How do you know where you’re going, if your eyes remain fixed on where you have been?

Each and every one of us has a story we tell. The map that outlines our every scar, mark, regret. We sugar coat it with a laugh and keep telling ourselves that it’s what made us. But, what if it is what is holding us back from who we can be? What if the truth is, it’s a map to somewhere that no longer exists, and we are driving blind looking for a lost time?

The story we tell ourselves and others, of the regrets and trauma we survived, can be a powerful and illuminating light to shine onto the darkness for ourselves and others. Or, it can be a shackle that tightly locks around us, unforgivingly imprisoning us from reaching our purpose. When we use our past as a guidance, we break the power it holds. However when that map becomes a maze, it can be the very thing used to destroy us or drive us mad.

Blame, regret, shame, and pressure to achieve can stop us in our tracks. Like a flat tire they slow us down and require us to fix a damaged piece. As children we gain these ideas of what being an adult means, or what a relationship should look like, what success is, what responsibilities are. The way we learn these is not always in the best environments, or taught by the best teachers. Like dust blowing in the wind as we drive on, we can never return to the same time or place. We can’t return to choose new teachers, but we can choose to use the tools they gave in more skillful hands.

Our eyes must remain fixed on the road ahead. While we can carry pieces of the life left behind us, we have to use them as tools and not weapons. We have to allow ourselves the freedom of forward progress using the fuel from lessons of the past. Like everything in life, the past is only a series of moments carried within the picture book of our mind. The future is just a concept, of expectations and dreams, designed by the pictures of our past. The present is the now that makes up them both. Allow the nows to unfold each day, to soak up the picturesque scenery each new now presents itself with. Allow the now to build to an expectation-less future. A future of purpose. Allow each now moment to rewrite the story of what is behind you. The story you tell yourself and others.

You can’t go back and undo the past, you can’t fast forward to build the perfect future ending, but you can wake up each day with the lessons of yesterday and create the You and the Now that leads to and lays the foundation of the destination you deserve!