This piece touches on painful memories and/or old mistakes. If you’re in a raw place right now, it’s OK to save this for later, or to read it slowly, just a little bit at a time. <3
On some level, I actually used to think I could think my way out of my past. Like if I replayed the situations enough times, I’d eventually end up with a version of events I could live with.
Maybe you know that feeling too? Lying awake until the wee hours of the night, running through what happend back there, maybe something you said, or didn’t say, or did, or wish you hadn’t done. Trying to edit a mistake or time in your history that’s long over.
I figured out the hard way, though, that you can’t think your way into a different past.
BUT you can think your way into a different relationship with your past.
That might sound like a small distinction, but that distinction can actually be the difference between depression and inner peace. And that is no exaggeration.
You Can’t Change What Happened
You can’t go back and undo the past. You can’t hand past you the wisdom you’ve learned (the hard way).
And yet, we re-play, we re-analyze, we imagine another ending, we punish ourselves over and over and over for choices we made before we had the tools and the self-awareness we have now, or we review those traumatic memories as if to un-do them. It’s like on some level, we believe if we feel enough guilt or see it clearly enough, it could rewrite the record.
Reality check: It won’t.
Inner peace, as opposed to depression and anxiety, doesn’t start when you decide everything that happened back was fine.
Inner peace with your past starts by realizing:
Yes, it happened. And you can choose to let go of your past like a balloon into the sky.
Responsibility Does Not Equal Self-Imprisonment
You can own the ugliness of your past without deciding you are your past.
You can admit it was a dark time without seeing your whole life as a dark experience.
You can grieve time you can’t get back without believing your whole life is unrecoverable.
You’re allowed to wish it had been different, and you’re also allowed to stop living inside that wish.
You did the best you could with what you had. Maybe you were scared, or angry, or lonely, or living with a situation that was so much harder than anyone realizes, or maybe you were just trying to get through the day. Whatever your reality back then, this I know for certain: You didn’t know then what you know now.
Whatever it was — the person who lived through that or made that choice isn’t sitting here reading this. You are. And you’re not the same person.
Your life circumstances have changed.
You’ve changed.
You’ve learned things.
You’ve lived with the consequences.
And you’ve come out the other side able to see, clearly, how what happened back there is truly over.
Forgiveness Does Not Equal Condoning
It’s easy to confuse the two. Forgiving someone, or yourself, doesn’t mean saying it didn’t matter.
On the contrary, it means saying “It did matter, I learned from it, and I’m done living inside the past, forever.
There’s a point where reflection turns into rumination, and even hatred. But you don’t have to keep hating the past to become who you want to be, who you’re meant to be in spite of everything that happened. Hatred, whether it’s for someone else who wronged you or for yourself for what you’ve done, literally does the opposite of what we hope … it keeps us stuck.
So, please, when you find yourself regretting, ruminating, hating, judging, try this instead: Say, “I’m allowed to accept my past and release its hold on me, and I’m allowed to feel peace.
All of that can be true at once. None of it cancels out the rest.
A Few Small Shifts That Make All the Difference
Instead of asking “Why did they/Ido that?” ask,“What was going on for me back then?”
Instead of “How could I have been so stupid?” ask, “What didn’t I understand yet?”
Instead of “They or I ruined everything” ask, “What can I build from here?”
Instead of “I wish I could change the past” ask “What do I want to do differently starting now?”
That’s really the whole shift. You stop scanning the past for a different ending and start paying attention to the beginning that’s actually in front of you right now.
Letting go doesn’t mean forgetting, or pretending it didn’t happen, or brushing past the people it affected or how affected you. But it does mean you stop demanding that yesterday magically change before you’re allowed to feel good today.
You get to keep the lesson and wisdom without carrying and being the full weight of it forever.
When the Memories Come Back …
And they will. That’s normal.
When they do, try not to climb back inside them.
Just notice.
Breathe.
Say, Yeah, that happened. I wish it had gone differently. But I’m not there anymore … I’m here now.
Then come back.
To the room you’re actually in.
To whoever’s in front of you.
To your breath, your morning, your dog or cat, to the people who are still around, to the choices that are actually yours to make today < because that’s the only place your life can still move >.
Yes, of course your past really did shape you and wound you or others, but it doesn’t get to run the rest of the show.
You’re allowed to put it down.
You’re allowed to forgive yourself or others, slowly, imperfectly, more than once if you need to.
You’re allowed to grieve what happened and still build something good after it.
So, no, you don’t find peace by wishing for a different past … you find it by realizing that the past is finished.
But you’re not.
Anitra Lahiri 