownership and accountability for your feelings. I know you are hurting right now but remember that you are in control and you can move forward. Everybody has their share of tragedy, pain and disappointments in life. You are not alone in these feelings, and you can make the choice to move forward. Following this guide is a great step to choosing to move forward, so you are already on you way there.
Explore and embrace your feelings. Letting go of the past can flood you with emotions that you don’t even want to deal with right now. You might feel angry, sad or have an outpouring of emotions that range from regret to depression. Instead of withdrawing from those feelings or trying to avoid them with external things such as spending time with friends, binge eating, working too much or alcohol, welcome the emotions.
Allow yourself to be vulnerable and experience the pain. Explore your emotions and embrace them. I understand this process is painful and at times, quite scary and may be too intense. That’s okay. Allow yourself to feel the pain in whatever ways you can tolerate.
When you avoid your feelings, you teach yourself that you cannot handle the pain. That the pain is stronger than you. Allowing yourself to feel your emotions teaches you that you are okay. Everything will be fine, you can deal with this and you are strong enough. You can move forward and let go of the past, no matter how painful, because you are courageous and strong.
Live in the present. What matters right now, is today. The present is what matters the most, not what happened in the past. Today is the perfect day to work on your life and get things back on track. Today is the ideal day to start the process of healing and taking care of yourself.
Stop allowing the past to define you. Stop having self-limiting beliefs in yourself because of past choices. You can do this. You can make better choices. You can create the life you want for yourself. You must believe that what matters is what you do right now. Your past does not determine your future.
Living in the present will take practice and daily persistence but eventually it gets easier. For now, focus on nurturing your relationships. Now is the time to spend quality time with your family, friends and your partner. Invest more time and energy into your hobbies, interests and passions. Take care of yourself by eating foods that make you feel good, exercising, being in nature and treating yourself to something relaxing and calming.
Practice forgiveness. Refusing to forgive does nothing beneficial for you. I know that right now you might believe that forgiveness means you are approving the way someone hurt you or saying you are happy with what happened. Forgiveness doesn’t mean you approve of bad actions or that you are choosing to forget them.
Forgiveness doesn’t mean you should let the person know you forgive them. Forgiveness doesn’t mean that you need to be friends with this person or even talk to them anymore. You aren’t excusing the person by forgiving them. You are forgiving what happened for yourself, so that you can find peace and move forward. You can forgive quietly and peacefully within your heart.
Forgiveness must also happen within yourself too. You may have made mistakes but it’s time to let that go. You are human and just like you can make mistakes, you can grow and be a better version of yourself than you were in the past.
You may never forget what happened to you or the choices you made, but you can choose to forgive and stop giving the past pain anymore power over your life.
Letting go of the past is essential to living in the present and creating a life filled with joy, love and peace. You don’t have to let your past cast a shadow over your life anymore. You can take control of your life and make positive changes so that you can move forward. Your journey didn’t end when things happened in the past. Nope, your journey didn’t end there. Your journey in life is happening right now, so start taking steps forward. It’s time for you to let go.