The Art of Letting Go and Moving Forward

The world is composed of only three zones – the past, the present, and the future. Focusing your mind exclusively on the past or the future  will render you ineffective while you are in the present. The more you dwell on the past, the more the past limits and controls your future.

However, you do have the power in the present moment to change your thoughts, feelings, and attitude about  what happened to you in the past, whether in your childhood, or what happened in your love life the day before yesterday. In effect, you can choose either to react or to respond to your past

Reacting to your past is the process of allowing your thoughts to trigger and stir up the same negative emotions about past events you didn’t like when you experienced them the first time. Responding to your past is the process of accepting where you are in the present as an okay place to be, and then dealing with your past as nothing more than a stream of already lived events that have no direct power over your present other than which you give it. When you choose to dredge up unpleasant memories or thoughts of what should have, could have, or ought to have been, you have punished no one except yourself. If you center the blame on other people, events, or bad luck, you would end up experiencing the negative emotions of anger, hate, self-pity, revenge, and resentment.

Remember, the past is no longer real. Your only reality is the present moment. Your past is only a set of thoughts that could just as easily have come from a movie as from your own experiences. That stream of thoughts cannot possibly control your life or your future – unless you allow it to occupy your mind and divert your attention from the task at hand. Anytime that happens, take back control of your own mind by refocusing on the present.

In taking control of your life you must begin with a clean slate. That means dumping the garbage of the past and its hold on you. Your past, no matter what it contained, can be either a quagmire of negative emotions to drag into your future or a solid platform of opportunities for future accomplishments.




  • Teresita Tayanes

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    • Well said. Many of us still dwell in our past that is why many of us can't still find a way to move on and left behind all the bitter sweet memories of the past. Like for example, if we have a loved one who are very close to our heart untimely passed away we cannot accept the fact that he or she is gone. Why? Because we are still clinging with the memories of them and acceptance of the truth is hard for us to do for those bereaved family longing for losing a love one. You know what people say that there's always a grieving period? Inspite of the misery, the sorrow, hurt and lonileness that we felt we must learn the art of letting go for us to accept the pain. In that matter we will try to accept the truth that our love one is passed away without even coming back and we must start life over. Start a new life. Be grateful to God that were still alive inspite of our wretchedness. Spend our life here on earth with a purpose. For life and death are only understood by love ;-)

    • Absolutely true. Human beings are known to hold onto to things that really don't matter in their lives. They will keep bringing in the old stuff that will definitely distort their future. If I was to ask how many of us have a grudge that they are holding onto right now from way back in the days? Am sure one or two people will say th3y have something that has been bothering them about a friend or a relative and they just don't know how to get rid of it. It's very simple just let it go,quit thinking about it. It will just keep dragging you behind with your progress.
      I learned one thing, and it really helped me a lot. Someone did something to me that really hurt me, and I kept it in my heart. In short I had a grudge with this person u
      For so long and it always used to hurt me whenever I met that person. My mood just used to change drastically and i just get pissed. But when I heard a sermon about forgiveness, i had a change of heart. I decided to forgive that person and remove that grudge from heart. Note I did not tell that person personally I just pray3d about it and God was able to lift that burden from my heart. I suddenly felt so good and so free like never before. So forgiveness is key to a free and peaceful life. Holding onto something that gives you no joy and brings you sadness and frustrations is not worth it you deserve better and you know it.

    • The past is the past no matter what you do you won't be able to change the past. But the past can be a lesson, if you did a mistake in the past, you must remember that past and never repeat the same mistake again.

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