You Won’t Get Over it Until You Choose to Get Over It
Don’t stumble over something behind you
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Literally and physically speaking, it’s impossible to stumble over something behind you unless you’re walking backwards, not watching where you’re stepping. If you’re walking down a path in the woods and step over a log, it ends up behind you. After you’ve passed it, the only way to trip over that log is to walk backward and not watch out for it.
No one blindly walks backwards in the woods. So why is it that people are so willing to let themselves blindly walk backwards in real life?
There are two things we know for certain. First, no advice is new and second, people rarely take advice and actually practice it. There’s nothing anyone can tell us that we haven’t already heard somewhere before.
I rarely give or receive advice because it sounds preachy, and it becomes moot if the person giving the advice doesn’t follow their own.
I’d rather hear concrete, actionable, words to live by. They make more sense because they’re universal and can apply to anyone if ‘anyone’ wishes to constructively put them to use.
Don’t stumble over something behind you.
The single biggest inhibitor of forward progress is living in the past. Many people preach about moving forward and becoming a better person even when it’s crystal clear they’re still living in their past. They can’t seem to let it go and so it becomes an obstacle of their progress.
Negative events happen in our lives for one reason — to learn from them. We can’t learn what not to do unless we screw up and do it, and then realize it was a mistake. We can’t learn who not to avoid unless we run into that person and realize we don’t want to deal with them again.
But then, MOVE ON from it.
If we choose not to learn from negative experiences we are allowing ourselves to live in a loop that’s stuck on replay, over and over again. We ignore what’s good for us and allow ourselves to stay in a counterproductive cycle.
We need to turn down the volume and stop pressing rewind on things from the past that need to be erased. We can’t heal from the past if we’re dwelling there. It’s a place for learning, not living.
If someone has done you wrong, it can hurt like hell and the pain is valid in the moment. We’re all entitled to lean into the hurt and feel it. But there comes a point where feeling it and dwelling on it intersect.
That point is the lesson, the teachable moment. It is the juncture where we’re supposed to assess what it was meant to teach us, learn from it and keep pushing forward — not with baggage but with understanding.
If you keep cycling back to that event and possibly repeating it, you’re doing it wrong. No good can come from engaging in negative situations over and over. You’re missing the point.
Maybe you lost a job a few years ago. You’re not going to get it back, and those who let you go aren’t thinking of you years later, so why are you hanging onto it? All it’s doing is impeding your forward movement toward a new and better job.
Maybe the last guy you were in a relationship with was a douchebag, and hurt you to your core, but dwelling on his shortcomings isn’t holding him up at all. He isn’t giving you a second thought so why are you wasting your time reliving those moments when you could be creating new ones with someone better?
If you’ve already declared your independence from a bad past situation, then LIVE IT. You can’t just say you’ve moved on, you actually have to go for the walk in the woods, and leave the log behind you. Don’t go back to trip over it.
If you’re not ready to keep walking yet, you need to ask yourself how long you’re willing to let yourself hang out in purgatory. Guaranteed, the person or event that did you wrong isn’t giving you a second thought, so your purgatory is your own, as long as you allow yourself to live in it.
How do you know if you’re still living in purgatory? You’re easy to spot. You’re the ones still badmouthing the person who did you wrong. The one still lamenting over events that happened five years ago. And the one announcing that you’ve moved on when it’s obvious you haven’t.
Moving on is done quietly, from within. No one should have to hear about it because true recovery happens inside your soul.
Moving forward and freeing yourself is a very powerful life force. You can even witness it in some incredible humans who have been victims of violent crimes.
After they’ve allowed themselves to lean into their pain for a period of time, they’re actually able to practice forgiveness. Not to let the other person off the hook, but to let themselves off the hook.
They refuse to walk backwards with their eyes closed in the woods. They reject tripping over that log because the alternative is to walk forward and never encounter the log again.
I’m willing to bet that every single one of us have suffered hurt or pain as a result of negative events in the past. No one comes out of the woods unscathed. But then, do you choose to go back into the darkness of the forest?
Instead, how about looking for the light of day ahead, and open fields in front of you?
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