Want to know how to let go of the past? Is your past impacting your present and future life? Are you ready to leave the past in the past and move on to a better life? defining your future and you are ready to move on for the better. If so, keep on reading as you’ll find out how to let go and I’ll be sharing my top tips for moving on from the past.
HOW TO LET GO: 7 TIPS FOR MOVING ON FROM THE PAST
1. Give yourself some time to process
Before delving into how to let go of the past it is important to note that there is a difference between something that happened in the past (last week) and something that happened in the past (two years ago). Depending on what happened in the past you need to give yourself a reasonable amount of time to process. It would be unfair to expect yourself to be over a breakup with a partner you were with for 20-years in a week.
It is vital that you give yourself some time to process what has happened. However, it is important to work out how long is acceptable to process and when you are dragging something out. This is very much a case-by-case situation but something you need to be aware of.
2. Express your negative emotions
It is hard to let go of the past when you are still filled with negative emotions. Therefore, you need to find a way to express your negative emotions in a healthy way. Depending on your style you might prefer to journal, shout, do a physical exercise like boxing or talk to someone else. The method doesn’t matter but you should give yourself a period of time when it is fine for you to express your negative emotions. You are human and trying to pretend you don’t have negative emotions and locking them up isn’t going to help you one bit. Instead, find a healthy way to release your negative emotions.
3. Try to get closure
One of the best ways to let go of the past is to find closure. It is common when you have “unfinished business” that it is hard to close that chapter of your life and move on. Sometimes you are able to get real closure. You might get to talk to a person involved. However, very often you might not be able to get “real” closure, but that doesn’t mean you can’t create the feeling of closure.
If there is someone you wish you talk to one last time but can’t try writing a letter. Write down everything you want to say to them and get everything out. Then seal the letter as if you are going to post it. You then have a few options some people just tear it up and put it in the bin, whilst others burn it. What you do doesn’t really matter as long as you feel that you’ve got everything out that you wanted to say so that you can let go and move on.
4. Remove reminders
It can be hard to let go when there are reminders everywhere. Sometimes you don’t have the option to remove the reminders, but where possible remove the reminders.
5. Create physical distance
This overlaps with the remove reminders tips as sometimes a place can be a reminder and by creating physical distance between you and a place you can stop yourself from being reminded and pulled back into the past. You can also create a physical distance between you and the people that you are trying to let go of.
6. Identify what the past has taught you
Sometimes we find it hard to let go of the past because we don’t want to make that mistake again. In this situation, you should identify what the past has taught you. When you can clearly articulate the lesson from the experience you can rest assured that you don’t need to keep on going over the event to ensure it doesn’t happen again. Now you can focus on the lesson rather than the experience.
7. Forgive yourself
Do you partially blame yourself for what happened? Maybe you actively did something or maybe it is the opposite and you did nothing to stop something from happening? Either way there is nothing you can do to change the past and going over it again and again won’t change anything. However, blaming yourself won’t help you move forward positively.
You need to forgive yourself. Acknowledge that you might not have made the best decision in the past, but the past is the past and you can’t change it. Forgive yourself and move forward.
That’s it! You now know You now know how to let go of the past.
Letting go of the past and moving on isn’t always easy. However, the fact you are trying to work out how to let go shows that there is value in you finally being able to let go of what you are holding onto.
I wish you all the best in letting go and moving forward with your life.
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