You Are Not Your Past, But Your Present
The path that we have traced to get to where we are today is inscribed in our past. Thus, our past therefore has a great influence on what we think, what we say, what we do or even on the different strategies of confrontation that we put in place. The experiences we have, the lessons we have learned, the people we have known or what we have learned over the course of life are part of who we are today.
What you did before defined who you were then. But you are no longer that person, you are the one today. Human beings change, every day, with each new information received or each lesson learned, and this is inevitable.
This is why rejoicing or lamenting what we have done in the past only serves to hurt ourselves. It is certain that guilt is an emotion which, well done, can help us to repair these mistakes that we may have made, or those failures that we have been able to endure. But if we exaggerate it too much and it becomes an obsession, it can turn into a toxic emotion that will make the present slip through our fingers and not help us resolve our past.
When we say that something is unreal, what we mean is that it is not tangible, that we cannot access it: neither touch it, nor feel it, nor see it, nor hear it. If something cannot be perceived with our five senses, then it does not exist. This does not mean that it did not exist and that it was not real at some other point in our lives. Obviously it happened, we know what happened, but it is only real in our mind, in our psychological reality.
For this reason, it is worth making the effort to “place” ourselves in the present whenever our life travels to the past, and also when it does so into the future, enveloping us in unnecessary anxiety. . Anyway, the only thing that really exists is the present moment; the before and the after live only in our heads.
The reality of the present, where you really have the power to influence, is one thing, and the psychological reality is another. Here, some of the actions that one carries out in the present are not only useless on a practical level, but also cause suffering because of what has happened or will happen. To worry today about what happened yesterday is wasting the limited time available.
The first step is to realize that the past is not real. He might have been at another time, but not today, not now or at this precise moment. Therefore, we must stop giving importance and value to what no longer exists. What we can do, on the other hand, is to learn a lesson from all this so that, now, in the present, this past is useful to us and becomes part of us, but without giving it more time than necessary in “ our present reality ”.
Therefore, when you realize that your thoughts contain an “I should have been” or “it shouldn’t have happened”, force your mind to come back to “this is what is happening now, and this is the way I should be ”. This exercise, practiced in a conscious way, will allow you to get used to not settling in the past.
Finally, let go of whatever you do in the present that magically directs you to change the past. You have to accept that the past cannot be changed: what happened has happened, and this is how it should be. For better or for worse.
There is also no point in berating yourself, repeating, praying, begging or falling into ruminating. The only thing that is profitable is the lesson that can be learned, so as not to stumble on the same stone today or tomorrow.
Live in the moment, focus on what is around you: the people you see, the objects you touch, what you smell, what you eat, what you hear. Nothing more, at least for the moment. Live it today, and free yourself from your past.
