Even people who seem like they are “model citizens” often have one or two skeletons lurking in the closet. Films and television tends to teach us that these secrets can be explosive – robbery, abuse and so on – but for the average person, they’re far more mundane than that.
Take a moment and think about your past – are there any issues that you remember immediately, and recoil at the memory in the same instance? These are the things you may need to deal with. To truly advance in life, you need to learn and accept your past – be it an embarrassing moment or something far more sinister.
A good way to begin is to write down the negative experience in full. If it is something embarrassing or you’re ashamed of it, don’t worry, only you will ever see it. Write down exactly what happened, why it effected you so badly and what kind of effect it still has on today. Instead of rejecting and simply dismissing the thought, spend a good half an hour really thinking about it – for some, this is the first time in many years that they’ve really relived in the memory in full, and the process can be liberating. However, it can also be upsetting, so try and bear in mind that you’re doing this to help you grow in life.
Another, more advanced technique, is to take the written experience and send it to yourself in the mail. When it arrives, open it and read it again. As this is happening on a fresh day, it allows time for perspective and sense to come through and you should feel slightly differently to how you did at the time of writing.
At this point, if there’s something you can do to rectify the past, do it. It may be contacting someone you had a fight with or apologizing to friends or loved ones for past behaviors. The point is that if you can do something to correct or reduce your past mistakes, then do try and do it, fit will really help you move on. You may need to push yourself a bit through the unpleasant aspect of it but it is worth it in the long run.
With this done – or if it wasn’t something you could rectify – then complete the exercise by destroying the written text. Fire, as long as it is done safely, is most people’s preference for this, as you can watch your past burn away slowly rather than a sudden and almost violent action like tearing it apart. Watch the past go up in flames and see that you can finally release all that negative energy surrounding it.
If necessary you may need to repeat the process more than once, especially for an event that was very negative. But by confronting an uncomfortable past, you are opening doors for a more pleasant future. Good luck.
