There is nothing in your past that needs to be changed. You don't need justice, apologies, or accountabilities so that you can move on with your life. The only thing that needs to change is your thinking about your past.
I used to think that my anxious and poverty-ridden childhood was the cause of my insecurity, self-doubt, and never having enough money in my life – if only my parents could have given me a more secure and stable upbringing, if only they could have paid me more attention, if only they could have been richer and inspiring role-models, I wouldn’t have spent most of my life feeling anxious, insignificant, and poor.
And there's more...
If it wasn’t for all of the cruel and dysfunctional relationships I had with men, I could have avoided years of feeling insecure, jealous, and not good enough. I could have found my soul mate a lot earlier in life.
If it wasn’t for all the times I felt like an imposter in my work – always anxious about giving an opinion and always looking for ways to hide out – I could have had a thriving and more impactful career.
But now I see it all so clearly.
I was supposed to feel all of that. I was supposed to have the parents I was born with; I was supposed to meet those men who were all wrong for me; I was supposed to feel like an imposter and hideout in my career. All of it was supposed to happen.
All I needed to do – all I ever need to do – was change my thinking - change the way I looked at my circumstances. But I didn’t know what I know now. I didn't know that other people were not the cause of my misery. I didn't know that they were not responsible for how I felt.
Many of us are still questioning – inwardly and outwardly – about what happened to us in our past. We’re still arguing for our limitations. We're still trying to dissect and analyze why stuff happened to us. We want to make it right. We’re still trying to re-write what we make it all mean.
Consider that there is no past thinking. And even though you are thinking about your past, the stuff that happened in your past cannot affect you now or ever. Can you see that? What's affecting you is your thinking in this moment about your past. Can you see the power in this?
There is nothing in your past that needs to be changed - there is nothing to be healed for you to feel good, for you to move on in this moment. The only thing that needs to change is your thinking about all of it. I can't change my past, but I can change what I'm making it mean. I can't change the fact that the man I lived with gaslighted me for years. But I can change the way I'm thinking and feeling about those events in my life.
Our experiences in life are never insignificant. Bad things have happened to all of us. And this is not about making them a non-issue. On the contrary. It’s about looking at our past circumstances through a different lens. Not through the lens of shame, blame, or as an excuse to close us down from life, but how those experiences are always calling us to go beyond who we think we are. To wake us up to how we're interpreting all of it.
When you find yourself thinking about the future you want to create for yourself, and you hear that voice in your head dampen your spirits, or tell you that you'll never do it, or that you're not good enough, remember that there is no OLD THINKING. It's always a current thought. And remember that there's nothing in your past that can stop you.
I got the exact and perfect childhood I needed to become who I am today. I met the perfect men for me at that time in my life. And so have you. No one has the power to say how your life goes. No one gets to make you feel miserable or hopeless. Turn your head away from the past and look to the future. Try thinking some new thoughts.
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