It’s easy to find motivational posters and speakers who advocate living in the moment. To stop living in the past and worrying about the future and just focus on the now.
While I definitely agree that this is important, I also know that it isn’t as easy as just deciding that you are going to live in the moment. It does change your thinking to a certain extent, of course, but sometimes things from the past are so deeply seated that they affect your present.
That doesn’t mean that we should all dwell in the past, though. More that we need to honor our emotions and actually feel these things so we can say goodbye to them for good. So they don’t continue to follow us in the shadows as we try to move forward. So our present is no longer negatively affected by the past.
I’m not saying this because I’ve seen the light and I’ve completely shed the weight of past incidents. As recently as last week I had an emotional breakdown because of past emotions. Those feelings of despair stayed with me for almost two weeks. Then yesterday it seemed like the universe closed a couple of loose ends for me; one with a past relationship and another with a past job.
If I hadn’t had the breakdown last week and let myself feel those negative emotions, this ending might only be temporary in the story of my life. These incidents that hurt me in the past might surface again when I start to feel bad about myself in regards to relationships or unsure of myself when it comes to my career.
Now that I allowed myself to feel those emotions, though, I am confident that they will not surface unexpectedly from a random catalyst in the future. It was hard to feel them in the moment—crying on the floor of my house for a few hours hard—but I feel freer now that they’re gone.
You don’t want your past to define you, but it does shape you. You don’t want to completely ignore your feelings, but you also don’t want to feel them forever. Find a way to feel your emotions about the past, to honor them, and to let them go with love. Once you do that, you will be much more open to bigger and better things in the present and a more exciting future.
The present moment will eventually become the past so you want to make it count.