I Choose... My Destiny

I Choose… My Destiny

“My history does not determine my destiny.”

(Mary Manin Morrissey)

And just because something painful may have happened in my life does not mean that I have to carry it around with me and allow it to color my current experience.

Dead weight is exhausting, and it has a tendency to “prove” itself to be true for us for as long as we choose to carry it around.

This morning I noticed that I’ve been unconsciously carrying a load that could have been set down at least two years ago. And that load has been determining my attitude about a certain area of my life for those entire two years. I had a painful experience. I had what felt like a “BIG FAT FAILURE” and, as a result of that, I retreated into safety, and here I sit, flattened by that load that I, myself, have not chosen to let go of. Here I sit, allowing my history to continuously “prove” to me that it’s not really worth it to me to be bold, because “look what happened the last time I tried that!”

In a nutshell, I have been allowing my past experience to determine my current perception of this one particular aspect of my life. This has been influencing my destiny because the decisions I’ve been making in my present circumstances have been based on that past experience. Make sense? In other words, I’ve been being a victim of that one experience that felt painful to me. For two years.

How many of us have done this for decades? For lifetimes? For 34 years, I carried around the fact that I had been abused as a child. And the presence of that load – the power that I had handed over to my history – as I lived my life DID (in every area of my life) determine the destiny that I was creating for myself. Right up until September 19, 1999 when I came across the above quote by Mary Morrissey, and decided to knock it off. And, as any of you who know me or have read my books knows, it worked!

And now, here I am again. Thank goodness it’s only been two years, rather than thirty! I think that after two years, it’s time to set it down. It’s time to let go of this piece of my history and make my decisions without that particular experience influencing my current perception. Or, at the very least, it’s time to recognize it when it’s happening, because that is the first step toward changing it.

I Choose… My Destiny

This week I choose to NOTICE when I’m allowing “past experience” to influence my current perceptions, attitudes, and decisions, and I purposefully let go of it and stand in my Now. I stop, let go, take a breath, and ask myself what I would be able to see if my history were not blocking my view. And then I take my next step unburdened by that which, in reality, has no weight except that which I give it.

Check it out for yourself. Look at how you are currently perceiving the different aspects of your life: Friendships, intimate relationships, job situations, finances, health, etc. Where are you looking at your life through the filter of “past experience,” allowing it to influence your current view, which DOES influence your destiny.

And, if you choose to, remind yourself that “your history does not determine your destiny,” unless you allow it to.

I repeat, your history does not HAVE to determine your destiny… but it WILL if you let it.

Join me this week, if you’d like to, in choosing your “destiny” deliberately, rather than defaulting to your “history” out of habit. Just do it as an experiment, even if you just notice when and where you’re doing it. From there you will be able to decide consciously how you want to see those things and, from there, you can choose much more consciously what your next step will be.

And—from there—YOU, rather than your history, will be determining your destiny.

Love,

Sandi