Make peace with your past and you’ll take control of your future.
I’m not proud of everything I’ve done.
When I look back at my life there’s a lot of things I would do differently. There were mistakes I made. Girls I should have kissed, girls I shouldn’t have kissed. Deals I let pass me by, deals I shouldn’t have done.
(Girls I shouldn’t have done deals with.)
And for a long time, I would cringe when I’d think about the silly things I’d done. I was embarrassed. They were like that person you’re trying to avoid showing up at a party. I’d just shuffle around and pretend they weren’t there until the memory went away.
But the reality is that in every situation, I was trying to do the best I could do. I was trying to make a good decision.
(I mean, who ever consciously makes a bad decision?)
And so if I’m honest, the ‘bad’ decisions I made came through me, but there were also bigger forces at play.
Take that hair cut I got in 1987. I regret that now. But how much of it was ‘my’ fault? I was responding to the cultural norms of the time. I was vain because I was a blender of hormones on high-speed. I was insecure because I was a product of a society that attaches personal value to attractiveness and sex-appeal. The hair-dresser was hot.
And really I was just a kid. I still hadn’t learnt what it means to be human, and to consciously navigate all the emotional and hormonal drives that come with having a body.
I still had my training wheels on.
And so I don’t blame that kid. He was just doing the best he could as best as he could understand it.
And I think that as I’ve learnt the ability to accept and laugh along with (not at!) myself and all past versions of myself, I’ve learnt to have more compassion for others.
If I’m not judging myself, then I’m not really geared up to judge others.
Everyone is just doing the best they can, as best as they understand it.
We tend to have structures in society – like the legal system for example – that imagines humans to be perfectly rational beings operating with a single ethical value system, and unencumbered by their personal histories.
And so if people do something wrong, it’s because they’ve chosen, with a clear mind, to do something wrong.
When is that ever true?
I mean, show me someone who isn’t a product of their experiences, their culture, their exposure to music videos in the early 80s.
I’m not saying we don’t need systems that define the limits of acceptable behaviour; I’m just saying that people are the way they are for a reason.
I am the way I am for a reason.
So if you’ve made mistakes in the past, don’t worry about it. Laugh it off. You were doing the best you could, even if the best you could do at the time was a confusion of selfishness, vanity and a lack of foresight.
That’s ok. Offer yourself a bit of compassion.
But now I can imagine what the regulars here are thinking. Hang on, Jon. What about your ideas of radical responsibility? The idea that our lives are always what we create?
What room is there for personal agency if we’re just leaves in the winds of culture, history and Molly Meldrum’s CountDown?
Two points here. The first is that I believe everyone has free-will – even if it exists only as a puny and undeveloped muscle. No matter what your background, in the here and now, you have a capacity for choice.
If you listen carefully, you’ll be able to hear the voice of your highest self.
The second point is that personal responsibility is like a muscle, and muscles develop through use.
When I was 17 my hormones had the upper hand. I hunted soccer balls during the day, and girls at night. I was kind of wild.
But overtime, you learn how to master your drives (the hormones also settle down a bit which helps). The more you engage with it, the more you are able to separate yourself from the forces that push you this way and that, and you take the reins into your own hands.
Eventually, I think, you come to a point where your history and the world around you have no influence over you. Nor do your emotional and hormonal reactions.
In this space, I think, you are completely free.
You are not driven by your emotions and hormones. You are not a slave to your past, but the master of your future.
(Did I just make this sound like a Marvel comic? I have been watching a bit lately…)
I think very few of us ever achieve a state of ‘complete’ freedom, but I also think it is a spectrum. The more you practice ‘self-control’ the better able you are to act from a place of clear consciousness.
And the decisions you make will then be more in line with drives of your higher-self – drives that are aligned with love, compassion, generosity… all the good things.
And in that sense, they will be better decisions.
But like any skill, it’s something that comes with practice.
And the one point I would make is that if you’re going to master your history, then you need to face it. You need to square up and own it.
And I think that begins by coming to terms with all of it – even the bits that make you cringe and shrink.
You need to go back and find compassion for that moron doing doughnuts in the car park. Understand him. Accept him. Forgive him.
When you realise that the past is not your fault, the future becomes your responsibility.
Go Team Avengers!
Do we need to make peace with our past to take control of our future?
excellent point !
Nice thanks…..
A good article. Not too moralistic not too much of taking the high road or holier than though approach. I enjoyed reading what was written. Thanks. Making peace with myself and many aspects of my life has and is taking a life time. cheers Jeff B
Memories of youth, all the things you choose to remember and those you should definitely choose not to remember .The reflections about chasing hairdressers recalled a very pleasant memories. Never too old for thinking, thanks Boris
Great point Jon.
Obsessing over past events that you cannot change is bad for your mental health (and a waste of time). You cannot undo what you have done so you have to accept that all you have done has made you who you are today. Hopefully you wouldn’t make the same choices if put in the same position today. Wisdom takes time and experience. And wisdom will help you make better decisions for the future. Instead of wishing you could change your mistakes try and mentor others so that they avoid making the same mistakes.
