Let Go of the Past – You Don’t Live There Anymore

Let Go of the Past – You Don’t Live There Anymore

Although you don't control everything that happens to you, you have complete control over how you react to events. This control extends to events in your past. The past can have an incredibly strong hold on you, if you let it. Here's how to break the chain:

Let It Go

You have to start the process of getting out of the straitjacket of your past by declaring to yourself that you're going to let it go. It's as simple as that...at least to start. The point is that admitting that you want to move on from your past is a necessary stepping stone to everything that will follow.

Part of choosing to let something go is reclaiming control over your own story and acknowledging that, although something may have happened yesterday, you don't have to let it continually affect your today and tomorrow. That can be a beautiful thing as long as you have the power to forge ahead.

Avoid the Victim Mentality

Too often, when things from the past have a tight hold over us it's because we've, consciously or unconsciously, taken on the role of a victim. Part of this is down to fear, irresponsibility, or an unwillingness to take responsibility for something that happened in the past.

Analyzing your past isn't intrinsically bad, but spending a lot of times brooding about something bad that happened without offering any kind of new perspective or life lesson is definitely not product. It might even promote the kind of victim mentality and disempowerment that you're trying desperately to avoid on some level.

A lot of times, being the victim can feel good to people, as sick as that sounds. There's something reaffirming in blaming others and thinking that you were in the right after all and that, if you'd only been given a break or two, things would have turned out in your favor.

The trouble with taking a sense of victimhood to heart is that it keeps you stuck in your past and held in thrall to circumstances. People who forge their own path aren't prone to the victim mentality because they see themselves as the movers and shakers of their own reality. It's time to take back control over your own life.

Learn to Forgive

Going hand in glove with this kind of victim mentality is bitterness. That might sound strange at first, but oftentimes when people take on a sense of chronic victimhood they're extremely bitter at someone or something in their past as well. This all goes with a sense of disempowerment.

Instead of being stuck in a sense of victimhood, you need to choose to let things from the past go and forgive other people. The thing to realize is that other people were probably doing the best that they could do at that particular time.

There's a really good chance that they didn't mean to hurt or wrong you at all. It's time to forgive people from your past and embrace an empowering future.