You’ll be stuck in the past when you think it has a vital role to play in your chances of future success. However, it’s not true that you cannot thrive again because of your mistakes and past failures. The future promises a lot if only you are willing to let go of the past. This chapter examines why the past doesn’t define the future of an individual.

The Past is a Closed Chapter

Treat your life like a book. Your experiences are previous chapters. The present moment is the chapter you are reading. In most cases, you don’t go back to a chapter you have read. You only flip back to those pages when you have something you didn’t get correctly. In some cases, you also flip back to that chapter when you find a similar concept in the current chapter. The implication of this is that you should only remember your past when you need to draw lessons from it.

You will not make progress if you remain stuck in a chapter of a book and refuse to read on. In fact, you might find better explanations regarding a particular concept you find difficult to understand in the subsequent chapters. Life is like that. Sometimes, you will not understand why some things happened the way they did until you forge ahead. For example, you might find out why your former boss treated you wrongly later. It could have been because of a jealous colleague....

In the words of Chuck Palahniuk, “Your past is just a story. And once you realize this, it has no power over you.” These words were spoken some years ago. However, they are still as potent and relevant as the first time they were spoken. If only many people realized this simple but extremely powerful truth, life would have been easier for them. We would have had more individuals that are less cranky and frustrated in the world.

Some people struggle to overcome their past demons. For instance, bad experience from their past relationships often hinder them from building robust and happy relationships in the future. They built a mental wall and find it difficult to trust another person or commit into another relationship. Letting past experiences interfere with our future is detrimental to our growth and mental wellbeing. This chapter will explore some vital things about the past you need to know.

Life is a Journey

This statement might sound like a cliché, but it’s not. You have to realize that life is a journey. In fact, it is an experience we are all having for the first and last time. In other words, no one has been to this world before that is now having another opportunity to live it all over again. Indeed, there are people who are experienced in this world. However, their experiences are all parts of their journey in life...