SELF-AWARENESS 101 #3: I REALIZED TO SOAR, I NEEDED TO LET GO OF THE PAST.

Today I want to explore the quote, “I realized to soar, I needed to let go of the past. You can’t fly when you’re holding on to all that baggage.”

One of the beautiful things about the journey to self awareness is that it is a journey, it is not a destination. Over the years, one of the things that I’ve noticed from many people who are on this journey, myself included, is the amount of frustration that happens along the way. What I mean is that we work so hard on improving ourselves, we work so hard on clearing away the past, we work so hard on learning new skills and new strategies to help us become better people. And when we think we have it all figured out, then we hit these new stumbling blocks that stop us in our tracks.

I know for me personally, about 20 years ago, I had really done a lot of work on myself, and I reached a place in my life where I just felt like I was spinning my wheels. It just seemed like I could not get ahead. I felt like the sky should be the limit for me, but I also felt like I was held to the ground by chains and I couldn’t figure out why. I remember it was December of 1998. I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep. I laid there tossing and turning trying to figure out why I felt so stuck. I said, “You know, something is not cleared up, there’s something…. and I haven’t finished with it yet.” I decided I needed to go back one more time, I went out to my living room, sat down at the computer and I started to write. But I wasn’t just writing about my past, my history. I was using a process where I would write to learn about myself, about things I had not seen before.

I didn’t intend on it becoming a book, but it did. The point of what I was doing was in essence, a journaling exercise. I made the decision that I was going to sit down and write to learn about my life, from as early as I could remember until that current moment. But I wasn’t going to just tell my experiences, I wasn’t going to sit there spew out “war stories”, like… I did this, and then I did this, and then I did this.

The idea was to look at the experience, with the intention that I would write to learn new perspectives from an observer’s point of view, rather than from my original perception. To be able to look at the experiences that happened in my life; to be able to analyze them; to look at what happened to me mentally, emotionally, spiritually in those moments. I would look at some of the traumatic moments in my life, in an effort to understand what happened on all those levels.

But it wasn’t[ about simply looking at what “happened” and how it affected me, but I wanted to learn what were the strengths I gained that came from going through that experience? Or, what were some of the resources that were available to me, that I didn’t use? So I was going back and not just reliving the experience, but I was going back kind of like I was walking through it, but this time with my best friend. I was being my own best friend and saying, “Hey, did you notice when this happened, or did you notice, you could have done this?”

It was a wonderful experience and it really freed me. It has allowed me to forgive myself, because there was a lot of areas where I was carrying guilt and anger. By looking at everything as an observer, I was able to recognize resources I never realized that I had. It showed me strengths I never realized that I had and it showed me options, I never knew were available.

Understand that as you go along this journey, you’re going to hit plateaus. You’re going to even backslide at times. And what I suggest that you do at those times is journal. Get a book, specifically for journaling, and when you feel yourself stuck, when you feel yourself spinning your wheels or backsliding, sit down and allow yourself to benefit from the experience as you write and learn everything you can about yourself through the eyes of an observer. Just write it all down and give yourself the gift of separating yourself from the experience. Become your own coach where you can look at it from an objective position. Then ask yourself these questions:

What were some of the strengths that this gave me?

What were some of the new directions this moved me in?

What could I have done differently?

What were some of the “gifts” that came later in life from this experience happening?

When you come at this with the intention that you will write to learn from those experiences, trust your instincts. If there is something “nagging at you”, continue writing about it until you feel it is complete. You will learn so much about yourself by sitting down, being objective, and journaling.

Take a moment right now and look at some of the biggest moments in your life; some of the greatest triumphs, or the hardest trials. And, just as an exercise, start to write and expect to learn about everything you can remember regarding that experience. As you are writing about it, look over the whole experience, and be a coach to yourself, be an observer and make the observations you may not have noticed before. Ask yourself, “What were the gifts? What were the lessons? What were the resources I tapped into? What were the strengths or the characteristics I used to get through that experience?

I know you’ll learn amazing things about yourself.

Again, this is the journey of self-awareness and as you allow yourself to become aware of these things, you can carry these tools, and these skills with you as you move forward. I look forward to hearing what you uncover about yourself.