How to Put the Past Behind You | Jack Canfield

Hi, I'm Jack Canfield and today I want to talk to you about how to put the past behind you so that you can move on in your life and enjoy the happiness and the success you deserve. By the way, make sure to click the subscribe button and the Bell icon to receive notifications of when I release new videos. You know, everyone makes mistakes and goes through difficult times in life, but it's not your mistakes or difficulties that define you, but rather what you learn from them that truly matters. How you think about the past can be an excellent teacher and a great source of motivation, or it can interfere with your happiness and hold you back from living your best life. So how do you put the past behind you? Well, here are four tips I'd like to share with you today to help you heal your old wounds and move on to a better and brighter future. The first tip is to practice forgiveness now. Whether it's forgiving yourself for a mistake that you made or forgiving someone else who you believed harmed you for, forgiveness is one of the best possible things you can do to heal yourself from the past. You may have heard the saying, holding on to anger and resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die. It's true. When you continue to be angry and bitter about something that has happened in the past, the only person you end up hurting is yourself. So whatever old grudges or disappointments you've been nursing, I strongly encourage you to let them go. You will feel a lot better about yourself and about the world around you if you do. Now. If you want to change your outlook about past hurts, present stress, anger, anxiety or worries, download my free Positive Thinking guide now. My second tip for putting the past behind you is to practice gratitude. Take time every day to feel gratitude for everything that is good in your life. And I do mean everything. Be grateful for the people who love you and who have helped you, mentored you, or taught you something on your journey through life. Be grateful for the roof over your head. Be grateful for your health. Be grateful for the opportunities you've been given in life, the flowers blooming outside your window and the blue sky overhead, the things that make your life easier and more enjoyable, and the people who are involved in making those things and bringing them into the world. The more you cultivate gratitude and appreciation for everything that's good in your life right now and focus on those things, the easier it will be for you to forget about the things that have hurt you in the past and also remember to be grateful for the people that have made your life difficult at times. It's because of them that you have developed qualities like courage, perseverance, compassion, strength. So make sure to develop a daily practice of gratitude, Whether it's in meditation, writing in your journal, or just walking around and appreciating everything you see. Do that for a few minutes every morning. Now, my third tip is to remember that you're thinking. Thoughts determine your reality and you are in control of your thoughts. So if you want to improve any aspect of your life, make the effort to think better thoughts. Every time you find yourself thinking about something negative that happened in the past, consciously transform that negative thought into something positive. For example, if you're thinking, I can't believe I wasted all those years on someone who betrayed me, replace it with the thought, I am so happy and grateful, I'm now free to find someone who truly appreciates me for who I am. You see, meditation is also a powerful tool that can help you with this. When you meditate, you can simply assume the position of a witness to your thoughts. You're an observer. Your thoughts always seem to come in a constant stream. You're just going to witness them as they flow by. And as you become more aware of your thoughts in meditation, you'll more easily and more often begin to recognize when you're going into a negative spiral. And you'll be able to then consciously shift your thoughts and towards something more positive. It takes constant vigilance and work, but the ultimate rewards are so worth it. My fourth tip is to consciously choose to remember how awesome you are. Focusing on the failures of your past can be crippling to your self esteem, your self confidence, and your happiness. But the opposite is true as well. When you focus on your past successes, of which there are always many, you build your self esteem esteem, and you build your self confidence. Now, one great way to acknowledge your past successes is to sit down and make a list of all your past successes. Here are a couple of ways to do that. The first one is a simple exercise I call nine Successes. Now, to do this, simply divide your life into three major time periods. For example, if you're 45 years old, the first time period could be from birth to 20. Then the second would be 20 years to 33 years old, and a third would be from 33 to 45. Just make the first time period from the present until you're about 18 or 20 years old. And then divide the rest of your life in half. And then list three major successes that you accomplish in each time period for a Total of nine successes. And don't discount things like learning to drive or graduating from high school, getting your first job, or buying your first car. Remember, they were all big deals at the time. Now, once you complete your list, look back over it and remember that if you were able to accomplish those things in the past, then you can accomplish whatever else you want to accomplish now and in the future. Acknowledge the fact that there are plenty of accomplishments in your past to feel good about and allow that sense of accomplishment to elevate your self esteem. Now, another exercise even more powerful is to make a list of 100 successes you've had in your life. Now give yourself several days to accomplish this. Not full days obviously, but you know, a couple little sessions of maybe 30 minutes each. And make sure to include all the things that you may now take for granted, like learning to speak a second language, passing that difficult English literature course in college, achieving sharpshooter status in the military, raising a healthy child, learning to grill the perfect steak, learning to play an instrument like the guitar, the piano, learning how to type, saving enough money to take that trip to New York or Europe, beating your dad at chess, learning to swim, making Eagle Scout, painting a picture, learning to take great pictures with your camera, getting a promotion, developing a website, figuring out how to use social media like Pinterest and Facebook. Maybe you help the political candidate get elected, talking a friend out of committing suicide, getting sober if you were battling some addiction, maybe learning how to bake the perfect cake, coaching your kids little league team or soccer league team, and so on and so on and so on. I've literally had people resort to past first grade, past second grade, past third grade, past fourth grade. But you can get a list of 100 now. Finally, one last tool I'd like to call your attention to is EFT Emotional Freedom Technique, often referred to as tapping. Now, as many of you know, easy FT stands for Emotional Freedom Technique. It's a powerful way to release old thoughts and beliefs and the feelings those thoughts and beliefs create that are no longer serving you. EFT tapping is similar to acupressure in that it focuses on systematically applying light pressure to key energy points on your head, like this, under your eyes, your nose, your chin, on your chest, under your arms to help you release negative thoughts and emotions and energy. It's a very effective tool that I've used with phenomenal results in my own life and the lives of literally hundreds of thousands of my students. Given that EFT exists as a tool, there's no reason to stay stuck in the past. You can learn a lot more about it by typing EFT into the search bar for my blog at jackhamfield.com so those are some suggestions for how to put the past behind you so you start living your best life. I'd love to hear from you. What are your thoughts about watching this video? Do you have any old wounds from the past, hurts that you haven't been able to put behind you going forward? What are some of the strategies that you're going to now use to heal those wounds? And if you feel so inspired, please leave a comment below with your answer. I'd like to read what you have to say and thanks for watching. And remember, nothing in your life will change for the better until you do. Now, if you found this video helpful, make sure you like it, share it with a friend who may need it, and make sure to subscribe to my channel for more videos like this one. And for some additional resources on how to put the past behind you, visit my website at jackcampfield. Com. Thanks again for watching.