Have You Been Changing in the Best Way?
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Who you are is the sum of what you were born with and everything that has happened to you. So all of your experiences have mixed with the kind of person you are to make you who you are today.
But the kind of person you are has also been changed over the years by what you have experienced, and if you were selfish when you were younger, you're probably not so selfish anymore.
So all of your life, you have been reacting to what has been happening from the viewpoint of who you are, going from mistake to success and success to mistake. And of course, you can learn from your mistakes, meaning that you won't do the same thing in the same situation again, but there is something else here that's very important. Have you been changing in the best way? Have you been reacting to what has been happening in a way that is best for you? And did you get the right things out of all of your experiences?
The answer is that you don't really know because you don't always know what the best way is or in what ways you should change, and you don't always know what the right things to get out of an experience are. And one of the reasons for this is that you have an agenda. There are certain things you want to get out of a situation and there are certain outcomes that you would prefer to have, above all others. And this is natural and normal, it just makes it difficult at the time to see clearly. But it is possible to look back at recent events and even further into the past and see if the results really were the best for you.
You can do this by looking at what the situation made you do. If it challenged your fears, then it was good for you. And if you reacted by facing those fears or worries, then you reacted well. And if your takeaway from that reaction is that you will face it better when you meet it again in the future, then you are being an active participant in an important process.
Another situation might have forced you into doing something that you wouldn't usually do. If this was the case, then it has benefited you, and you should be aware of it and what it has done. And what it has done is to expand the kinds of decisions that you are comfortable making. It's easy to get stuck making the same choices all the time just because it's safe. But it's important to break out of the box sometimes.
If, however, the situation was a completely new experience that you haven't had before, then this is a little different. New experiences broaden your view of the world, and this can be in a positive or a negative way. But to get the right thing from it, you need to know what the right thing is. And that is simply that this new experience will make you see the rest of your life in a different way, and that's always a good thing.
Or maybe the experience made you revisit something from your past. These kinds of experiences will inevitably cause you to also revisit the emotions that went with that experience. You will always benefit from doing this because you can see how strong those emotions still are and how much they still affect you. So you shouldn't be afraid to face them openly.
As you can see, the things to take away from the past are usually positive, but it's all about perspective. You might think that some things definitely aren't good. Your life can get very serious sometimes and it can last for a long time. And while you're in it, it's difficult to see how it is moving your life forward or how the changes can be good.
But looking back, it's important to make the connection with how that bad time led you to where you are now and to realize that you couldn't have gotten where you are without it. The things that have happened to you have changed you, and maybe they have changed you a little or maybe they have changed you a lot, but it all adds up in the end to you being very different. So if you look at it in the right way, the past shows you that you are being given what you need when you need it, and you can take this knowledge into the future with you.