Letting Go of Your Past to Create a New Future

We’ve all been hurt. You can’t be an adult — or teen — alive today who hasn’t experienced some kind of emotional pain.

It hurts. I get that.

But what you do with that hurt is probably more important than the hurt itself. Would you prefer to get back to being an active liver of life? Or do you prefer to ruminate endlessly about the past and something that cannot be changed?

In short, how do you let go of past hurts and move on? Let’s find out…

Blaming others for our hurt is what most of us start off doing. Somebody did something wrong, or they wronged us in some way that mattered to us. We want them to apologize. We want them to acknowledge what they did was wrong.

But blaming someone else for our hurt can backfire.

The problem with blaming others is that it can often leave you powerless. For example, you confront the person (your boss, your spouse, your parent, your child), and they say, “No, I didn’t,” or worse, “So what if I did?”, then you’re left with all this anger and hurt and no resolution.

People who hold on to these past hurts often relive the pain over and over in their minds. Sometimes a person can even get “stuck” in this pain, in this hurt, in this blame.

Whats the best way to get over this  ?

Here are the best 7 Ways to Let Go of Past Hurts

The only way you can accept new joy and happiness into your life is to make space for it. If your heart is filled full-up with pain and hurt, how can you be open to anything new?

1. Make the decision to let it go.

Things don’t disappear on their own. You need to make the commitment to “let it go.” If you don’t make this conscious choice up-front, you could end up self-sabotaging any effort to move on from this past hurt.

Making the decision to let it go also means accepting you have a choice to let it go. To stop reliving the past pain, to stop going over the details of the story in your head every time you think of the other person (after you finish step 2 below).

2. Express your pain — and your responsibility.

Express the pain the hurt made you feel, whether it’s directly to the other person, or through just getting it out of your system (like venting to a friend, or writing in a journal, or writing a letter you never send to the other person). Get it all out of your system at once. Doing so will also help you understand what — specifically — your hurt is about.

We don’t live in a world of black and whites, even when sometimes it feels like we do. While you may not have had the same amount of responsibility for the hurt you experienced, there may have been a part of the hurt that you are also partially responsible for. What could you have done differently next time? Are you an active participant in your own life, or simply a hopeless victim? Will you let your pain become your identity? Or are you someone deeper and more complex than that??

3. Stop being the victim and blaming others.

Being the victim feels good — it’s like being on the winning team of you against the world. But guess what? The world largely doesn’t care, so you need to get over yourself. Yes, you’re special. Yes, your feelings matter. But don’t confuse with “your feelings matter” to “your feelings should override all else, and nothing else matters.” Your feelings are just one part of this large thing we call life, which is all interwoven and complex. And messy.

In every moment, you have that choice — to continue to feel bad about another person’s actions, or to start feeling good. You need to take responsibility for your own happiness, and not put such power into the hands of another person. Why would you let the person who hurt you — in the past — have such power, right here, right now?

4. Focus on the present — the here and now — and joy.

Now it’s time to let go. Let go of the past, and stop reliving it. Stop telling yourself that story where the protagonist — you — is forever the victim of this other person’s horrible actions. You can’t undo the past, all you can do is to make today the best day of your life.

When you focus on the here and now, you have less time to think about the past. When the past memories creep into your consciousness (as they are bound to do from time to time), acknowledge them for a moment. And then bring yourself gently back into the present moment. 

Remember, if we crowd our brains — and lives — with hurt feelings, there’s little room for anything positive. It’s a choice you’re making to continue to feel the hurt, rather than welcoming joy back into your life.

5. Forgive them — and yourself.

We may not have to forget another person’s bad behaviors, but virtually everybody deserves our forgiveness. Sometimes we get stuck in our pain and our stubbornness, we can’t even imagine forgiveness. But forgiveness isn’t saying, “I agree with what you did.” Instead, it’s saying, “I don’t agree with what you did, but I forgive you anyway.”

Forgiveness isn’t a sign of weakness. Instead, it’s simply saying, “I’m a good person. You’re a good person. You did something that hurt me. But I want to move forward in my life and welcome joy back into it. I can’t do that fully until I let this go.”

Forgiveness is a way of tangibly letting something go. It’s also a way of empathizing with the other person, and trying to see things from their point of view.

And forgiving yourself may be an important part of this step as well, as sometimes we may end up blaming ourselves for the situation or hurt. While we indeed may have had some part to play in the hurt (see step 2), there’s no reason you need to keep beating yourself up over it. If you can’t forgive yourself, how will you be able to live in future peace and happiness?

I know this stuff is hard, that it’s incredibly hard to let go of one’s pain. If we’ve held onto it for a long time, it feels like an old friend. Justified. It would be sacrilegious to let it go.

6. Control Your Pride.

Pride is a good thing in certain contexts. Taken to extremes, however, it can be a destructive force that can ruin you professionally and personally. If your pride gets in the way, you may refuse to see your mistakes, and that means you will never learn.

This can stop you from improving at your work, or from seeing the other side in a fight with a partner, friend, or colleague. Pride can destroy relationships. So let it go before it does any more to erode your happiness.

7. Step outside of Your comfort zone

While your comfort area and your routines are important for creating a sense of stability and security in your day to day life, there are times when you need to learn to let go of them.

If you never step outside of your comfort zone, you never grow as a person, and your comfort zone remains small and contained. While doing something new may be uncomfortable at first, look at it as a chance to expand your comfort zone.

Over time, as you forge into new frontiers, you will give yourself the chance to be comfortable in a new environment, a new role, or a new relationship. You will free yourself to achieve more, to be more. Your comfort zone should be there to welcome you home each day, not to serve as a prison.  step outside  it AND LET GO

So do everybody — and yourself — a big favor: Let go of the pain. Do something different today and welcome happiness back into your life.

See You Tomorrow With Way #28

__________________________________

ABOUT MARWA ABD EL AZIZ

Marwa is a pioneer and expert in developing projects to build revenue, profits and corporate visibility  with extensive experience in all facets of  projects starting with site identification, developing and overseeing the implementation of the feasibility plans for projects; actively participating in the various financial analysis, acquisition, master planning, design review and tendering.

She is in the UAE Property Development industry Since 2001 during which she has coordinated all administrative activities pertaining to construction projects with an overall budget exceeding 5 billion.

Marwa holds an Architectural Engineering degree, PMP and Master in Project Management from the American Academy U.S.A.

More info: https://pdcconsult.com

_________________________________________________