Often in my life I have fallen back to my safety blanket, my justification for my current actions – my past. My childhood, my parents, my old pains and experiences, how could these things not have an impact on my life and the way I am living my life now? They don’t.
What I have learned is that you are only the experiences and lessons that you chose to learn from your past, nothing more. Your current life and actions are not dictated by your past, they have no current negative influence in your life, unless you chose that path. Every challenge in your life has come with a lesson, something that you needed to learn, experience and grow. If you chose to focus on the negative or the challenge alone, you have lost the whole purpose of growth.
I have blamed my past for many of my actions in the last many years. The reasons behind my actions that I did not like, that I regretted were quickly justified by my past.
The realization that I made rather painfully, is that I am only the lessons that I chose to learn and the change that I chose to make from my past and past experiences – and if I only chose the negative, or the decisions and actions that go against my belief or my character, then that was my decision. I actively participated in these decisions, in this course of events.
But I am not my past.
I am not my parents failed marriage. I am not my broken home. I am not the tears that fell. I am not the childhood I never had. I am the strength that was there to support a broken mother, I am the strength that supported a broken home to make it whole and I am the tissue that wiped the tears. I am the good lessons learned from a bad experience.
The more I tried to run and hide from my past, the more it seemed to catch up with me – and until I made the conscious decision to understand and learn the lessons from those experiences, they will never go away. They will never be at peace. They will always be the justification for my poor actions and decisions.
I am not my past.
I am not my failed relationship. I am the possibility of what a relationship can be. It is up to me to understand the lessons learned from this horrible experience and to apply them to my life – and not use them as a justification for why I was not the man I should have been in the relationship. My past did not make decisions for me, my past did not take action to hurt my partner, no, but I did – actively. It was all me. The power is within me, the strength is within me to make the changes I need to make so that my past does not play a negative role in my future.
You do not have to be your past, your negative experiences, your pain – you can be the possibility of a future, without the pain, but with much deeper understanding of yourself and the path you need to avoid – it is my strength, it is my life and it is my choice.
I am not my failed relationship. I am the possibility of what a relationship can be. It is up to me to understand the lessons learned from this horrible experience and to apply them to my life – and not use them as a justification for why I was not the man I should have been in the relationship. My past did not make decisions for me, my past did not take action to hurt my partner, no, but I did – actively. It was all me. The power is within me, the strength is within me to make the changes I need to make so that my past does not play a negative role in my future.
You do not have to be your past, your negative experiences, your pain – you can be the possibility of a future, without the pain, but with much deeper understanding of yourself and the path you need to avoid – it is my strength, it is my life and it is my choice.
I will not be my past.
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