Why You Shouldn’t Let Go of Your Past
By: Kelly Lee Reeves
Tags: Personal Development, Personal Growth, Life Lessons, Letting Go, Storytelling

Let go of the past. Live in the present. Don’t worry about the future is an adage that we personal and spiritual growth coaches like to use as a developmental benchmark.

Easier said than done, right? Letting go of our past is probably one of the most difficult things to do. We lived those experiences. They are ingrained in our memories. We can’t make them go away or un-happen. Shit happened, so what are we going to do about it?

While I totally agree with the importance of letting go of certain emotional aspects of your past, there are good reasons why you shouldn’t completely let it go.

“The secret of change is to focus all your energy, not on fighting the old, but building the new.” — Socrates

Your past matters. Sure, it’s ugly, riddled with mistakes, regrets, pain, failures, guilt, and shame. It is your story. It is what makes you who you are today. You are the main character in your story. Character development is an essential part of any good story. In fiction writing, character development is the process of building a unique, three-dimensional character with depth, personality, and clear motivations. Character development also refers to the changes a character undergoes over the course of a story as a result of their actions and experiences.

You can’t develop if you have nothing to change. You grow and evolve chapter after chapter. When you take what you learned from your previous chapters and apply it to your present and future chapters, then the story gets even better. If you erased your past, then you’d be looking back at a blank page rather than a very juicy story, not knowing how you got to where you are or where you’re going.

Your past is your foundation. It is the record of your life, your rearview mirror, which shows you where you’ve been and why you ended up where you are today.

Sure, we all want a clean slate, but that’s something you can start over with today with the added benefit of having a past jam-packed with lessons and experiences to draw upon.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” — George Santayana

I look at my past as my personal guidance system to show me the way to what I want to become. Lord knows I’ve made plenty of mistakes, and there are a lot of things in my past that I am certainly nor proud of, but I had to decide what I was going to do about it. I could either use it to my advantage or let it drag me down.

I’m not advising you to hang onto the emotions from the past. That’s called “baggage”. You can’t move forward and evolve if you keep hanging onto those negative emotions and replay them over and over again. To your mind, it’s like you’re repeatedly reliving the unfortunate experience. It doesn’t know any different. It’s only doing what you tell it to do.

Your emotions and response to your past are your choices. We are 100% responsible for how we choose to respond, react, feel, and behave about any situation in life, past or present. You can choose to wallow in self-pity; or you can choose to get over it, find the lessons and blessings from it, and enjoy life regardless.

We always like to say “if I knew then what I know now…” Well, you do know now, so what are you going to do with that wealth of the information and all the stuff that you’ve gathered for the past however many years? Don’t just toss it away because it’s not pretty. Forgive it, appreciate it, bless it, and leverage it. Your past has caused you to know what you do want and what you don’t want. It is the planting part that has allowed you to grow. It protects you and guides you. It’s the study and research material for your life’s exam. Don’t try to shove it aside as if it never happened for fear those skeletons in your closet will come back to haunt you. Look those skeletons straight in the eye sockets and tell them “Ok. You happened. Thank you for all you taught me. I am a better, stronger, more aware person because of you” and lovingly send them on their way.

When you honor your personal history, you benefit from the lessons, which shaped who you’ve become. “We’re only as old inside as the wounded child who sustained our oldest hurts — neglect, ridicule, criticism, abuse, etc.,” said Tina Gilbertson, LPC.

You can’t heal if you don’t tend to your wounds. When you try to hide from your personal history and insist upon focusing on the present and the future, you can’t help that child heal. This is how emotional maturity is developed.

Your entire story, no matter how gruesome it may be, deserves your interest and attention. Don’t live in your past and replay the negative emotions of it. Let go of those. Simply look at it like the goldmine it is rather than something that should be erased or brushed under the rug. You can’t lose it so you might as well use it.

Namaste.