07: The case for letting go.

You’re built on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes of the past, but don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy, any of your time, any of your space.” — Johnny Cash“

It’s time. I understand. It was rough, people were mean, and you didn’t ask for it, but it sought you out and delivered year after year of disappointment, betrayal, and unfulfilled promises. Because of that, we all know that this means that our future is full of the same problems and people. Except it isn’t, and it’s time to put the bags down and move forward.

There are things that you want for your future. Goals that you want to hit, places you want to visit, and people you want to surround yourself with, but..but..but..the past though. Have you been hanging out with Doc Brown and built your own flux capacitor and DeLorean? Have you linked up with Rick and Morty and freely time travel traveled as you pleased and corrected all of the injustices that have befallen you? Nah, I didn’t think so. So now that’s solved, let’s begin the business of accepting the. past, learning from the past, but using the data to prevent future mistakes, not predict the future.

Here’s the thing, it’s not easy. Nothing ever is. If you can accept the fact that it will be extremely difficult to accept your past, forgive people who have hurt you, and focus on your future goals, that is a major step in the right direction. I was speaking with a close friend of mine about this topic and I explained it like this. Our brains are a hard drive. They come prebuilt with a set amount of memory and an operating system. If we have, for example, 200GB of memory, we allow the negative parts of our past to dominate 199GB of that memory, as well as 98% of the CPU. Have you had a computer that is running very slow, won’t load any apps, and freezes every time you press a button. You take it into your local computer shop and they tell you, “your memory is full. Unless you delete a lot of things off your hard drive, this computer won’t function properly.” Unlike a computer, you can’t swap hard drives or buy an external one. You have to delete that stuff. That means figuring out a way to get rid of all that emotional baggage so that you can free up space for your future.

I love the serenity prayer. If you have never heard it, it goes like this: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference”. Accept the past, because you can’t change it. Have courage in changing what you can, your attitude and your effort. Develop wisdom, so that you can tell which is which.

Until next time.

-A

“Everyone you meet comes with baggage. Find someone who is willing to help you unpack.” — Ziad K. Abdelnour