4 Reasons Why You Should Leave Your Past Behind You

The moment that we begin to live in the past is the precise moment that we should leave it behind us. To leave the past behind and drop who or what hurt you isn’t something that comes easy. It takes a lot of effort, time, patience and self-respect to keep moving forward. It’s a twisted concept to think that sometimes the people that we love and respect the most are also the people that are the ones so capable of hurting us.

Closure is necessary but not always something that’s handed out. Some people are able to push past who or what hurt them, while others let it eat them alive. Accepting what happened for what it is and forcing your mind to focus on other things is a lot easier said than done. However, leaving the past in the past is undeniably one of the best choices that you could ever make.

1. If you never truly drop the past, you can never truly move on.

For years I allowed multiple situations and people mentally torment me. To live inside my head, to eat at every conscious and non-conscious thought. We have all either made a mistake that we never thought we were capable of making, or have been hurt by somebody that we never thought would be possible of hurting us. If you allow yourself to live in the past and be consumed by what’s already done, then you don’t give yourself the chance to move on and leave what’s in the past truly in the past.

2. Living in the past allows old doors to stay open, and new doors to remain shut.

If you can never truly let go of what’s already done, then you aren’t allowing yourself to have a better present or a better future. What we deserve and truly desire in this life is true happiness. To truly be happy is to accept where you are at the time being, and believing that the choices or mistakes you made were made for a reason. For the years that I allowed myself to live in misery because I was stuck in the past, I truly look back on now and wonder why I wasted all that time. When I finally let go of the past, was the exact moment I felt life gave me another chance. One of the easiest yet hardest concepts to grasp I finally learned. For all the years I kept walking through the same cycle, the same old doors stayed open. When I finally learned to let go and accept my circumstances and situations for what it was, the new doors were finally opened to things and people I never imagined possible.

3. This life is too short to waste time on what’s already done.

If there’s one thing that I’ve learned from trying to maintain a positive attitude no matter what I’m going through, it’s that life is too short to waste time on living in the past. The only things that come from living in the past is hurt and pain. Letting the past reside in your head is like letting a scab never heal. Letting it never heal to the point where you keep picking at it, so it keeps re-opening the wound. This life is too short to allow yourself to keep opening old wounds. Situations and people can only destroy us if we let them. When life removes somebody or something from your life, if you’re able to let it go then 9 times out of 10 you will find that life will replace it with something far bigger and better than you could’ve ever imagined.

4. You can’t rewind time and change what already happened.

I’m sure all of us at some point wish that we could rewind time and change something. Whether it is a situation, something we did or even something we said without thinking. But the reality of life is that we get one chance to live it. The only thing that we can change is the present moment. We are not able to go back and change what’s already happened, so why bother allowing ourselves to live in misery of something that can’t be changed? The most important thing that we need to realize is that what’s done is done. And for whatever reason we went through what we did, we need to know that our present and future can better than ever thought possible if we give it a chance.

One quote that holds close to my heart is “life is too short to be anything but happy”. Our past does not define us. We have the ability to decide who we want to be in this life and we are given one chance to live it. Sometimes the most complex questions have the simplest answers. True happiness resides within. If we allow the past to run our thoughts and our life, we can never truly be happy with where we are. It’s not something that happens overnight, but it can start with one simple thought in the morning. All it takes is a little strength and a whole lot of faith.