If you don’t choose differently, your past will choose for you

A lot of people say, “Leave the past in the past,” and then they tell you to "focus on the future".

A good old human way of looking at things, focusing on everything but the present 🤡

Looking to your past without deciding what you want to do with what you find is like a puzzle half complete.

Most of us go digging into our pasts to understand why we are the way we are. We trace the traits we dislike back to origin points.

“I can’t connect with people because of this.”

“I ruin relationships because of that.”

“I hate this part of myself, but now I know where it came from.”

We turn our circumstances into justification. We wear our pain like a badge for self-sabotage.

But it doesn’t take a genius to see that’s not a real solution. It’s just a false sense of safety, and worst of all, it convinces you that growth isn’t possible.

Here’s the part people skip, It’s not wrong to look at your past. In fact, it’s important.

Your thoughts, your personality, your patterns, they’ve all been shaped by what came before. But the point isn’t to stay there.

The person you were raised to be in the first 20 percent of your life, doesn’t have to dictate the next 80.

If there are parts of yourself you don’t like, don’t settle. Don’t wallow. Don’t self-soothe your way into staying stuck.

Instead, ask, who do I want to become despite it all? What traits would that version of me have? And what sits between where I am and where I want to be?

That space in the middle, that’s the work. It will come with pain. With challenge. With identity shifts and uncomfortable truths.

Which is why staying stuck is often easier and sometimes, oddly comforting.

A comforting feeling I’ve found difficult to explain. I used to look back at my past just to feel sad. To feel comforted by the story that I was behind.

Like I’d been dealt a bad set of cards, and that made it okay because it wasn’t in my control.

Until one day, I realised it was. And if I didn’t change, this would be my story forever.