Advice to Your Younger Self

My son and I, years ago in Stowe, Vermont, enjoying his favorite: crepes.

When I look at my life now and the choices that lie before me, it's easy to be reminded of things that happened in the past. I want to avoid some of the things that happened and some of the situations that I have been in. I fear them. But there is a way to resolve those issues. This is not only about not fearing the pain of the past, but also about learning from it so that you can enjoy your life even more today. Plus, you can change the past.

The Past is a Recreation

The past doesn’t exist in the present. You are creating the past from the present. It is always right here and right now. This is something that most of us have heard before, and we are told to remember to be present and “Be here now. “ You are instead imagining the past and recreating it in the moment. How you imagine the past is what creates the experience.

Avoiding the Past Doesn’t Take Away Its Power

Of course, you have probably heard this before, and trying to be here right now does not really take away the past. The reason we have certain emotions about the past is that we have not resolved them. Fortunately, this is easy to do. However, until we do, they will continue to influence our lives today. Ignoring negative feelings doesn’t make them go away, because feelings are messengers. They are not bad things to be avoided. They are messages that we have refused to listen to. Those situations will repeat themselves unless we deal with them.

Like Dreams

People often wonder how to interpret dreams. Are they real? What do they mean? Are they just random thoughts? The answer is that regardless of what you think a dream means or where it is coming from or why it exists, you’re having an emotional experience. And every emotional experience is the result of your beliefs. When you feel bad in your dream, it is telling you that you have unresolved beliefs. There are beliefs that you have not processed and resolved.

The same thing is true of the negative parts of our past. Until you resolve them, they will cloud your present.

What Advice Would You Give Today?

This is a solution to this problem. In fact, there are many, but one is to start by asking yourself these questions. “What advice would I give to my younger self? What advice would I give to myself, knowing what I do today? How would I have lived my life differently? How can I apply that to my life today?”

In my case, when I look at the past, I find myself thinking that I should have focused more on investing in the projects that were important to me. I gave up on certain projects, or if I did finish them, I completed them with less quality than I was proud of. In retrospect, I should have been more patient and persistent in doing things the way that I wanted them done.

I can’t predict the future, and regardless of what happened, at least I would be proud of myself. On top of it, that attitude would have probably led to an even greater success today.

Often, I let what I perceived as feedback from others suggest that there was a right way to achieve success, and that my ideas were not as good as I believed. I doubted myself. Now, I realize that no one will ever see my ideas as well as I do, because quite simply, they are my ideas.

My wife and I listen to Chris Stapleton. We appreciate that he does things the way he wants to. We can’t suggest to him how he should write songs. No one can write songs the way he writes songs, and we wouldn’t want him to. The same is true of any of us. No one will ever see things the way that we do.

The other thing is that I would have invested more in having a nicer home life. I feel that, in general, I had an attitude of “I’ll fix that later when I have more money and resources.” Instead, I should have made a quality home a higher priority. If I had to search for free or cheap used furniture. I should have. If I had to fix an apartment or home by myself, I would have. If I couldn’t find the solution in that moment, that was okay; I could be persistent and keep my mind open. I just had to be persistent in what I wanted. Instead, I listened to the ideas of others who said: “Don’t go into debt,” or “Focus on what you do best and let other people do that.” Those pieces of advice might be great for others, but they weren’t the advice I needed.

In the end, when I look at my younger self, I am reminded that I can’t count on the approval of others, or whether money will work out or not, but I can always commit to being the person that I want to be and the life that I want to live.