A received an email from a young man who was struggling in his job, he was asking for me to give him some inspiration to move forward in his life. This email was the longest email I had seen, this young man told me everything that was in his heart. I could not just write back, I needed to speak to this person, they were carrying so much baggage and I just wanted to help them so much. I get a lot of these emails but this one was different, this was a man who had reached breaking point and wanted to move forward in his life. The next day I was speaking to him on skype,, I asked him what was holding him back and that’s when he started telling me about his past. He spoke about how his father abandoned him when he was young and how the teachers in school did not like him. He told me all about his past and how it is affecting him today. After listening to him for an hour I asked him how his past was serving him today? He looked a little confused so I repeated the question and this time he thought about it. He was suddenly speaking in a very low tone of voice, the passion that was there when he was talking about his past had disappeared and I could see that he was now asking this question to himself. Without me prompting him he said “I think I use my past experience as an excuse to why I am not living up to my potential” I went on to coach Jonathan for a year and he since turned his life around by simply looking at possibilities that are front of him everyday.

I hear people complain about their past everyday, they blame their past for their failed marriages, for their luck of progression and everything that has gone wrong in their past. The problem with blaming all your short comings on your past is that you can’t change your past and if your focus is on something that you can’t change, nothing in your life will change. What happens when you are focusing on something you are not able to change? You feel weak and depressed and you are not able to find a way out of the situation you find yourself. If anybody asked you to drive your car at 70 miles an hour in reverse would you do it? Of course not, you will probably say it is too dangerous, if you do this you will not get very far, you will soon crush. This is what happens when you are focusing on the past; the only way you change your life is by focusing on what is front of you. Stop looking back, there is nothing there for you, everything you need is front of you today.