The Past Will Eat You Alive—Live! By Ginger Rae Published by: O'Reilly Media, Inc. Buy now from: Amazon Amazon.ca Buy now from: Amazon.ca Amazon.com Buy now from: Amazon.com Read the entire series! It has long been known that the past can haunt us. A look at someone, for instance, in college and they remind you of a particular event you were involved in that left a scar. We might never tell them, but you see the look that passes across their face and it brings back that particular incident. Your mind starts to wander, maybe to the next guy in that class who was mean and you start to associate that with being hurt. After a while, these people and things in our past might become almost synonymous with pain. It's sort of like the way a child will draw demons on their chest when they get a booger in their nose (they seem to think the booger is the demon and of course it is, sometimes). The booger is not really a demon, but to the child who is afraid of a booger, the booger must seem like it is. It could be that you were taught something and now, all you know to do is react to that piece of knowledge in the most negative way possible. You might be one of those people who simply is fearful of spiders or a situation that makes you feel afraid, alone or sad. It doesn't matter. You've been put in a position where if the only way you know to react to that thing that causes you stress is through an emotion, that's what you will do. The same holds true when I am with someone who is being particularly negative. We become caught up in the negative energy being shared by someone and, instead of taking steps to remove ourselves from it, we allow it to be our story. If I am standing next to a child or a friend who is being negative, and that negativity is brought to a boil, I too will become enmeshed in the event or situation. In some cases, such as with negative people, my body and mind will feel numb because I have been exposed to the same thing repeatedly and the only way I know how to deal with it is to become numb. This is not healthy. Not all of the time, but often enough that it has to be mentioned. The way we deal with negativity, especially in situations that are forced upon us such as work, school or when we are alone, can be damaging in very real ways. When it comes to the past being our present, however, we have to examine more carefully what we are doing. We are aware that a lot of the time when we look at our past, we are doing it without a positive frame of mind. We might be focused on some mistake we made or a situation where we felt bad. If we look at it in that way, we will naturally become defensive. We are doing that because we know that the mistake or whatever it was was the cause of the negative emotion and, if that's how we examine the past, we will keep it as a present problem. It becomes even harder to change because you really can't let go of it without re-experiencing it. So you have to put up some mental boundaries around the past so that it doesn't take over your life. It's like if you are a smoker and you think of that addiction as a really unpleasant past time. Forget about the cigarette, right? It's gone, it's done. You were never a smoker. Well, as much as you know that, you are still smoking cigarettes. It's because you have put up a boundary where you are allowing it to be a part of your life. You had a smoking problem, you decided not to have one any longer, and now you are smoking as part of a life without the smoking problem. So you are putting the addiction back in your life. Now, in a way, you are allowing the problem to have the same affect on you that it had before you had the boundaries. In other words, there is no new information coming in. You are not learning anything new. You're just still experiencing what you already experienced. It is important to say that some people have a more difficult time getting rid of an addiction. Their body and mind has become accustomed to that drug. But, in general, the more difficult a person has it to let go of the past, the easier it will be to make sure you can let it go. This will be helpful when we examine our relationships with other people, some of whom are more difficult to forgive and others who we simply can't let go of. What is done is done, right? We can go to the grave with it, but we are living with it, moment by moment. When a relationship with another person is bad or difficult, it is important to examine your life and determine if the event or person is actually a part of your life. Are you allowing the event to affect you? Do you feel like that person caused your problems? Do you allow the past to ruin your present? For instance, some of us have a difficult time getting over the pain of a bad breakup. They really were bad breakups and we were certainly hurt. However, the problem is that we live with those things and allow them to haunt our present. The reality is that the past was bad. We can accept that, right? But we have to let it go. We might feel like it wasn't good enough or what we expected or that we deserve better. But guess what? We got out of it and it is time to move on. Yes, you may have feelings about it and you may have things you don't like about the person who hurt you. It may even be true that you made mistakes that played a part in the situation. But your mistakes didn't mean the breakup was your fault or that it is your fault. It's just a fact that your mistakes led to a situation in which you were hurt. It may be a painful situation, but it doesn't have to be permanent. Your life does not have to stay the way it is because of some bad situation that happened in the past. Letting go of the past is one of the ways we change our future. You can let go of your past if you can think of it as something that has happened to you, perhaps even something that has been painful. But it isn't who you are today. It doesn't define who you are. And, even though you might have lived through it, it is now gone. You can accept that it happened and maybe, if you look at it objectively, there is some good that came out of it. But don't look at it as the whole reason you are the way you are today. You have to keep it in perspective. You can do this. It is really hard, but you can. It doesn't mean that we forget about the past. We have to always remember where we came from. What we were like, what we learned, and all of that. But to make sure the events that happened to us do not define us, you have to remember to keep a positive outlook. When someone hurts you, even if it was the person who broke your heart and caused you so much pain, that is part of who you are and what you know. Don't let it define you. That way, every day when you get up, it's a new day and a new way of being. You've got to get out of the prison that you put yourself in by hanging on to something that was bad. Let it go, let it go. Do not let a bad relationship or a bad decision haunt your future. If you're willing to let it go, if you're willing to give yourself a break and try something new, it can become a better day. You can get out of prison, out of pain and you can make the next day, if you let the pain build up and build up, truly a better day. You deserve to be happy. Your past doesn't have to define you. "My father worked all the time, and yet I never seemed to get anything from him." —Paul Gilbert, drummer for Van Halen Dennis Prager’s book is called Still Reeling: Coping With The Pain Of Divorce and the Long Struggle For Peace Of Mind. If you liked this story, please consider sharing it with your friends. We'd really appreciate it! The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*** (The Book) - A MUST READ. 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