“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Too many of us don’t heed the words of Emerson and start each day with a heavy load of baggage from the past. Those who can start each day with a “that was then, this is now”
frame of mind have a huge advantage in life. The absurdity of clinging to the past is demonstrated in the ads for Let Go, the web site for selling stuff that you don’t really need anymore. A person dangling over a cliff but stubbornly holding onto a bowling ball is no more absurd than us carrying around the worry or guilt about something that has already happened or may happen some time in the future. There is little that we can really do about either, but they both could consume immense amounts of our time and energy.
It is important that we move sad memories of losses of loved ones from the front of our minds, where they may weigh us down, to a place in the fond memories section of our minds, where we can revisit the memories of good times as often aas we’d like. Worry and fear about things that may happen in the future need to be placed in little metal boxes and put aside to be opened and dealt with, should any of those things come to pass. Mistakes made yesterday need to be assigned a place in our mind’s knowledge base under the lessons learned category.
It might be helpful to end eac
h day by putting away the things that you’ve been thinking about or worrying about or regret having done. File a place to file them in your mind or resolve to discard them, but don’t keep them for tomorrow. Those things, those mistakes, those doubts, those losses are over, so let them go. They are so yesterday. Erase them as you would a blackboard at school. Tomorrow you start with a clean slate that has yet to have any failures or successes written upon it.
Perhaps using a standard little business trick might help. The first step is to write down those things that you are carrying around with you from the past. Then prioritize that list from most important to least important. Then work your way down the list, using the thought process:
- Is there anything that I can do to change this? (If it is in the past, the obvious answer is NO)
- If I can’t change it, is there any value in keeping it in mind?
- What can learn from this to help me in the future?
- How can I let go of this?
Just going through that process may help you put the things on your list in the right perspective in your mind. It will, at a minimum put a less emotional and more rational
light on them. If you feel that yo still need a little more help in dealing with them, remember that God is always right there, ready to offload any burden that you want to give Him. The serenity that Emerson mentioned may be found in the act of prayer and the decision to let’s God’s will for you to prevail.
Have a great and unencumbered long weekend. Put all of yesterday’s nonsense behind you and get on with life.
NormsMilfordBlog 
Some times it is hard to go past something, but we should always try our hardest to do so. Once we do we get freedom from it.