“How to change your past”, a topic like this usually gets a lot of raised brows. The simple reason being that it is impossible or more accurately, we think it is impossible to change the past. But what if there was actually a way to change your past and you got to know of it? What would you do with such knowledge?
Just thinking about this possibility is enough an aperture for hope to trickle into our soul. Why not open the flood gates and let hope rain… no limits, no boundaries?
We can think of the past in two ways: the incidental past and the experiential past. The incidental past has to with the way events unfolded.
In the incidental past, we say hurtful things to friends, take a silly decision, miss an appointment and so on. For these things, we need a time machine to have them changed. And if you still haven’t found a time machine then it’s okay to give up on ever changing them. Let them be.
However, the experiential past opens up a lot of possibilities that we shouldn’t take for granted. It is in a state of constant change and we, through understanding, could make this change favour the course of well-being and happiness no matter how things unfolded in the past.
The past is pretty much like a dollar bill. It has no inherent value; it’s sole value is the value you attach to it. In the absence of this attached value, the dollar bill no matter the number of zeros inscribed on it will be completely meaningless to you.
You can think of the inscriptions on the bill as the incidental past. For some, the zeros might be fewer but that doesn’t make any difference. For things to be any different, then we need to focus on what makes the difference.
The experiential past is the attached value that we give to the incidental past and that’s what makes all the difference. If you’re reeling from the pain of the past, the events around the pain aren’t as important as the pain itself.
If I changed all the events of your past, you’ll still feel the pain because the pain has been internalized. But if I took the pain away (like I can😅), you’ll no longer experience it no matter how things unfolded in the past.
I listened to an interview some time ago that totally rocked my world. A renowned movie producer was asked about his regrets in life. Everyone, including me, knew that this movie producer had a shady past full of uneventful happenings. His simple answer was, “I don’t have any”.
Until that time I didn’t know any person who didn’t have any regret in one form or the other. I wondered how a man with a history like his could have no regrets in life. It was stunning how the past that looked like it was designed to hurt was now a life-giving spring of hope and faith for this man.
In case you’re wondering how practical it is to change your past then know in no uncertain terms that we, I mean all humans, experience this reality from time to time.
Sometimes it happens that we initially react unfavorably to a situation or an event in our lives, and with time when we gain some level of understanding, we grow more appreciative.
Although we don’t quite think of it that way, we’re actually changing our past. When we have such power, why then are we so scared of our past? Why then do we keep sweeping our past under the carpet?
Dear friend, your past is nothing more than a tool. Don’t allow the tool to overwhelm you. Rather, use it to create something beautiful, something that resonates with your inner beliefs.
Restpiration 