Are you still thinking about yesterday?

"You can't have a better tomorrow if you're thinking about yesterday." ~Charles Kettering

There is not a single one of us that doesn't do it.  We look back over our lives and think about all the should haves, the could haves and the would haves.  The 'if only I had...'.  It's human nature to spend time reflecting upon and (hopefully) growing from the life experiences that we've gone through.  That's what it's all about...learning, growing, doing better, becoming our authentic selves.

But at times we do find ourselves stuck in the past.  We end up in that cycle of asking what if?  What if we'd done, said, behaved, listened differently?  And wondering if we had, how would our lives be different?  How would we be different? What if, what if, what if...

What if we started to accept that the past is far behind us, and whatever we may have done or said then is also far behind us.  What happened happened.  I choose to believe it was for a reason...maybe it was what I needed to learn to move forward.  Maybe it is what my soul came here to experience in the first place.  Maybe it happened for someone else's growth and learning, and I was just an actor in that drama.  Maybe it happened to spare me from something worse that I'll never really know in this lifetime.  Maybe.  In the words of Byron Katie...how do we know that is what was meant to happen...because that's what happened. End of story. It is us who attaches the deeper meaning to it.

None of us are our past.  Just as a butterfly is so different from who it was in it's life as a caterpillar, so are we.  Every single day we change, and we grow, and we transform into who we are...and tomorrow we will be someone different yet again because life is about change.  You know the saying...if there was none, there would be no butterflies.  I don't know about you, but I would not want to be my seventeen year old self again for anything in the world.  But that said, I'd never give up what that experience taught my 54 year old self.  It was all part of life's transformation and growth.   It's part of who I've become, but it is not the definition of who I will be.  Your past isn't either.

So what are you holding on to that keeps you from moving forward into who you have the potential to be?  Is it a title?  Is it an experience?  Is it a belief that what happened shouldn't have?  And the bigger question....who would you be if you just let that go and lived with the reality that is today?  Might you be happier?  More contented?  More 'truly you'?  If so, then what is stopping you from doing that?