How to make peace with your past? Here are 10 smart ways
“You are responsible for your life. You cannot always blame yourself for life challenges. Life is really about moving on.” Oprah Winfrey
Before we delve into revealing how to make peace with your past, note the following three reasons why it is more than imperative you make peace with your past:
It limits you: not making peace with your past limits you in your present and make you think what you’re experiencing is the only choice you have thus you limit your potential to expand and grow.
When you make peace with your past, you create space for something new to happen. It’s like having a choked sink in your kitchen.
Your past is not your identity. Yes, is part of your history but it’s not the final you. The butterfly was once a caterpillar, it is part of its making but that is not its final identity.
Making peace with your past is the cornerstone of change. No change, no growth. When you make peace with your past, you lay the foundation for change to make room for positive evolution and prevent sameness.
How to make peace with your past? Here are 10 smart ways:
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Forgive yourself
The primary step to making peace with your past is forgiving yourself. After an unpleasant experience, we tend to accuse ourselves of the whole happening. We thought we should not have taken the path that led us astray.
I didn’t get close to some people who gave me the opportunity. I reject that offer? How could I be so stupid? These thoughts enslave and complicate our current situation.
How could you have known better? You only acted per the information available to you at that time. You are not stupid. Remember the same you took some decisions that brought in positive endings.
To err is human. Mistakes are bound to happen. And life must go on. Forgive yourself to make peace with the past to successfully move on. Anything apart from this will only be a self-deception that will birth retardation in actions.
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Consider what happened as an opportunity for learning
Experience is the best teacher. Everything one goes through in the journey of life is what is termed experience. The experience of a seaman for instance is all he has gone through including safe sails, stormy journeys, attacks of pirates in the High sea. All these happenings will teach him more than he has learned from his lecturers.
Likewise, your bitter past was just a great opportunity for you to learn, grow and progress. Take it as such and make peace with it. If what happened served you as the best teacher, why then not appreciate it favorably? To make peace with your past, consider your past as training.
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Check out the positives
Even the worst situation presents a positive side. To make peace with your past, whether it was a betrayal, a setback, a great loss in business, etc., the eagle eyes find out the positives of what happened. Count your blessings from that experience, name them one by one and you will be marveled that it wasn’t a hundred percent loss. Make peace than with that experience.
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Share your anxieties with someone
You having difficult situations is to ginger you to get to achieve bitter past but you wish to make peace and move on, it will be important to speak with a trusted and knowledgeable person. It could be a friend, relative, or therapist.
I will recommend the latter to accelerate your healing process. The anxiety caused by the experience of the past is just like a fermented substance kept in a closed container. You are the container. Open it to avoid explosion. Open up to someone to make peace for a problem shared is a problem solved.
Sometimes shame and fear of backlash will not permit us to do that that’s why a therapist will be the best option for professional handling of the case.
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Let go of the past
The past is gone. The past remains what it is. It cannot be remade nor can it be rewritten. The only thing that can be done about what is past is to manage its impacts on the present to curb the repercussions on the future.
The best option to make peace with such a past is to let it go. Was it a failure? Let it go! Was it a betrayal? Let it go! The past is past.
6. Accept the present you
To make peace with the past, you ought to accept the present and the present you. The past might have deformed you physically, left you a divorcee, or jobless, you need to accept your present condition and find ways to live as such.
Some views may suggest that by faith, you don’t accept bad fate or you must reject any bad condition.
That’s true, but permit me to submit that before you reject you ought to accept that that’s what it is. Faith does not deny the fact but rather acknowledges it.
7. Be positive and avoid any negativity
This is where you need to apply the faith of you are a man of faith. Reject all negativities. Stop associating with negative-minded souls. You losing the opportunity doesn’t make you a failure, you need not spend all the time cursing the former employer or anyone who was behind your misfortune.
Don’t try to group with ex-employees who suffered the same fate to be talking only about the problem. Know the 9 household items that you never know expires.
You can only team up if there is a plan to take legal. Be positive. All companies are not like where you were bullied.
8. Cherish what you have now
After a fallen marriage one is likely to be frightened of any idea of it. Anybody who comes your way that experience is going to be seen as the one partner. But hey, all humans are not the same. It is because of evil that snakes have different names you know.
So if your past job was a nightmare, all jobs are not like that. Where you are now cherish it and give the best of yourself. Any comparison between the old and the new. Enjoy the new things you have either job partner etc. and value them to make peace with your past.
Focus on the people who love you instead of the person who hurt you and left you to cry. Focusing on what you have will make you realize that there’s much more to your life than you thought.
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Try not desperately to understand why
Why me? How did this whole thing happen? Why at that particular time. Who did this to me?
These are desperate questions we seek answers to but mostly in vain. To make peace with the past, it will be good to let sleeping dogs lie. Mostly these questions do not seek to find the cause of our problem but rather to situate blames. Unfortunately the most inaccurate answers we get only deepen our wounds. Desist from trying to understand everything if you want to make peace with your past.
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Create a healthy environment for yourself
To make peace with your past, endeavor to place yourself in a healing environment. Move to places that will not remind you of the bitter experience. Explore new things and start a new life. Enjoy the present to the fullest because it is all you have.