Your Best Life Now!

Does your past cripple you from moving forward with your future? Do you look at generations before you and feel their downfalls hinder you from living your best life? This is your life so are you where you want to be?

These are the questions I asked myself after a girl’s night out and had heavy conversations. There were tears and self-realizations to issues that I had never put my finger on, till then.

The topic of how we parent was brought up and comments were made that, “I want to do better, be better in my children’s lives and how I raise them. I don’t want the things of my past to get in the way of me being a loving parent.” We discussed generational curses and things that I didn’t want to bring into my present life. I explained that I have been allowing myself to have anxiety over these things and they were crippling me emotionally.

My girlfriend looked at me and said she had similar feelings at an earlier time in her life and gave me the best advice I have had in a long while. She told me that she and her husband had a talk while they were dating. She expressed her many fears rooted in dysfunctionality she saw in her family growing up. His words to her were so profound!

He said, “You aren’t your parents. You aren’t your family. You are an individual. Deconstruct your past and Reconstruct it into the future you want.”

My friend went home that night and got out a piece of paper. She began to write down everything she was afraid of. Everything!  Every- Little-Thing! Each fear went on a new line. She created two columns. The first was labeled: Fears. The second column was labeled: Reality. After writing down each fear, she went and wrote down each reality. Because her parents had a bad marriage, she wrote that she was scared of having an unhappy marriage like her parents. On the Reality side of the paper, she wrote: I choose men that are kind, loving, generous, communicative and seek to be that myself. One fear was now feeling more like peace. She was choosing to see what was real rather than getting stuck in fear. She did that with every last fear. She was reminded that she is responsible for her life, whether she chooses fear or peace.

Take actions to stop or change what you don’t like. Become aware of the things that give you anxiety. Living in fear will not help you grow into the person that God knows you are.

I did a similar activity that my friend did with her paper. To further visualize it, here’s what I would write. Obesity runs in my family so I would write in one column, “I’m scared that I’ll become obese.” In the other column I would write, “I am not obese. I can work out and eat healthy foods like I’m already doing.” If I want, I can set goals to aid me in that if I feel I need to right now.

I went home that night and made a list of my fears. With prayer, I am working through this journey of guiding my life where I want it to go and seeing what I can do to ensure I don’t remain chained to my fears. We all have a past, but the beautiful thing about the past is we have the power to write our future.

Take an honest look at what scares you and gives you the feeling that you aren’t in charge of your direction. Write down your fears, and then write down your reality or what you want your reality to be.

Deconstruct Your Past and Reconstruct It Into the Future You Want!