Nostalgia, regret, reminiscence, whatever you want to call it, means it is easy to get stuck in the past. Making peace with your past helps you to experience the present more fully. In a present state, your attitude towards life becomes lighter, and you can relate to others in a more meaningful way. If thoughts about the past are negative, they can consume your energy and make you feel heavy and tired. If you are carrying resentment or unresolved issues from the past, it can be difficult to feel truly happy and have the best possible relationships.
Step-by-step guide:
- Begin to understand your past and how you REALLY FEEL about it. This is not to wallow in self-pity or dig up unnecessary things but the first step to living an authentic life. This is much more relaxing than putting on a “mask” to cover up how you really feel about things. In the longer term, you will actually have more energy, as you will no longer try to escape from yourself or the feelings that you don’t understand and have kept buried because they don’t feel good.
- When you have a strong feeling around a situation, name how you feel, hurt for example, and validate the feeling as this helps to remove the emotional charge, or the energy around the feeling. When you have an emotional charge around something (also known as a reaction, being triggered or hooked), you have strong positive or negative feelings that can drive your behaviour often in ways that you later regret.
- Let yourself really feel this feeling of being hurt for a moment. Lovingly acknowledging your feelings as neither good nor bad, allows it to flow through your energy system. All pain is created by resistance to what is, Energy used to resist things, which could be used to enjoy present experiences.
- Accepting your past as it was, helps you to understand the way it has helped shape your character; giving you unique qualities, insights, and depth that you may not have otherwise experienced. Life can be a wonderful teacher, helping you to; develop compassion, expand your awareness, and open your heart. Acceptance and forgiveness are powerful tools in achieving inner peace. Insight and understanding will help you see that everybody does the best they can, with the skills they have at the time, and this applies to you too!
- Visualise (a very powerful tool) how you would like to be! You may prefer to feel loving, open and happy rather than hurt. Imagine yourself in this state (this is your true self). Imagine yourself being this way with your friends and loved ones.
- In your natural state, you mostly feel peaceful. When you have healed your past wounds, you are able to let external events flow around you, maintaining your peaceful state. (rather than being hooked or triggered by them). When you have made peace with the past rather than your life being consumed by drama and stress, you are more able to use your energy to manifest the life that you want to live.
TIP: When you find yourself in a situation where previously you would have felt reactive, but now you don’t, it is a sign that you have healed that part of yourself.
