Your Past Mistakes Don’t Have To Define You
I can’t even tell you how many people I come across who say, “I’m a failure”. “I don’t have it”. “I suck”. Life sucks. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. Every single year, I get poor. I’m stuck.
These people are not low IQ individuals. There’s nothing in their appearance that should make them seem like they are inferior in any way. Instead, it’s their attitude that dooms them to a life of mediocrity, struggle, and frustration.
If you’re reading this article, chances are you’re feeling these things you’re feeling that your life follow a pattern where one day is basically the same as the day before it.
There’s really not much change in your life. Before you know it, you feel that you’re stuck in your life. It’s as if the script keeps playing over and over. It’s the same boring old movie again and again. Same movie, different day and then, comes the conclusion. Death.
I know it sounds depressing. It’s definitely discouraging but I want you to understand where that mindset leads to. It definitely doesn’t lead to a happy place. If there was any doubt before, now you have the answer.
People who screw up in the past think it seals the rest of their life.
Your past mistakes don’t have to define you.
No matter how bad you screwed up in the past, it doesn’t have to hold you back unless you let it hold you back. When you keep repeating scenes in your head of being rejected, humiliated, embarrassed, betrayed or oppressed.
What do you think happens? Do you think you get justice in the here and now? Do you think you change the material fact of what happened in the past? It does not. It’s not like the movie Back to the Future and you got flying Delorean that you can jump into like Marty McFly. It doesn’t work that way. What happened in the past happened. What you can change is your interpretation.
What you can change is its effect on you in the here and now. Claim this power. The key to external change which is happening in you right now your appearance, your work, your business, the amount of money in your bank account, how big your house or apartment is.
All across the board, it is an internal change. Change your relationship with your past and you change your future. Does your past condemn you? Does it make you feel small, weak, and powerless?
Well, you can change how you interpret your past. Internal changes mean changing your thought patterns, assumptions, beliefs, and emotional habits. While it’s perfectly true that the world doesn’t care about your feelings, it cares about your actions.
It aims at results. Where do you think those results come from? It comes from your thoughts because when you think about your situation in a certain way; you end up in an emotional state. In that emotional state, you make certain decisions.
When you make those decisions, you change your world because you acted. What if you can change your thoughts? What if you can change your assumptions about your past?
Your life doesn’t have to feel like a runaway roller coaster where the moment where the moment you think about something negative, everything has to end up with a negative choice again and again and again.
It doesn’t have to be that way. Please understand that you are always in control because you can always choose how you interpret things. You can always choose what you think about. You can always choose what you dwell on.
Do not let go of that power. That would be the height of irresponsibility and I hate to say this and it’s painful because when I first realized it when somebody said it, it hurt me. It stung.
That was precisely the point because at that point I grew. You do it to yourself. You really do. I know it doesn’t make much sense. Who wants to live a frustrated life?
Who wants to feel this pain? But you do it yourself. The answer, stop doing it. Take responsibility. You can do it. Do something different.