Can your ever truly leave your past behind? No, you can’t. It’s part of who you are.
Your past forms the bedrock upon which your present is developing. It’s up to you to nurture it in a way that leads to a fulfilling future.
It’s your past beliefs and experiences that have shaped your present. Believing that you can totally break away from your past is naïve. It will always be a part of you.
Doesn’t matter how dull and boring or checkered your past is, it’s still remains undeniably yours. Denying it serves no purpose.
Instead by accepting and appreciating it in its totality is the most sensible thing.
What’s the point of wasting your energy and time fighting something which can’t be undone?
All your experiences, good or bad, have left an indelible impression on your thinking, influencing the kind of person you’ve become.
Learn from the past mistakes. Make better decisions in the present. Build a better future.
Blending Former Beliefs with New Perspectives
This is the process of growth, personal growth.
Your growth involves you getting wiser with experiences. You begin to challenge outdated beliefs while also accepting the wisdom they offered.
You learn to sift through your experiences, keeping what helps you grow and discarding the superfluous.
Do feel it’s time to let go of something from your past, something that has outlived its utility?
Think of your past beliefs as a rough draft. You refine, edit and keep the most valuable parts as you grow.
You understand how to integrate the old lessons, modify the perspectives to make it relevant, and create a new worldview which is tailored to your present needs.
It’s like the first day at another new job. It may be a new office, new people, new responsibilities but you’re more confident because of the lessons you learned at the earlier job.
You start off with renewed zest because you want to better yourself, avoid repeating the same mistakes and apply what you had learned from experience.
Abandoning your past is like ripping the first few chapters of the book. You find yourself fumbling and floundering through the rest of the book because you’ve no idea about the origin of the story or the characters or the timeline. You’re disrupting the plot of your life.
Growth is about allowing your past to help create a more enhanced present. It’s like this long chain, each knuckle taking the other along.
Viewing Growth as a Continuous Journey, not a Transformation
Don’t get carried away by all those who say that growth is all about total reinvention, breaking away from the past, transforming who you are.
That’s nonsense.
Imagine yourself as the banyan tree, then all your past experiences form the roots spread all around that tree. It’s that what you keeps you steady, come what may.
Growth is a continuous journey. It’s incremental with each phase building on the last.
What you can do is develop a mindset for sustainable growth. Learn to be flexible; being rigid or fastidious is not compatible with personal growth.
My child’s struggles with learning disability changed my thinking, encouraging me to take up teaching. Innovative ways to make learning easy and fun led me to my true calling. It might sound little dramatic but it’s the truth.
Had I been rigid with my earlier career aspirations, I wouldn’t have discovered this part of me. Everything else fell into place, as if it was a natural progression.
Each phase was a small win, each building on the last. That’s what growth mindset is in reality.
Embracing Your Journey
They say when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Isn’t that what growth is about?
It’s about accepting and not rejecting. Accepting and learning from your past, assures you continue to grow towards a more meaningful future.
Sit back and reflect on how far you’ve come and its then that it will hit you.
Enjoy the revelation and now steer the boat to where you want to go. Your greatest teacher, your past, has taught you well.
This week, reflect on one experience from your past that shaped you. How has it influenced your decisions today?
