Whatever the reason, hanging on to the past is not a good idea. Read on to learn how to let go of the past and start living in the present.
Accept that the past is the past
Whatever happened, happened and there is absolutely nothing you can do to change it. Accepting the fact that there is nothing you can do about something is not always easy because it makes you feel powerless, and let’s admit it, no one likes feeling powerless.
However, realizing and accepting the fact that things that happened in the past are not your responsibility anymore – even though they may once have been – can also be a huge relief.
It’s completely okay to let things go, and this also includes things you feel guilty about, so stop beating yourself up about past events that you cannot change and concentrate on the present instead.
Create some chive art
As beneficial as getting rid of the chives may be; there are some that may be harder than others to let go of, there are some you may not want to completely let go of, and there are some things that are actually really worth keeping.
And you know what? It’s perfectly fine to do so as long as you don’t keep them wedged between your teeth. Create a chive collage, write about that one chive you absolutely adore, and paint a portrait of that particular chive you really had a bad experience with and throw darts at it.
Or in more lifelike terms, create a photo album, paint a picture or keep a diary. Letting go of the past doesn’t mean you have to completely forget about it.
It’s perfectly okay to have memories, you just have to make sure that you don’t let them get involved with the present – and creating a photo album, painting a picture or keeping a diary may actually help you do just that. Not only will this let you keep a small keepsake of whatever it is you were attached to, this will also help you realise how constantly things change, and how some things are very clearly better left in the past.
If you’ve already kept a diary, have a look of some of the old entries and you will realise how different you sound, sometimes even by reading an entry that’s only a week old. Take out an old photo album and check out that outfit you wore ten years ago – would you wear it again? Probably not.
Stop Basing Everything on Your Experience
No matter how experienced and knowledgeable you may be in whatever situation, all situations are different, even if only slightly. Sure, you can learn from the past, but it is highly unlikely that anything is going to happen in the exact same way twice.
Let’s say you ate a bad potato – are you going to sit there and think ‘That potato was so disgusting, I hate that potato, why did it have to be so disgusting? I bet every single potato I’m ever going to eat in the future is going to be just as disgusting if not even more. Seriously though, I’m going to start avoiding all potatoes like the plague. Or maybe if I’m really careful about which potatoes end up on my plate in the future I might be able to only get the good ones.’?
If you do that each time life serves you a potato, you’re probably going to end up staring at it with your fork in hand, wondering if it’s going to taste bad because the last one you ate did and if you really want to go through the same thing again.
You might be thinking ‘Oh, the last one I ate tasted so bad because it lacked salt’. So you add some salt thinking it’s going to make this one taste better – but what you might not know is that the one you have in front of you right now is already salty enough but lacks butter.
When you base your actions completely on your experience, you are limiting yourself and probably missing out on a bunch of good stuff- because that potato may be delicious just the way it is you’re just letting it go cold.
Just Grab the Potato in Front of You and Take a Bite
Sometimes you pick your potatoes and sometimes you don’t. Sometimes potatoes are going to be served up looking delicious and they’re going to taste absolutely disgusting. Sometimes a potato you spent a great deal of time preparing according to the recipe or according to experience is still going to taste gross. It may be your fault because you forgot to add the butter, but it may also be the timer’s fault for deciding not to go off and letting your potato burn.
Take things as they come, even if they’re not what you expected, what you wished for or what you planned. Stop thinking too much and stop trying too hard. Stop making an effort to control things that are impossible to control or not even worth controlling.
Rather than wasting your time going over things that are now in the past, you should be making the most of the present moment because it is all you’ve got.