Brilliantly written, it goes alongside Neale Donald Walsh, and all the universal messages received via Abraham-Hicks, yoga and the like. Consciousness, and self-mastery – which involves igniting one’s will, responding to or expressing from our expansive higher self, and understanding & having compassion, having a third-view point on things (instead of dualistic/ viewing things as either right or wrong). Keep this more expansive work going, Jon. Property and wealth creation is simply a tangible avenue to witness how we can create whatever we desire. And our external reality is but an articulation of our inner self. Wealth and abundance is one aspect. What I find is that what differentiates wealthy people who are sick and miserable, and wealthy people who are enjoying their well-being and vitality alongside what they’ve created, is that the latter are consciously aware that what they are creating is an expression of who they really are (ones true self). And one’s truth/ who you are, as unwavering as it is, is also constantly evolving. One’s level of evolution/ journey in consciousness is constantly expanding – from living unconsciously and more say primal (hormones raging stage), to a more mindful and conscious practise of living in the present moment. The personal journey is never done. And we are forever creating, whether consciously or unconsciously. No one can sit on their stump and stop creating. One is still creating even whilst refusing to participate in any form in this physical reality. And at each point of consciousness or unconsciousness – you are right, we are doing the best we can. It’s called being human. Church and government, and any external structure wanting conformity, monotony, consistency, and recipe – is so unforgiving and invalidating of this natural fact and phenomenon. It stunts the innate personal power we are each born with. And as a collective, we as a society are capable of so much more. To your continued well-being and success.
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Monica, a warp of need is often the precursor for weft to become an answer from within our deep seeds. It is improbable that any person born – does not have need – it is a part of our ancient genetics encoding. Despite any otherwise postulating the fact is humans still do understand conditions of lost hopelessness.
Look back at humanity and it is obvious that not one person is more than that – even if fate or not bears a child King or Queen OR a hobo, all are their own sovereign beings and challenges to fit the character.
To recognise every person is sovereign is to anoint them as if a queen or king sovereign unto each as all. To value the previous consideration ‘one’ must recognise there is no hierarchy of humans, it is fictitious. To appreciate human beings evolution from Cro-Magnon man to a current capacity is evolution of mind
The self-bound blind fold parlance reasoning of whatever we desire as if articulation of rightness has merit seems fortunate on face value first instance but – in reality one of the last bastions to fall will be where everyone has a birth right to a parcel of land, after all we all have a right to work – so to a home.
While your perspective fits hand in glove with the relevant crusaders of self-benevolence the reality for many, many up and coming generations of humanity that are seeing any of the potential of an own home becoming realisable, is next to not affordable purely by a totally uneven financial property playing field.
Evolving constantly also is, is it as unwavering as, are you who’s/truth ones’ and …
Based on empirical facts for an evolution of humans arriving at a self-designated A.D. 2017 datum one would have to agree we don’t live in any form of devastating historical tyranny but all financial shackles are still on a grossly uneven playing field to a point money being everything with, no nose ring for poor.
While you have introduced the widest band of modern tax collectors as equal to now many new Sheriffs of Nottingham from those times, you have arrived at one crucial cattle or sheep counting taxes pen yard.
Being human is all we have and as such you have recognised the obvious IS all the said hierarchical are just an unequal and opposing expansion of the polar opposite where all the daily lives of all those mass populations carrying doubt and despair for ever for-seeing their own hopes of an own home never being within any even likely possible long term arm reach. The bare fact across the world is that there are more people on Earth that do not own an own home than those that do … so what does that say to you..?
A deposit on Mars property could be an idea but would NASA have the U.S. Banks title in those stakes? Just an inspiration or postulation on a housing future for many generations that may flee Earth or abuse by the banks and or future prospective real estate property moguls, as if nobody, has spotted an obvious.
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The ONLY true as equal cohesive method for supply and demand and equality mode for every person as to have a right to an ‘own home’ is to be granted at birth the sovereign right of a land parcel as full right.
However all the there-after technicalities of such an elementary birth right play out is not such a big thing nor problem. There are more than enough relevant industry benefits or initiatives to become available in many different and undifferentiated manners or modes as there would be unlimited increase for housing.
As far as the eye cannot see, where the limit could be for assisting all future generations as are looking forward NOW – Whom is it that does not have ‘native title rights’ to the land they are BORN by proof.?
Without including great idealism nor due bureaucratic buffoonery if every political stratagem for defeat;
For the sake of meeting all other ‘Rainbow generation’ equalities the natural land rights belong for us all. Getting on the front foot and allowing native title to everyone is a natural sovereign right and ‘It’s Time’
When, after all are we not tired of having to put up with a sluggish world homelessness as for life crisis that causes so many homeless unable to ever have 1 possibility for an own home, expanding, exploding?
By the way, has anyone out there seen a Real Estate mogul at the back of Nasa’s Board room as yet?
Better active forward thinker, that just another bottom bouncing hook bait on a heavy sinker.