What Can I Do to Get Better at Letting Go of Past BS?

We all hold onto things that don’t serve us. Letting go challenges us each differently.

Photo by Sonia Kardash on Unsplash

Over the past month or so, I’ve been focusing more and more on identifying my self-sabotaging behaviors. Thus, I’ve learned that my self-sabotage is born of conclusions I’ve made about myself, other people, and life.

I recognize what these conclusions have been (for me, it’s that I’m not worthy, people are capricious and inconsistent, and that life is an unfair uphill battle). Now recognized, I have acknowledged these conclusions.

They are part of my past. As I’ve learned via lots of different sources, the past is the past. It has happened and cannot be undone, redone, or changed in any way.

So — to move forward in a way that leaves the self-sabotaging conclusions behind, everything must begin in the now. From this moment — and not from any time in the past.

Yes, the past teaches us many lessons both good and bad. But beyond that — we need to leave it in the rearview mirror and move onwards.

One challenge I keep running into with this is letting go of numerous matters from the past. It’s easy to say, “be here now” and “focus on the present.” But I’m only human. And there are things that I have done or that occurred that still bother me. And I find letting go of them difficult.

Hence the question — what can I do to get better at letting go?

It always starts with recognition

One of the slipperiest slopes of the past is that it’s seldom a clear, clean picture. Though I used to believe in the notion that hindsight is always 20/20 — I’ve come to realize that’s not true at all.

Why? Because the past as we believe it to be is utterly colored by us.

My beliefs, values, experiences, biases, prejudices, knowledge, and everything else in my head is going to color my past. How I look at things I did or that occurred outside of my control is colored by all the aforementioned notions.

What does that mean? For example — many years ago, friends I thought I was relatively close to didn’t invite me to their…