I often take time to reflect on my past, as I believe it helps me pave the way forward. There will always be times when it’s hard, but necessary.
I go back to not knowing about having a disability and remembering my struggles. Having to work through everything blindly was difficult and having to fight my corner, impossible. With no understanding and empathy, it was an endless battle: it was never ending.
I believe reflection is a good tool to help us work through our past and family lives. It allows us to grow mentally and emotionally, helping us to look at our lives more positively, differently. When we can use our past as a tool without making the same mistakes, we will have learned our lessons.
Some benefits of using reflection:
It’s easy to look at our lives and feel guilty about what we’ve failed at, decisions made or missed out on, but that doesn’t serve any purpose. It just creates more stress and irritabilities. Forced decisions that don't reflect our own thoughts or sentiments, can and do make us feel guilty.
If issues become something learned and we can make future changes from them, then those issues will never be wasted. We cannot change the past, but we can change the way we look at the past. Studying the past is necessary because understanding certain aspects of it will help shape our future with new and better outcomes.
Without the past, we have nothing to check, measure and balance against. Any changes we can make from the past, although they may seem difficult or complicated, can result in new positive experiences and opportunities.
I look back on the past and regret some of the decisions that I made; like not going off to college because of my boyfriend at the time, which was a huge mistake. I'll always regret the decisions I made about my education, but I'm hopefully going to make up for that one soon.
The other decisions I made when I was a teenager were bad and that's because I was a rebellious teen.
I rebelled against my parents because they never let me do anything. I realize now they were just protecting me because I have diabetes, but I'm pretty satisfied with my life otherwise.
Most of us will have made decisions in our past we're not altogether happy with, but drawing on those experiences and using our strengths so that we can change our future, I believe is the way forward.
I also believe dwelling on the past will always hurt us. If we can reflect and change what happens in our past that will help.
A wise friend once told me feelings are there for a reason.
I do believe looking to the past is helpful in order not to repeat the same mistake twice. Yes we hopefully learn from our mistakes. But try not to dwell on the past too much.
Look to the future and all the possibilities it holds.
Ditto. Totally agree.
Wise words indeed Randy.
Yes they are indeed wise.