Letting go of the past

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Someone asked me recently how I manage to cope with all the challenges I'm facing. I answered, "I've accepted it and moved on and I leave my fate to God".

Too err is human, seems like a cliché but who doesn't make mistakes. I know I have my fair share of mistakes and bad misjudgements in the past. I've most certainly have disappointed and hurt some people including people dear to me with what I did.  It’s already in the past, it's over and done with and there’s nothing I can do about it.

Believe it or not, one of the best demotivators is your past. Our past can drag us down before we even realise it. Our past can be a burden on our shoulders that for some of us, it could be too heavy a burden to carry.  The good news is it’s a burden we don’t have to carry. Take it off your shoulder and leave it behind.

I remember reading somewhere about a man who was late to work. He sped through a traffic light and ran over a mother and her baby. Both mother and child were killed but the driver survived unharmed. Feeling guilty, the man became an alcoholic and a drug user and his life started spiralling out of control as his guilt was so painful. It took him almost 30 years but one day he realised that what was done was done and there was no way to change it. By destroying his life as well he was effectively ruining three lives.

By living in this past moment you are preventing yourself from actually fixing what you did wrong. You can never go back in time and you can never erase what happened. "Life has no rewind button", I love this catch line of an ad I heard on the radio while driving my other half to work in the mornings.

Every new day presents you with the opportunity to start again. No matter how bad your past might be, you still have a bright future ahead waiting for you. Just don’t let the burden of the past stop you.

Waiting for the silver lining