Seven Keys To Overcoming Your Past

Do you ever feel as if you’re struggling to overcome your past? The old adage says, “If life gives you lemons make lemonade.” We can either continue life with a bitter taste in our mouths, or turn what is sour into something sweet and useful. It isn’t what happens to you but how you react to your life experiences that define you. Although you may have been victimized, you are not a victim of the past; your experiences do not define your identity.

 As a counselor, I speak to people every day who have experienced painful relationships, rejection, addiction, abuse, and so much more. These experiences can either make you or break you. What you experience promotes your thought patterns, beliefs, and expectations. How you process your situations will produce what you think, how you feel, what you speak, and how you react and respond in your relationships.

For example meet two women, Sally and Jill. Both of them experienced abuse and rejection beginning in their family and continued the pattern in relationships with the men in their lives. Sally has just gotten a divorce from a man who was an alcoholic and verbally abusive. She now realizes that she is lonely and depressed. She doesn’t want to continue in the patterns and feelings that are familiar experiences to her, but she doesn’t know how to make it any different. This is her version of normal.

Sally seeks help to escape these feelings and begins a new life. She identifies the messages that have caused her pain and realizes her value and worth. She processes the pain and grief of her past. She blames no one, but grows from it, learning tools to discern and identify the difference between healthy and unhealthy relationships. She applies tools to make wise choices. Her thinking, expectations, and new relationship tools now point her in the direction for successful relationships so she will never be victimized again.

Jill on the other hand, is in a relationship with a man who berates her and emotionally abuses her. He looks at porn to meet his needs. She feels crushed and accepts the crumbs that he offers. She is constantly trying harder to please him, not anger him, and meet his requirements so he will love her. She has a victim mentality and believes that this is as good as it will ever get. What is the point of trying to leave or change the situation; this is her lot in life and all she has ever experienced. It is her normal. She does not make proactive choices to heal herself and this relationship, but repeats the same behaviors over and over which enable and produce the same results. She thinks there is no way out and sees no possibility for a better life, so she does nothing.

The question you should ask yourself is, do you have a success mindset in every area of your life, whether in education, career, or relationships? Bad experiences happen to all of us, but how you respond to them will either cause you growth and development, using these experiences for good, or they will crush you and keep you trapped. Are you a Sally or a Jill? Sally broke free and now helps other women by serving in a divorce care group, while Jill just continues to bleed out emotionally.

You get to choose who you want to be today. Here are seven keys to moving forward and overcoming your past experiences:

1. Identify The Past And Recognize The Messages That You Received

Examine the past — not to blame anyone or anything, but rather to understand the messages you received that hindered your life so that you can overcome them. When someone in your past was emotionally unavailable and openly hurt or rejected you, know that it does not define your value, but their emotional health and life skills. Don’t allow them to direct your beliefs, expectations, and behaviors. You can learn from negative experiences, but you can’t embrace them as what you deserved, or as punishment, clinging to faulty messages.

2. Have Courage To Be Honest With Yourself

Accept that you cannot change the past, and that it is not required to be happy today. Be willing to evaluate and discern the situations and people that you have encountered, and not judge them. Be honest and identify what was unhealthy in the situation and in your response to it. Be courageous to face those faulty messages and work at tearing them down in your daily knee jerk reactions in similar situations. If you do the same things you will have the same results so be willing to identify, grow, and adopt new thought patterns and behaviors through the application of healthy life skills and tools. You CAN change your old patterns.

3. Give Yourself Permission To Be A Work In Progress.

Let go of the belief that you should have already mastered everything. Acknowledge guilt, but reject shame. Guilt says I did something wrong, and can be helpful to direct your choices. Shame on the other hand, says I AM bad; this is never helpful or true. You can change your choices, so you are never defined by your failures.

4. Choose To Forgive Yourself And Others.

In order to give yourself permission to be human and fail, you must learn how to forgive yourself and others. Making mistakes is part of being human. If you hold firmly to your own failures and the offenses from others, it will lock you in chains. In order to break the bondage of unforgiveness, you must accept that you and every other person on the planet have made mistakes. Forgive yourself and others to be set free. 

Forgiving yourself is one of the most important parts of not being defined by your past. Forgiveness is a choice. It does not mean that what happened is okay, or that you forget the experience. Punishing yourself and others by never letting go, stops your growth and healing, and leaves you stuck in the pain.

