Grow from your past

Welcome back!

Every one of us has a past. Often times I hear people say, “Forget the past. Don’t dwell on the past.” Instead, I say, “Grow from your past.”

 

I agree too many people spend much of their time living in the past, I don’t believe in forgetting the past. Much of our identity is based on everything from our past, from our memories and our history. When we hear our favorite song on the radio, we remember what was happening when we first heard that song. I do agree we shouldn’t dwell on the past. Some people, they are stuck in the past; they keep doing what they have been doing over and over again. It is like living in the movie Ground Hog Day. The same thing keeps happening to them. I believe the best thing to do with the past is to grow from it. Recognize what has happened in the past. Make peace with it and then take only the lessons with you. This will allow you to benefit from the past and grow from it!

 

I personally tried the “forget the past” tactic. What I learned was I didn’t forget anything; I just avoided anything that resembled past situations. What I actually did was shut down that part of me. Each time I said I am going to forget the past, I blocked a memory. My world got smaller!

 

When I was 20 years old I had an incident with discrimination. I got fired for a false reason. It was a clear case of prejudice. My initial response was sadness. I was depressed for 5 days. Then I said to myself, this is enough. I am going to forget about this, and move forward. I never processed what happened; I just carried that incident on my shoulders silently. It wasn’t until a few years later that I realized I had developed a complex. I secretly had a chip on my shoulder. When I noticed this about myself, I had to trace back to the time I was wrongfully fired. I had to process the incident in my head and recognize what really happened. I no longer have strong feelings about that day, I made peace with it. Because of that I gained a new understanding of myself. If I am secure and confident with myself, I am able to stand strong when a person is prejudging me. When someone judges me without sufficient knowledge about who I am, then I know their judgment is false.

 

Because of this new finding, I grew to have a much stronger sense of myself. I gained a lot of self-confidence from this lesson. The actual bad experience was a small price to pay compared to the lesson I gained. I am a better person because this did happen, and I am thankful I have grown from it.

 

I would love to hear your story on how you grow from your past. Tell me your story.

 

 Giovanna Garcia

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