Are You Defined By Your Past?
Whether we realize it or not, we’re all in business for ourselves. Each of us is a builder and a designer of our own life, consciously or unconsciously. As so often happens, we’re not really present to the business of our life in this way. We’re just trying to cope, keep up, or ride the wave of what’s happening right now.
At some point we may notice that we’ve built a life that doesn’t resemble what we thought we wanted. Perhaps we experienced an unfortunate circumstance where we allowed this experience to define us.
“I’m not smart enough or good enough” became the drivers of our decision-making.
Feelings of failure, rejection or embarrassment, along with thoughts of “I’m not smart enough or good enough” became the drivers of our decision-making. We then built our future around this place of deficiency of our “triggered” or bruised parts.
How does this happen? Suppose Sally was never a good student throughout school. Her parents were critical of her lackluster achievements and her classmates bullied her. Sally grew up thinking that she wasn’t smart and couldn’t possibly be successful because of her results thus far.
As Sally constructs her life, it is based around the parts of herself that feel “less than.” In fact, she designs her life around isolation and avoidance, because she feels embarrassed that she hasn’t kept pace with her friends. Slowly, she disconnects from relationships and life’s opportunities. Sadly, Sally’s “less-than” parts are charting her life.
An empowered move is to consciously build our lives out of presence and a sense of wholeness, as opposed to giving the momentum to someone else, some past event, or to some triggered part of ourselves.
We are more than our past and more than our triggered parts. We as presence can be in the leadership role and build a life that honors, respects, and integrates all of our parts into our future. In this way, we take a stand for the value we can generate now, rather than to be defined by our past.
