I wept because I had no shoes…until I saw a man who had no feet. – Ancient Persian saying.

In So What – Part 1 we talked about people who allow their lives to be run by things that have happened to them.

It may be a person who was abused as a child and now uses their past as an excuse to explain the mistakes they make, the things they are afraid of, or their unwillingness to try to accomplish new things in their life.

Many people allow these bad things to form who they are.

Don’t get me wrong; I completely understand that horrible things can happen to people. And those horrible things can have a severe effect on your self-confidence, self-esteem, and can create fears and insecurities.

While there is always a healing time after a horrible thing happens, you cannot let it take over your life.

If you were abused as a child and you are now in your 30’s and still using that as a crutch you are choosing to let the abuse continue. You are letting that bad event hurt you – over and over and over again by limiting your life.

You have two choices when it comes to the bad things in your past – you can live through it or live in it.

If you are living in it, you are holding yourself back and will never reach your potential because you are letting one event, or even a series of events keep you from being more.

If it is a person who caused these horrible wrongs in your past, do you really want to let them do it again? By allowing these events to form who you are, that is exactly what you are doing.

Meanwhile, if you learn to live through your past, you can go beyond the walls that living in those events will build.

No, what has happened is not going to just go away.

You will always remember the bad things that have happened in your life. There is no way to make them cease to exist. They are a part of you.

But the key is to not let them rule your life.

When you find yourself getting into a mode where you say, “I would but I can’t because of…(insert appropriate horrible event from the past).”

Stop right there!

Why give that event or the person who caused it that kind of power. Sure the bad feelings may pop up, but this is where you need to tell those feelings you are not going to let them control your life anymore.

Instead, you should be even more determined that you can accomplish whatever it is that you were having second thoughts about.

Every time you accomplish something that your ‘past’ made you think you couldn’t, you are taking a piece of yourself back from that event and letting it control your life less and less.

Eventually, you will find that the bad memories are still there, they are just that – memories.

They are no longer a controlling part of who you are, just a sad part of your past.