“As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live (Goethe).”
Learning to trust ourselves takes time. It takes a lot of letting go. It takes heaps of courage to dare new things without a safety net. When we reach the place of where we can trust ourselves, everything changes for the better.
What if I decided the past can’t hurt or haunt me? Every human has scars, emotional or physical, from past hurts. Physical scars heal over, but the emotional pain often remains. The worse part of the pain occurs when we allow the past emotional and physical scars to continue to hurt us over and again. We allow the memories to haunt us like Dickens’ ghost from Christmas past. We may not be able to prevent these thoughts from randomly popping into our mind. We can make a decision not to join them. Let the thoughts stay as long as they want and tell them not to let the door hit them in the ass when they leave. Don’t give them power by reminiscing with them.
You already have everything you want. It may not be packaged the way you want it packaged. When you let go of what you think you want, you will see, perhaps for the first time, everything you really wanted was always with you.
“Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward.”
Focus on the present.
Returning your focus to the present will help you accept and let go of what you cannot control. It will also help you realize that you can’t change the past, and that the future hasn’t happened yet, so it’s a waste of time to keep thinking about them. (This doesn’t mean that you are unaware of what happened in the past or what is about to happen in the future.) Try taking a deep breath and asking yourself how you are feeling right now.
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If you consider a bad childhood, bad financial decisions made years ago, or a breakup as a negative self-fulfilling prophecy for your future, your future will be pretty gloomy. Instead, take life’s challenges as lessons, put them in your past, and consider yourself stronger for overcoming the negatives in your past.
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Almost everyone has experienced being wronged by someone. . . . But hanging on to those negative feelings can do great harm to your health. Forgiving a person who has wronged you is never easy, but dwelling on those events and reliving them over and over can fill your mind with negative thoughts and suppressed anger. When you learn to forgive, you are no longer trapped by the past actions of others and can finally feel free. Practicing forgiveness can have powerful health benefits. Observational studies, and even some randomized trials, suggest forgiveness is associated with lower levels of depression, anxiety, and hostility; reduced substance abuse; higher self-esteem; and greater life satisfaction.
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Give all to love;
Obey thy heart;
Friends, kindred, days,
Estate, good fame,
Plans, credit, and the muse;
Nothing refuse.
‘Tis a brave master,
Let it have scope,
Follow it utterly,
Hope beyond hope;
High and more high,
It dives into noon,
With wing unspent,
Untold intent;
But ’tis a god,
Knows its own path,
And the outlets of the sky.
‘Tis not for the mean,
It requireth courage stout,
Souls above doubt,
Valor unbending;
Such ’twill reward,
They shall return
More than they were,
And ever ascending.
Leave all for love; –
Yet, hear me, yet,
One word more thy heart behoved,
One pulse more of firm endeavor,
Keep thee to-day,
To-morrow, for ever,
Free as an Arab
Of thy beloved.
Cling with life to the maid;
But when the surprise,
Vague shadow of surmise,
Flits across her bosom young
Of a joy apart from thee,
Free be she, fancy-free,
Do not thou detain a hem,
Nor the palest rose she flung
From her summer diadem.
Though thou loved her as thyself,
As a self of purer clay,
Tho’ her parting dims the day,
Stealing grace from all alive,
Heartily know,
When half-gods go,
The gods arrive.
