The Past is Dead, but Don’t Bury It
The Past is a Wellspring of Gratitude
They say that you should live in the present.
I’m all for this advice, but does it mean that we turn our back on the past and avoid looking forward to the future?
What does a healthy relationship with time, past, present, and future look like?
Getting Stuck in the Past
When people tell you to live in the present, they are likely very aware that there are two major pitfalls of dwelling on the past.
The first is the idea of the “good old days,” a sense that the past was better than the present. The problem with this view is the fact that our memories of the past are not always rooted in objective reality but rather in subjective interpretation.
The good old days weren’t always good, and even if they were, you can’t get them back. You need to come to a healthy appreciation of the present moment. It isn’t perfect either, but it has great beauty if you’re willing to look for it.
The other danger of the past is getting stuck in a destructive loop where you constantly relive the experiences that cause you pain, guilt, and shame.
We all have those parts of our past that we’d sooner erase, and getting stuck dwelling on them can put us in a very dark place.
Using the Past Well
There are dangers everywhere. When you really stop and think about it, swimming is dangerous. You could drown. That doesn’t mean you should never go swimming.
Just because there are dangers associated with looking back doesn’t mean you should never look back. What happened in the past is what has lead you to where you are today, and there is great value in understanding it.
Here are some of the ways that it’s helpful to look backwards:
Learning From Your Mistakes
Mistakes are inevitable. Of course you want to avoid them whenever possible, but you shouldn’t be so scared of making them that you fail to act.
If you are living a courageous life, you will make mistakes.
Sometimes, mistakes can even be an advantage. They can teach you a valuable lesson which can save you from trouble in the future. Moreover, when you learn a lesson the hard way, it becomes a great story, and stories are the best way to connect with other human beings.
Pay attention to any successful writer or entrepreneur, I guarantee that they will have interesting stories about mistakes that they have made and that these stories are a big reason behind why they are so likeable.
Reveling in Your Triumphs
Once you do learn a lesson from your mistakes, you should move on and come back to it only for the sake of telling the story.
You don’t want to dwell on your mistakes, you want to focus on your successes.
The reason for this is that it helps build confidence. It has been long known in psychology that your ability to perform is largely determined by how you feel about yourself. If you feel lousy, you’ll perform lousy. If you feel amazing, you’ll do amazing.
In his course “The Psychology of Selling,” Brian Tracy explains that unsuccessful sales people constantly go over unsuccessful sales pitches in their head looking for what went wrong. Successful sales people constantly go over the sales that they closed looking for what went right.
Which group do you think feels more confident going into their next pitch.
Filling Your Heart With Gratitude
You have more to be grateful for than you can possibly imagine. It might not always feel that way, but if you go looking in your past for blessings that you didn’t deserve, you will find them.
Let’s start with some basic ones that I guarantee apply to every single person reading this.
1️⃣ You were born. That may sound silly, but what did you do to deserve your life?
2️⃣ You were born in the most prosperous time in human history. We have abundant shelter food, and water. We have unbelievable technology. We have access to more information, more freedom, and more mobility to travel than ever before
3️⃣ You were born in one of the freest nations ever. This is especially true if you were born in America, but is definitely true for many, many other countries today.
Beyond those things, you have had ten thousand things happen to you that you didn’t deserve. You have been shown love and kindness and treated to moments of breathtaking beauty and experienced deep levels of awe and wonder that have filled your soul with a joy purer than the the purest gold.
Even if you find yourself in difficult circumstances, you are blessed beyond your wildest imagination.
In his classic book Flow, the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi comments:
How we feel about ourselves, the joy we get from living, ultimately depend on how the mind filters and interprets everyday experiences. Whether we are happy depends on inner harmony, not on the controls we are able to exert over the great forces of the universe.
I would suggest that the best tool in your arsenal for pursuing happiness through controlling your inner life is the discipline of gratitude.
I strongly recommend developing a practice to make gratitude a regular part of your life. My current practice is to write out three things that I am grateful morning.
When it comes to looking to the past, I would suggest three categories of inspiration for gratitude:
- Lessons you’ve learned
- Things you have accomplished
- Blessing you didn’t deserve
Of course, your gratitude practice should expand beyond the past and include such things as the opportunities still in front of you, and the melodic sound of a bird singing outside your window.
Conclusion
It’s never a good idea to live in the past, but memory lane is often worth a visit.
In your battle for happiness, control your inner life by channeling your attention on those memories from the past that fill you with gratitude.
This is the sixth in a series based on my article 30 Lessons About Life You Should Learn Before Turning 30. Shoutout to Dr. Christine Bradstreet 🌴 for the idea to turn the post into an in-depth series.