What’s in is your past? Do you want more of that in your future?
What if you viewed your past as a neutral circumstance? All you have in the present is your thinking about the past. The past is over. Getting a little woo, huh?
Your past affects you now because of your thinking. It’s easy for us to tell stories about who we are (based on the past), what we will be or able to do (based on the past), etc… but how much of that is true? If our infant brain had the same story, we’d be eating baby food and crawling forever.
Thank goodness, we learn and evolve… and can do that for as long as we choose. But notice how quickly the adult brain uses the past to justify what we can and cannot do. Or who we are! If anyone else imposed such restrictions on me, I’d be downright pissed! But when our own mind does it, we accept it as fact. Ugh!
Here’s the turnaround: you just have to notice it’s a story in your head and not reality. Then, you have the power to choose to believe the story you are telling yourself or drop it.
If I asked you to describe your childhood, you would tell me your story/ your version of your past. If your parent or sibling was asked about your childhood, imagine the differences.
There’s your past, your story, and then what you made it mean about YOU and what was possible for YOUR LIFE. How does that story serve you now?
Old pain: there are things that happened to all of us that caused pain. We are human. In many ways, there is a shared common humanity in suffering. There are big traumas and small traumas… and this work isn’t about comparative trauma. It’s about healing. [Putting in an important plug for traumas: sometimes, extensive therapy is needed for healing. I don’t ever want to negate that work.]
For me, coaching unveiled something important: sometimes ‘old pain’ is brought to the surface in the present but it’s not old pain. It’s current pain generated from our thoughts about what happened. It’s often sadness or disappointment or anger. It can often come from the space of: I didn’t deserve that. That was so cruel or unfair.
These are the current thoughts that cause the pain.
To be clear: these thoughts are sometimes totally justified! There’s no right or wrong here. But in crafting the present and future: do they serve you? Are you flogging yourself in the present because of what happened in the past (to you or what you did)?
What if you are able to change the way you think about your past?
Brooke Castillo wrote on this topic and I love this sentence: “The only way your past defines you now is the way you choose to think about it.”
Suddenly you have the power back.
Looking at your past: how do you want to view it? You get to decide the meaning you’re going to add. Are you the hero or victim of that story?
What if you believe your past made you strong or capable or worthy? If you go searching for evidence, I imagine a very different story can be told…perhaps one that continues to build strength and energizes you.
You can’t change the past, but you can change the impact it has on you now.
What’s the story you want to tell yourself (and others) about your past?
Tune in next week for an awesome exercise in re-examining your thoughts about your past.
