“We are products of our past, but we don’t have to be prisoners of it.” – Rick Warren
By: Mangkholun Touthang
People tend to be quite different in the things they think about. Some people are always thinking about the future, and the good and bad things that might happen to them. Other people have their mind mainly in the present without much thought for the past or future. Other people have an orientation more towards the past. Here, we’re going to talk about people who think a lot about their past. In order to make progress, you have to move on, I have to move on. Without looking back at the past and getting stuck in it, we have to move forward. It’s almost impossible to forget some of the events that had happened in the past, some even haunt us, but that doesn’t mean you have to keep thinking about it or dwell in it, you’ve got to find a way to not get stuck in it or instead learn a lesson from it every time you reminisce the memories, and move on. A lot of times, we dwell in our past memories and as a result of it we get upset, angry, lose confidence, lose hope, and thus fail to make progress and prosper in the future.
There are many things we’ve done and faced, good and bad, and instead of learning a lesson from them and making them a great tool for making the grade, we keep thinking about them, particularly the bad ones and feel sore about them, waste our time, and hence hindering our way to progress. Yes, there’s a lot of people who don’t succeed because they don’t study hard, work hard, pay attention to their work, they spend too much time on Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and other time-wasters such as these, but there are a lot more people who don’t succeed because they dwell in their past memories. Therefore, you might have to question yourself upon your inability to make progress or your reason for being unsuccessful at everything you try. It could be because of the fact that you’re dwelling in your past.
Like I’ve said, it’s hard to forget some of the events that had happened in the past nor can you do anything to change them, you either dwell in it or make the most of it. Memories can be very helpful in motivating ourselves and using them to keep moving on if we make the most of it but if you keep thinking about what makes you super upset or heartbroken, or dwell in it, the mere memory of it could let you want to commit suicide or do something extremely bad to yourself. The best way here is to stop thinking about the bad memories and instead learn from the good ones and use them to succeed in the future. There are some things in your past that you regret, feel guilty about, or wish you would have done differently. The fact is, however badly you feel, however desperately wish you could change it, it’s in the past. The page has turned. This may mean to forgive others or yourself. Let go of pain or guilt and keep (or find) the learning.
According to a data released by the goverment recently, at least 4,000 children in the age group of 14-18 years died by suicide after they failed to clear academic examinations between 2017 and 2019 and you might’ve heard the news of a 17-year-old boy who allegedly hanged himself after failing to secure good marks in CBSE Class 10 Board exams recently. It’s so heart-rending that students value exam marks and academic performance far more than possessing great knowledge and putting it into use. They would do anything to score good marks in the exam and when things go the way they don’t anticipate, they’d lose hope, confidence and even the thought of committing suicide. Therefore, it’s important for students to know that their exam marks or academic performance don’t determine their future or fate, even if you’ve failed the exam or scored less marks than you anticipated, instead of thinking about it again and again and be dissatisfied about it, learn from your past failure and strive even more to prosper in the future. You shouldn’t think that because you have failed before, you will fail again the next time. Instead, remember that you have control over your life, and you don’t have to be the victim. No need for losing hope, absolutely no need for committing suicide either, you just have to get up, learn from the past, make the most of it, and move on and prosper.
People who are always sad and depressed are mostly people who live in their past memories. Me too, I keep thinking about the past, especially those events that hurt me, and in the end I would end up being upset and sometimes even lose hope. Some memories I have are quite funny which make me laugh every time I think about them, but some are disgraceful and painful that whenever I recall them I would end up hating myself, fearing to walk out of my house since I’m so ashamed of what I’ve done in the past, and therefore, losing confidence and hope. I believe there are a lot of people like me out there. And I want to tell you this, there’s absolutely no good in thinking about the past and dwelling in it, in doing this, we don’t draw anything from it but continue to sink our present moment into our regrets which is absolutely unhelpful to us. Allow yourself to express your emotions, but don’t dwell on them. Negative thinking is unproductive as it distracts you from the positives in life and makes it harder to let go of the past. Negative thoughts plague your mind with self-sabotaging thoughts, denying you your right to live a happy life.
