Informative

How Can We Make Peace with The Past?

Our experience plays a significant role in what we are today. Our past experiences have a blueprint to a happy life, but only if we learn from them. Past experiences don’t only mean happy times. Many times, and most of the time, those memories are full of losses, sorrows, failures, injustices, and regrets, which poke our mind from time to time, prohibiting us from moving on towards peaceful lives. In this blog, we will look at methods by which we can make peace with our past.

Why should we let go of our past?

 Here are the reasons ‘why we should let go of our dark and gloomy past, which is holding us back.’

 -What’s done has been done. You cannot change the past. But, you can choose how you let it affect you.

 -To invite new things in life, you must have a new space in your present, and for that, you must clear out the clutter of past incidents and past relationships from your life. 

 -Learning from the failures in the past, and by overcoming the challenges, you rise by becoming a more robust and capable individual.

 -When you drop the emotional baggage, you feel free to see the new possibilities.

What happens when you hold down to your bitter past?

 Every second you spend entangling yourself in the past web is each one second you are missing in the present. Past events are only helpful for taking a lesson from them and moving on. The Divine has gifted everyone with a solid intellect to get over the past sorrows. When you let these feelings get over you, you are insulting your God gifted powers.

For example, holding down the grudges do not serve the purpose other than something like a badge of honor, that you have been a victim, the sufferer. But, apart from increasing the darkness within, it doesn’t possess any significance. And hence, people give you the advice to move on.  

But why does ‘just let it go’ not work?

 People give this advice to others all the time. People advise others to put everything behind and move on, but this advice hardly ever works, like everything in life is not that simple as it seems. The stuff that happened to you has happened to you. For letting it go immediately after someone gives you this advice, you need to be a Yogi, Saint, or a computer to erase that memory from your hard drive. And hence, this advice, without a plan of action, seldom works.

You must keep one thing in mind: simply forgetting about that incident is just repressing the memory. This habit is called a regressive coping mechanism, and it works like a charm at first. But that particular incident or memory you are trying to forget often comes back to haunt you when you least expect it. Accepting, understanding, and learning from these incidents is the only way to deal with the mal past.

How to make peace with your past?

 Vent out

 Sorrow, anger, jealousy creates a pressure cooker-like situation in our subconscious, and if it’s not vented out, it could lead to an emotional burst. Healthily expressing your pain is essential to the process of making peace with the past.

For instance, one can directly speak to the person responsible for the distress now in a non-confrontational manner. If that’s not possible, one can keep a journal or write a letter that he will never send.

Expressing your pain, not blaming and punishing yourself, is vitally important, and sharing this with someone will help you ease the pain.

Focus on today

 Easier said than done. When we are genuinely hurt, it seems impossible to do this. Practicing mindfulness or meditation will help to explore your current emotions, feelings, and sensations.

Meditation trains your brain to view your problems from a third perspective. This approach not only eases the pain but helps to find a better solution without involving your current emotions in it. If, while meditating, you find yourself constantly dwelling on the past incidents, try to get a mantra from a renowned Guru to bring your focus on now.

Seek Help

 Letting it go is a complex and challenging process. Nothing will be better if you could manage to seek help in this journey of moving on. A trusted family, a good friend, or a professional counselor will help you in this process.

At this age, many people are suffering from the same issue that you are facing. They even have the same goals as you. You can look for support groups, where you will meet such people, where it will be easy for you to take on the journey of making peace with your past, with few supporting companions.

Mindfulness

 Let’s face the fact that no one wants to be miserable by dwelling in the past, but if you do not control your thoughts, you are not making it easy for yourself to move on. Observing and realizing the periodical thoughts coming to you from the past is the first step to not engage with them.

Look Ahead

 We often dwell on the past because we are afraid of the hardships in the possible future. We struggle to let go of our history because we wish things would go back the way they were somewhere deep down within us.

When you move on, you allow yourself the possibility of a bright future. Setting up new goals, new hobbies will redirect your energy and will assure your growth. A dream board loaded with pictures, inspirational quotes, stories, and drawings for visualizing what your future should look like, will give you something to look forward to.

Forgive others and yourself.

 Forgiveness will require work from you. Just saying, ‘I forgive you won’t do anything on your behalf. It is said that no one can forgive others without some compassion and empathy. Hence, it involves a deep understanding of the person who has offended you and the circumstances in which he has offended you.

Your commitment to forgiveness will be the first step, and prepare to face the resurfacing negative emotions, even after you have decided to forgive.

Many times, forgiving yourself is often harder than forgiving others. Self-acceptance is one of the most challenging things to do in life. First, you must acknowledge the mistake out loud, considering the mistake as a learning curve.

Meditating will help you to have a conversation with the self-critique living within you. Journaling will help you to self-assess your strengths and weaknesses. Mindfulness will help you realize self-critical thoughts appear within you, and you can easily let them pass without indulging in them.

Forgiveness is the most important factor while making peace with your past as it allows you to let go of your anger, guilt, shame, vengeance, and many other negative feelings within you. When you identify those feelings, you will realize how forgiveness is freeing to the soul when you give them a voice.

Working on your personal growth and surrounding yourself with positive people will boost your confidence. Motives matter, and hence, it’s imperative to look beyond yourself. Giving back is one of the critical parts of the healing process while making peace with your past.

With intense Sadhana and discipline, a true seeker can easily make his way while making peace with his past. With the help of Guru, a Sadhak can acquire the lost self-knowledge by cultivating detachment from worldly possessions and by withdrawing all of his senses, his mind, and concentration towards the Divine within.

We hope this blog helped you to gain some insight into making peace with your past.

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