How to let go of the past and create a whole new life

We all have a time and place we had a traumatic experience where we could not anticipate of moving forward. I know a person who failed in front of VCs while presenting his start up and promised never to go public again;  people who failed classes once and fear never to be at school. I know kids who were bullied at school and hate learning for it.

The world is created that way. The media celebrates who succeeds and hates who fails.

People don’t let go the past for three main reasons

1- The past has some horror in it.

I once was emotional in front of a friend telling him how I hate my little perfect looking life. I was terribly worried of the how the future turns out to be thinking of my shaky past. He immediately stopped me and told me that I have two choices in life: to cry about it and stay there for the rest of your life or stand up stop whining and create a new life.

I have passed most of life trying to please my high standard mind. And I had to get the perfect thing out of my work, which is sometimes impossible. My days of thinking about perfection created horror in the closet, which made me fear of going in to them.

2- The past has failure in it.

Most people don’t start because of fear. Fear of failure. Failure has two faces: psychological and emotional. The psychological one is more of in the mind. This happens on people who have a permanent mark on their mind because of abuse, accident. The emotional is the general fear of something. When people do they fear of what people say about them. It is amazing in this age people who don’t do are comfortable and people who do worry about what others would think. Opposing, the saying a wet person does not fear the rain, most cling to the past as a bench mark or their future.

3- The past took their energy.

There are energy intensive people, events. There are horror spouses, there are energy taking works. If you find yourself abused and sacrificing your time and yourself in to helping other without helping yourself it possible you would fear the future. Someone was telling me how he could not have a girlfriend because 6 years because his girlfriend of 2 years betrayed him and left him for someone else. He was not only sad because of losing her but he thought he does not have the energy anymore to have a new girlfriend.

4- There are constant reminders of the past in your area.

If you break up with your boyfriend in your current apartment, and you have been depressed in it for months, then it is possible that the room is killing you. Our mind works in association. Sometimes it associate events with places that has no direct relevance with.

5- The past is comfortable.

This is the opposite. When a kid stays for 40 years in his parents’ house, this could be a sign of comfort, if not a sign of being loser. I remember when an elder person tells a mother to not give dinner for their 30 years old child who happens to live with her. He thought this would push him out to have his own life. When your past is comfortable in your head and when you can’t change, this is the time to change.

6- You fear the unknown.

I don’t know why we fear the future. In fact, most smart people do fear the future. Life is to be lived with trial and errors, except on life and death issues. We fear whether if she is the one, whether the job we have is the right one, whether to change our location or not.

I have always wanted to mould out of the scale of the world that holds me back. I have classified my life in to smaller bits to see if I could see any gaps of light that could explode the whole thing and put me in a new universe. Change is not easy as it was as a child.  We knew we were changing when we pass from class to class when we grow public hair when we change shoe size…

But after we grow life seems to go blind, slow, killing us away. I have figured out three ways to how to let go of the past and build the future.

1-The past is issue only for over thinkers.

Over thinkers make something, but after washing the lovely part of their life. Overthinking is the new way to down. Over thinkers are procrastinators. They don’t start something until it is perfect. If you are dreaming the future by basing your data on your past failure, you mightn’t go further. This takes us to point two.

2-The past is a lesson.

If you have failed in the past, you are one step ahead from the rest. You have tested one way that will lead to failure. This is what Edison said at the end of thousands of similar experiments. You should find a way to learn from your past. Don’t run from them. Face them. Sit tight and write the. And figure out where the fault lies. And practice not to do them again. How to let go of the past starts by believing the past is just a lesson.

3- When you fail people will laugh.

This is wrong. How many times have you laughed when someone else failed. If you’re like the immature gigs on the internet then you have done it for a while. But is you being that decent guy with a passion for life then you probably pity them. Life is full of failure, ups and down. Your failure is a news for others, it is additional marketing. What if Elon Musk fails in his space x venture. The media would talk about him for a week or two then what? Then his failure is forgotten. Everyone will be waiting what he would do next. The world is on his side because he tried and failed. How to let go of the past starts from believing that people are not bothered with you failure but with your success.

4-Get rid of the reminders.

If you still hung your ex-husbands picture in them idle of the living room, then you are living in the past. If you can’t get rid of the car you had accident with and you developed fear of driving, get rid of that car. How to let go of the past starts with starting fresh. If you have loser friends who live in the past and remind you of your past cut them out. Start fresh.

Then do the following actions.

1-decide to change. Decision is hard to follow.

2-change where you stay.

Go to people like you who need change. Share your life. Share your story. Promise to change.

3-Destroy everything that pulls you back.

Change your house if you have to. Change you style and even your friends.

4-Write or record your journey and share it to the world, not all of them.

Write everything that you learnt on How to let go of the past . Note your challenges and how you solved them or even your emotions. This will give you a reference to your progress.

5-life is a progress.

Believe me you can’t throw all the garbage away with in a day or two or even a year. But through your grinding, you will find yourself being a changed person. Good luck with your present and future. How to let go of the past and create a whole new life continuous with believing that you can become better in time. And past doesn’t define who you are.