It’s important to know that your past is what enables your future.
It’s cliché to say, “You can’t change the past,” but clearly it’s true.
What is not cliché is that you can use your past as a platform for the future no matter what your past is like. This is true, all those things rolled up in your past: successes, baggage, events, close calls, experiences, jobs, etc. All of these can either help you move forward OR help you put up barriers for yourself to not move anywhere.
It’s your decision!
Today, we are going to choose to take steps forward, but before you go lying down on the psychologist’s couch, let’s establish what we want to accomplish: I want you to have a productive inventory of the past that will help you evaluate your future.
The Questions (…This is the Hard Work)
Below you will find 10 questions to help you evaluate what from your past you want to carry into your future.
Write down your answers to the questions somewhere you can refer to them again and again.
- What do I love enough to do for free?
- What do I do that causes time to feel differently? What causes me to lose track of time?
- If I had to teach something, what would I teach?
- What do people typically ask me for help in?
- What makes me feel great about myself?
- What do I enjoy regardless of the opinions of others?
- What were my favorite things to do in the past? What about now?
- What has hurt in the past that you don’t want others to go through?
- What were some challenges, difficulties and hardships you’ve overcome or are in the process of overcoming? How did you do it?
- What causes do you strongly believe in? Connect with?
Bonus Question! If you were to stop living TODAY, what would you regret not having done already? What would you want people to say at your funeral that maybe they wouldn’t or couldn’t right now?
To help take a step forward, look over this list and decide 1 thing from your past that you want to include in your future.