A good rule of thumb is to spend no more than 10 percent of your time focusing on the past. Why would we need to go to the past? Because we have a rich pool of learning we can access and use this valuable knowledge to serve us in our present time.
We can go back to the times in the past when things worked for us and examine what we did, and then bring these things forward. We can nourish our emotional bodies by going back to the times we felt good, when we did something good for another person, or when we received something wonderful. This can re-energize us and help build our self-esteem and confidence.
For the times when things did not go our way, we need to acknowledge them. We do not need to focus on these memories or use them as an excuse to beat ourselves up feel guilty. We can use these valuable experiences to reflect upon how we can strategize to do things differently in the future. Maybe it’s learning a new skill set, developing the courage to say no, speaking your truth, or valuing yourself.
We get what we think about, whether we want it or not. Think about that for a moment. Can you recall a time when you put your thoughts on what was going wrong? Your energy probably dipped, your thoughts became negative, and people did not respond to you very well.
Our subconscious mind cannot tell the difference between the past, present or the future. The past does not actually exist. It only exists as a memory in our mind and in the mind of others. That’s why we can recall the same events very differently, as the events pass through our personal beliefs, perceptions, and filtering systems.
There is only this now moment. If your thoughts keep going back to the past and replaying events over and over, then you are re-living the past and giving away your vital life force. Make a decision to stop doing this and to recognize that your emotional body needs help.
I have a great meditation for healing the emotional body and creating inner peace. (Click here to listen). Our physical bodies get washed and cleaned every day, and our emotional bodies often need to be cleansed to. Some tools to help with this would be to reframe the past, to feel and express gratitude and forgiveness, and then let go.
Exercises:
- If your emotional body needs cleansing, choose to make yourself a priority by creating the time and space to heal it. Use one of the methods I mentioned.
- You can go back into the past and re-write an event that may have traumatized you, or go to a place where you simply want a different outcome. That’s right! You have the power within you to change the past. You can use your imagination to do this in-depth, and visualize the outcome of your choosing play-by-play. You can write down a totally different story. Create a vision board. Get creative and choose what works for you.
- Start noticing how much of your thoughts and energy go to the past. If you find yourself repeating the old. Ask yourself, what benefits are you getting from holding onto this old story and what does it cost you to hold on to the old story? Then ask yourself how you can let it go?
- As always, the Angels are only an ask away. Archangel Jophiel is a wonderful angel to call upon to help transform old thought patterns into uplifting ones.