Learn to apologize to those you have hurt, wronged, or betrayed – even if it’s you. If someone sincerely apologizes to you, receive it. Forgiving doesn’t mean you have to reestablish close relationships with them, it means you let go of the offense. This is sometimes the hardest thing to do, but it is necessary for your success.

5. Take Responsibility For Your Reactions To Messages And Look For The Roots

After you have evaluated your situations and what they produced in your thoughts and beliefs, be willing to identify the patterns that developed within you, and take responsibility for them. If you are negative, learn to turn your thinking and be truthful about the situations without focusing on the negative. Keeping a daily journal of what you are thankful for can be helpful.

As another example, if you are insecure, choose to identify the distortions you speak to yourself. Identify the thoughts that produce an expectation that everyone will hurt or leave you eventually because of past experiences. This produces sabotaging behavior patterns. Take responsibility for what has developed in your thinking, life, and relationship skills and develop new healthy patterns.

6. Redefine Your Healthy Identity

For me personally, my measuring stick for my value is what God says about me in the Bible. I choose to belief that truth over what anyone else may say to me or about me. I will not let a situation or a person define me as an individual. I will only receive the positive messages of my identity and the plans God has to prosper my life, to give me hope, give me and a future.

This does not mean that you shouldn’t listen to positive criticism so that you can evaluate yourself. You should because this gives perspective and helps with clarity; however, you should choose to reject anything that condemns you as a person. Conviction points out errors so that you can grow; condemnation destroys and urges you to wear labels and remain stuck. Reject the labels from messages of the past and believe that you have value, worth, and unlimited potential.

7. Use Skills And Tools To Identify And Apply Choices And Become Proactive

To get from point A to point B you need to move. To grow and improve, you need to be an active participant in that change. Research these topics; talk with a trusted healthy friend or family member, or get professional help through a counselor. Don’t just know what needs to be improved… do the work to actually improve it. First gain the “how to” knowledge, then you MUST apply it in your thinking, life, and relationship skills.

There is a huge difference between wanting or knowing change is needed, and actually doing something about it. The past isn’t’ something you can change, but what is in your control is the ability to make proactive choices to bring success to all areas of your life.

When you identify faulty thoughts and beliefs, it will change what you speak and the life and relationship skills that you employ. Skills and tools are the only protection you need in your life. Too often your life experiences cause you to put up walls and operate in fear which is destructive. The only protection you need is healthy life skills. Learning how to control and capture destructive and negative thoughts will change your emotions, choices, speech, and relationships for the better.

Learning tools like communication skills, coping skills, conflict resolution skills, and boundaries, will give you the ability to navigate through any life situation, both positive and negative. I have found that tools are what transforms and empowers individuals to make proactive choices. For example, to identify healthy and unhealthy relationship dynamics with tools like the 20 healthy behaviors in relationships, and 15 words that define verbal and emotional abuse, can provide a “how to” navigate in proactive choices when faced with challenges. These are examples of how skills and tools when applied can cause you to be an overcomer of any situation.

If you define yourself by your past, you will get stuck in the negative messages that you received and wear those labels, definitions, and beliefs. It isn’t the past people or experiences that harmed you; it is your belief and reaction to the messages that they produced. Faulty core beliefs are the chains that bind you into poor self-image, poor coping skills, negative emotions, and unhealthy relationships.

These thought patterns took years to develop and they won’t be broken in a day. Yet every day you can be one thought and action closer to a brighter future with peace, joy, and success. Don’t kick dirt over the past. Too often pain from the past is like a big mound under a rug that we continue to trip over. Yet, we can’t even identify what is under that rug.

Don’t limit your life by what has happened to you, poor decisions, what you have done, what you have said, or where you have failed. You can’t change the past, but you can overcome it. Choose to identify the messages that produced your thoughts, beliefs, speech patterns, and behaviors and grow so that you overcome the negative messages and the effects that they had on you. Then, leave the past in the past, and move forward growing through the new revelations so that you can make good choices today.

“Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself to have attained this. Instead I am single-minded: Forgetting the things that are behind and reaching out for the things that are ahead, with this goal in mind, I strive toward the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 3:13-14 (NET)

It is time to learn new skills for successful living.

Dr. Michele

Copyright © 2013 by Michele Fleming, Ph.D.