31 May 2021 · 5 min
Brendon Burchard argues that holding onto disappointments from school, work, and relationships eats up the mental space you need for creativity and bold ideas. He says forgive the past, honor it, and treat each day as a clean canvas. Let go of yesterday's stories to unlock what you're actually capable of.
Chapters
Let go of the baggage. You're never going to touch the full rim of your potential if you're weighted down by baggage from your elementary school years, your high school years, your college years, these last four years. Listen, the last chapters of the book, you gone through them, you finished them, you flipped the page, you got a new chapter here. And you have to be willing to break from the past to have the future you so desperately desire. You have to have the courage to allow yourself to honor the past as it was, to forgive those who need to be forgiven, to forgive yourself and to acknowledge that everything led you to this point now. Everything. Those crappy times, those times when you're depressed, those times when you gave up on yourself, those times when someone else gave up on you. Those times that you gave up on others. The times that you quit, the times that you failed, the times that you felt so small you were embarrassed. Those times don't live in this moment. And the more of those times that you cultivate in your mind and you ruminate on and you think and you self talk on and you revisit in your mind, the more disempowering times from the past, hurtful times from the past, failures from the past that you keep running in your head. What that is doing is that is taking up the very free space necessary for the bold ideas to come in. It's taking up the space for the very needed white space for creativity to come in, for the dreams to come in, for the best you to speak through from. It's hard for you to live an authentic and true and vulnerable and real life if you're always speaking through your baggage, if you're always thinking through your baggage, and you guys know what I'm talking, maybe your baggage is your divorce or that last job. They are not relevant today. And the only reason they're relevant today is if either you allow them to be relevant from those situations or those persons revisiting you or you're relevant, running the same old story, you're running the same old excuses. Yeah, I can't do this because I suck at relationships. No, you sucked at relationships 10 years ago. Well, I can't do this because you know, I failed. Yeah, six months ago. Today's a new day, homie. This day is fresh. This day is clean. This day woke up, showered, ready, prepped for you by the universe or spirit or God or luck or cosmos, whatever you want to call it. This day says to you. When you wake up in the morning, the day whispers to you, do not fear me for I have been brought here for you. You don't fear the day. That day has been brought here for you. And when you have real reverence for life, when you have a deep gratitude and appreciation, I like a deep gratitude and appreciation for life. You don't hold on to a lot of yesterday. When you're free and spirited in this moment when you're truly present, free from yesterday, like when you're present right here, that authenticity, that spirit shines through. And listen, the same people who completely shut you down yesterday, when they go shut you down today, you go, hey, that's not okay. Maybe the old you let them shut you down. The new you today you today the place you've been put on is a fresh ground of earth. Today the place that you've been put in is this moment. And this moment doesn't reek of yesterday. Because if you have reverence for life, you recognize that all those struggles brought you here.