Stop living in the past

"The best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour" - Dr. Phillip C McGraw

This is one of Dr. Phil's famous sayings that has made him such a iconic figure in selves-Help circles today. It's also really bad advice when used out of context. It seems that it's one of many excuses for people not to try at all, but give up because they've failed in the past at it. We all figure that the best way to move forward is to keep avoiding our past failures and hurts to which our past becomes our yardstick to which we measure our current success or failures. It's a vicious cycle which can easily destroy our happiness or any joy that may comes into our lives. The only cure to this is to learn to let go of our past, forgive ourselves and choose to live in the present.

There are a few benefits to not living in the past and they are:

1. We stop measuring our happiness by our past.
2. We free ourselves from regret.
3. We take more risks.
4. We allow ourselves to be more present.

We stop measuring our happiness by our past

We've all seen it happen, our best friend gets broken up with and suddenly their ex becomes the perfect man or woman. What happens? They ruin every relationship they have after that by comparing their current with their idolised (as in imagined) view of their ex. This might be a extreme example, but we all do it to some degree and the outcome is always the same: dissatisfaction, disillusionment and destruction of our happiness.

The funny thing about memory is that it's subjective, so we only remember what we want to remember and our brains has the amazing power to tweak our memories to fit out expectations of them. So that perfect person we've created in our mind is just a illusion, a mix of what we wanted them to be and who they really were. The reverse is also true when it comes to making a ex the reincarnation of the evil, they may have been a coward, they may have freaked a bit, but their still pretty much human, like you and me.

Ultimately, letting our past have a say in our present only ruins our happiness. So by letting go of the past we allow ourselves to forgive ourselves, move on and find ourselves again. It opens us to the joy and love of today's moments, which is the building blocks of true happiness.

We free ourselves from regret

Regret is a terrible thing to have to live with and like I said before, our memory is subjective, so the thing we regret doing seems worse than it really was. I think regret is pretty useless, it makes us feel worse for something we've done wrong, which messes up our happiness and makes us less incline to risk it again. I deal with regret differently. I take it as it is, figure out how it went wrong, learn from it and then move past it. The only function regret has is to teach us; other than that it's pretty useless. We cannot change what happened and if scientists can be trusted, we'll never be able to go back in time to change it. So let's learn from our mistakes, accept them and move past them, anything else is just a waste of our happiness.

We take more risks

Bad experiences have a crippling effect on our ability to take risk, they make us give up before we succeed and make us act irrationally with fear when having to face them again. Taking risk is how we grow and succeed in life and by fearing past failures repeated, we stop ourselves short of winning in life. Helen Keller once said that the bold gets hit just as much as the careful, which means that failure is part of life, if we take risks or not. Haven't you ever noticed how the one thing you try to avoid happening, you ultimately make happen?

What is the difference between the bold and the careful? The bold expects failure and have prepared themselves for it, while the careful, believing themselves safe, have not. Risks may lead to failure, but they also lead to success. Learning from our past failures makes the chances of us succeeding greater next time around. Letting go of our past mistakes and learning from them, makes risks much easier to do and ultimately allows us take more of them. The matter of when we'll succeed, then just becomes a matter of time.

We allow ourselves to be more present

Living in the moment is the key to all success, because we grasp at the moments that make our lives and the opportunities that present themselves. Living in the past does the exact opposite. We constantly regret moments we forget to grasp and opportunities we missed, which in turn blinds us of those moments and opportunities presented now. Do you see the vicious cycle living in the past creates?

Letting go of our past frees us from this cycle by allowing our attention to focus on the now rather than the could-have-been's. Living more in the moment makes us instantly aware of the things that can help shape our future, the risks needed and the opportunities that come from it. It's like waking up after a bad dream to a wonderful warm spring day, life just seems more promising and it becomes easier to let our past rest in peace.

I won't say I have all the answers yet, because I'm still learning to live in the present too. What I have found is that my life seems like a much happier place, I'm doing what I enjoy, I speak my heart and mind and opportunity is just a risk away. Living in the past only messes up our lives, but living for the moment might just save it.