16 simple steps to change your past and create your future

Where do you
want to go? 

I've spent a lot of time working on mindset and on letting go of my past. I had plenty of stuff happen to me throughout my life, particularly my teen years, as I've written about here on occasion. 

There are days I still feel like I'm far behind where I could have been if I'd had better parents, better teachers, better role models. But I didn't. And as an adult, I am the only one responsible for where I am in my life. Sure, I was a little slow off the mark. I'd like to be financially independent like some of my high school mates. But I'm alive, and some of those high school mates aren't. There are no guarantees. 

We all make choices, even if they're unconscious. Our patterns and beliefs served us at points in time. We developed coping skills and habits to move us along in the world. But at some point, we have to look at whether these continue to serve us or hinder our progress. A lot of the time, they stop us from having the life we want. 

Our roadmap

I've written about Landmark's Forum, too. A few questions I took away, all those years ago, are:

• what did you make it mean?
• what's the payoff?

What those two questions refer to are the incidents that happened to us and the meaning we assigned them. Even pre-verbal, we can assign meaning to something that directly impacts our self-worth, but most often, it's something that happened when we were kids. Sometimes it's truly something heinous. I totally get that. I had a few of those things. Big things. Things I'm still not comfortable writing about here. But at some point, we have to decide if that's the roadmap we want.  

Problem is, a lot of us don't even know it's a map. But it is. How we interact with our past shows up in how we interact with the world. Is the world a friendly place? Is there enough to go around? How do you make your presence known? Do you often feel bad about what happened to you, or someone else? (Just so you know, they may be over it...)

Change your story...

We CAN change our past. No, we can't change what happened, but we can change how we see it, feel about it, and our response to it, which really does change it. Our minds are amazing things... We have the power. 

Edwene Gaines, a Unity minister in Alabama, overcame a life of poverty and tells her compelling life story in The Four Spiritual Laws of Prosperity. In a vignette that illustrates the power of changing our story about something that happened, she talks about changing her consciousness around sexual abuse, and the gift of an understanding heart that came from that. That's huge. I'm not suggesting you do that, but, how we view our past plays out in our future in one way or another.  

It's worth doing the deep work to uncover these beliefs, habits, world views, and coping mechanisms. Because if we don't know they're there, they will drive us based on that existing map, full of potholes and dead ends, and keep us from getting where we want to go. Or at least, it'll take a lot longer to get there.  

Don't believe me? Try it.  

Simple, but not easy

So, in that vein, I have a list of steps for your consideration that can help you change your past and create your future. They're things to note and things to do, all simple, but not easy: 

1. When you focus on whatever happened in your past, you give it power
2. When you focus on that past event, you give it meaning
3. Consider: how real and true is the meaning you gave it? was it someone else's opinion, and if yes, why did their opinion matter, and does it still? 
4. Now: assign new meaning to whatever happened to you—what good came from what happened? Feel it, believe it, know it in your bones. Make it real. 
5. And, devalue whoever else's opinion played in, because their opinion has less weight than yours; you are the expert on your life and who you are
6. Ask yourself: what's the payoff? Do you still get value by reliving what happened? For example, some of us like to be right, and by living in our past, we get to be right, or we get to be a victim, and not take responsibility for where we are in your lives
7. Ask yourself: what did you learn from what happened to you that has value for you now
8. Own that something good came from your experience
9. Forgive anyone who harmed you, or yourself, for harming yourself or others
10. When old tapes start to play restating that meaning, or that opinion, hit the stop button on your internal stereo
11. Put in a new tape that brings you joy; what do you want to tell yourself instead? You get to make it up, just like you did the first time, only this time with more wisdom and knowledge to draw from
12. Give yourself room to dream and create a better future
13. Decide that you deserve to have better problems, and that you can't carry the world on your shoulders
14. Do what's yours to do and let go of the rest, trusting that we all have something we can do, and we do it the best we can
15. Stop caring what anyone else thinks, and let go of the need for permission; chances are, if you're reading this, you're an adult, and you don't need permission, and anyone else's opinion of you or your actions is none of your business
16. Remember: all that old stuff doesn't serve you now unless you're getting a payoff, and then you have to ask if the payoff is worth it. All that old stuff showed up to keep you safe, but if you want to grow, evolve, and flourish, you have to change your mind about your experience and give it new meaning.

And a bonus step: To quote Richard Bach in Jonathan Livingston Seagull, "argue for your limitations and they're yours."


If you like this post, or this blog resonates with you in any way, please feel free to share it, comment below, or send me a message. I'm also available for one-on-one coaching—you can find me here.