“When you are too caught up in the past, you miss what is in front of you.”

“But we had good times.”

“What about all the nice cards he wrote?”

“I can’t believe it’s over.”

How do we move forward if we are stuck in the past and it’s haunting our present?

After having experienced a divorce, I was stuck. I was thinking of all of our past memories. Asking the “What if’s”, and trying to wrap my head around how 23 years with someone was just over.

The advice I would get, “You are better off”, “Just forget about it”, “Today is a new day”, “Just stop thinking about it, what good does it do?”

When you have experienced a divorce or challenging transition in your life, we tend to hold onto those past experiences and can often struggle letting them go so we can move forward.

It’s necessary to allow yourself to grieve, but there is a point when you have to make a choice to stay in in the cycle of the grieving process or start to be more present so you can start looking ahead. Time only heals if you are willing to move along with it.

In order to move forward one has to make the choice to let go and start focusing on your present first, and then your future. You can’t expect that if you are constantly obsessing over the past that one day you will magically wake up and be happy. You have to be willing to put in the effort to move forward.

By ‘letting go’ I don’t mean forget, your memories will always be there, but it’s important if you want to start moving forward into a new chapter of life that you stop analyzing and stop rethinking about the situation(s) that have happened over and over again.

If you are stuck in the past, you can’t and won’t move forward—its’ a simple as that.

For example, let’s say you are obsessing over your divorce, what lead to it and how it ended. Now when you start to consider a new connection with somebody else, you are already anticipating that that relationship will end as well.

You stop yourself from opening up or even perhaps dating at all because the past experience with your divorce are consuming your thoughts.

Our past is a part of us. We can’t go back and change it, all we can do is cherish our happy memories, learn from our experiences, analyze what that experience taught you, and then use that as you press forward.

If you choose to only focus on the negativity and sadness of your past, you are going to get into a cycle that will be hard to crawl out of.

I’m not suggesting you try and forget about your past and never look back, but if you are living in the past, you are missing out on the what the world is offering you today and tomorrow.

Isn’t it more exciting (ok and yes, maybe a little scary) to think about what’s untouched and what lies ahead—instead of rehashing the past which has already come and gone?

Do you want to create new memories?

Do you want to experience life?

Do you want to grow as a person?

Confused on where to start or how? A baby step in that direction is to bring in the present moment when the past starts to invade your thoughts. Neuro-Linguistic Programming has many techniques that can assist you with controlling those pesky unwanted thoughts.

To learn more about it, CLICK HERE.

Remember, You Got This!

XOXO~