Renew Your Identity

Renew Your Identity

In order to move forward in life, you have to properly categorize the past.  We have all made mistakes.  We have all been wronged.  Some of us have been wronged very badly.  We have been hurt physically, emotionally, and mentally.  The pain that we may have can be intense.  Regardless, and not to be insensitive, we must put the past to use in a positive way or discard it if we are to move forward.

We want to achieve all that we can.  We want to become the best person possible in order to achieve our dreams and reach that life purpose.  The bottom line is, either your past can be an asset or a milestone tied about your neck dragging you down. Renewing your identity is part of a personal development plan.

For those of you who have past issues that you cannot deal with on your own, please get counseling.  I encourage emotional health and it would be unfair of me to believe or state that everyone can deal with everything in their past on their own.  Get professional help if you need it.  Do not let the past stifle your future.

Even so, there are many things in our pasts that do not require professional help with that must be dealt with:

  • guilt
  • regrets
  • insecurities
  • anger
  • loss of friends and family
  • pain physical and emotional
  • betrayal
  • failure
  • The list goes on…

Let us look at sports. Even the best lose games. Even the best see failure on the field. Why should we think that in our personal and professional lives that we will not have the days on the field when we lose?

Maintain A Positive Attitude

A college defensive end, Anthony Young of 2007 Morgan State team, once said about a series of losses that it was imperative they eliminate the mental mistakes that have cost them the past two games.

“You can’t sit around and be down and moping around, all you can do is get in tomorrow and start working tomorrow,” Young said. “We are going to be ready for Hampton and this is not going to happen again, it’s not going to happen again.”

This is the attitude that college and professional players must maintain if they are to have any hope of succeeding on the field. We often lose on the field and in life before we ever get started. We defeat ourselves with a defeatist attitude. We look at our past losses as predictions for the future.  We must Choose optimism.

Review the Plays

You can bet that the players reviewed the plays from the past two games. Going through each play in slow motion until they found what they did wrong and what the other team did to defeat them. Take this same attitude about life, career, and achieving your goals and life purpose.

We tend to run circumstances, past events and mistakes, over in our mind and beat ourselves up over them. We tear ourselves down because we think about how stupid we were to make those mistakes, or how clumsy we were to allow ourselves to get into difficult situations. Over and over in our minds those images replay until we are beaten once again.

College and professional athletes and coaches do not spend hours each week reviewing plays from the last game in slow motion so they can beat themselves up for their mistakes. They review the plays so they can learn. They are looking for ways to improve their personal playing styles, techniques as well as improving the team plays. It is a positive experience.

To learn from your past you must replay it in slow motion, but in a positive light – self reflection. Replay the past so you can learn. Put on your analytical hat. Step away from the emotion of losing or being hurt. Step into a place where you can benefit from the lessons of life.

Tips for Renewing your Identity:

  • If there are events in your past that you cannot replay without dredging up bad emotions, set those aside for now.  They need to be dealt with, but perhaps now is not the time.
  • Get professional help if you need it.  Some things in our past are way beyond ourselves to deal with alone.
  • Put on the analytical hat and look at the past as a way to learn something useful.  Get rid of the bad emotions.  The past is the past.  You can’t change it so learn from it.
  • Bounce situations off of someone you trust.  Getting someone else’s perspective can help you think clearly about a situation.
  • If you start to show emotion – anger, sorrow, fear, insecurities, etc. – you may not have your analytical hat on.  These are healthy emotions, but when you are trying to learn something for the future these emotions can cloud your perspective of the past.
  • Only remember the past as a tool for shaping a positive future.  Do not remember the past as burden, or as something that keeps you from thinking positively about your future.
  • We may have to live with the consequences of our past, but we do not have to let the past shape our hopes and dreams, nor become emotional obstacles.
  • View the past as a book.  It is a book to read and learn from.  It does not predict the future.  Your positive attitude, goals, and life purpose predict your future.

Renewing your identity is about how to shape, improve, heal your opinion of yourself, as a discrete, separate entity with self-worth and viable reasons to exist, be successful, and to be loved.  Renewing your identify involves being happy with yourself and taking control of the definition you have for who you are.

The past is a series of events that have shaped who you are today.  The past does not define who you will be tomorrow.  Use the past as a book to learn from, not a stick to beat yourself with.

I promise, you are a valuable person who has great potential.  This is true of all humans, and I assume if you are reading this article that you are human.

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Author: Jeff Harris
Copyright © 2010