Hindsight can be both valuable and damaging. It’s only by acknowledging where we’ve been and what we’ve done that we can fully appreciate where we are and what we’re doing. And it’s only by having a grip on where we are that we can move forward to where we’re meant to be.
But the danger in revisiting the past is the temptation to rewrite it…to use today’s wisdom and experience to reformulate our own personal history. It’s one thing to see where mistakes have been made; where the wrong call was made; where judgement was impaired; where things could have been done better or smarter. It’s another thing entirely to measure who we were in the past against who we are in the present, judge our performance and then move on to self-punishment.
So much depression is regret based. So many feelings of inadequacy and failure are linked with things that simply can’t be changed.
The best that we can hope for is that we learn from the life that we have lived to enhance the life we are living and build toward a positive future.
By wallowing in a state of hindsight we run the risk of triggering a trap from which it can be very difficult to escape. If we feed doubt, disappointment and anguish they can become dominant emotions. We can feel empty and sad.
There’s no denying the past. It happened. There were both welcome and unwelcome contributions made by individuals and circumstances. But no amount of rethinking, rescripting or regret can change history.
The good news is that it is altogether possible to write a new script for today. This moment and the next can be altogether different to yesterday’s script; last week’s script; last year’s script.
It’s all a matter of learning from the past and living in the moment.
Gary Bentley Counselling 