Let go of your past: You are allowed to forgive the person you used to be

There are decisions most of us have made that we wouldn’t make today. Things we’ve said that we wish we could take back, people we’ve trusted when perhaps we shouldn’t have, relationships we’ve stayed in for too long or walked away from too quickly, opportunities we’ve missed and moments when, with the benefit of hindsight, we simply got it wrong.

Everyone has a past. Everyone has made mistakes and almost everyone has something they aren’t particularly proud of. We don’t always talk about those things, of course. We tend to present the edited version of ourselves to the world, while privately carrying memories of moments when we weren’t quite the person we would have liked to have been.

That is part of being human.

The difficulty comes when something that happened five, ten or twenty years ago is still being used as evidence against the person you are today, particularly when the person doing the judging is you.

You made that decision with the person you were then

Looking back is incredibly easy because you already know how the story ends.

You know which relationship didn’t work out. You know the job you should probably have left earlier, the person you shouldn’t have trusted, the argument that wasn’t worth having and the financial decision that turned out to be a terrible one. You know which warning signs mattered because you’ve already seen what happened when you ignored them.

The person you were at the time didn’t have that information.

They had whatever knowledge, confidence, experience, circumstances and emotional resources were available to them in that moment. Perhaps they were younger. Perhaps they were frightened, lonely, angry or desperately trying to make something work. Maybe they simply hadn’t learned the lesson yet.

That doesn’t mean every past decision has to be excused. Sometimes we genuinely behaved badly. Sometimes we knew better and did it anyway. Taking responsibility for those moments is important, particularly if our actions hurt somebody else. But responsibility and lifelong punishment aren’t the same thing.

You can acknowledge that you got something wrong without sentencing yourself to feel guilty about it forever.

Regret can be evidence that you’ve grown

There is something slightly strange about beating ourselves up because we wouldn’t make the same decision today. Isn’t that actually the point?

If you can look back at something you did ten years ago and think, “I would handle that completely differently now,” that tells you something has changed. You have learned, matured or developed a different understanding of yourself and other people.

The uncomfortable feeling we call regret can sometimes be evidence of growth.

Perhaps you tolerated behaviour then that you wouldn’t tolerate now. Maybe you treated somebody in a way that you now recognise wasn’t fair. You may have spent money you didn’t have, ignored advice, walked away from something good, stayed somewhere that made you miserable or allowed somebody else’s opinion to determine what you did with your own life.

You cannot go back and give your younger self everything you know today. You can only decide what you do with that knowledge now.

We all have things we’re not proud of

Social media has made it remarkably easy to believe that everybody else has navigated life beautifully. They haven’t.

Behind the photographs, career announcements, holidays, anniversaries and smiling families are human beings who have also made questionable decisions, said things they regret and occasionally made a complete mess of something.

Some mistakes are small enough to become funny stories eventually. Others are painful and have consequences that last much longer. There are things we can apologise for and repair, and there are things we simply have to accept cannot be changed.

Nobody reaches adulthood without collecting a few chapters they wouldn’t particularly like published. That doesn’t make you a bad person. It makes you a person. What matters is whether you learn anything from those chapters.

Sometimes you need to make amends

Letting go of the past doesn’t mean pretending it didn’t happen. If you hurt somebody and an apology is appropriate, apologise. If there is something you can genuinely put right, do it. If your past behaviour has created consequences that still need addressing, take responsibility for them.

An apology shouldn’t simply be a way of making ourselves feel better, though. Sometimes contacting somebody from the past may cause them more harm than good, particularly if they have clearly moved on or don’t want contact. Making peace with our own behaviour doesn’t always require involving somebody else.

There will also be situations where no amount of apologising can change what happened. That is one of the harder realities of adulthood.

You can be genuinely sorry and still be unable to undo something. At that point, perhaps the most meaningful apology is making sure you don’t repeat it.

Stop replaying conversations you cannot change

Most of us have experienced the completely pointless 2am courtroom inside our own heads. You remember a conversation from years ago and suddenly you’re replaying it word for word, except this time you have the perfect response. You imagine what you should have said, what you should have noticed and what you would do differently if you could somehow have another attempt.

Your brain can become remarkably committed to solving a problem that no longer exists.

Reflection is useful when it teaches us something. Rumination is different. Repeatedly replaying the same mistake without discovering anything new simply keeps us emotionally attached to a moment we cannot alter.

When you notice yourself doing it, ask a simple question: is there anything I can actually do about this now? If there is, do it. If there isn’t, continuing to punish yourself won’t change the outcome.

Be careful with the words ‘I should have known’

“I should have known” is one of the cruellest things we say to ourselves.

You should have known the relationship would end. You should have known somebody was lying. You should have recognised the warning signs. You should have taken the other job. You should have saved more money. You should have spoken up. You should have walked away. But knowing something now doesn’t mean you could reasonably have known it then.

Sometimes warning signs only become obvious when you’re looking backwards. Sometimes people deceive us. Sometimes we take a reasonable risk and it doesn’t work. Sometimes we make the best decision we can and still get a bad outcome.

And sometimes, yes, we ignore something we probably did know. Even then, ask yourself why. Maybe you weren’t ready to face it. Perhaps the alternative frightened you. Maybe you hoped things would improve. Understanding why you made a decision doesn’t remove responsibility for it, but it can stop you reducing a complicated period of your life to “I was stupid.”

You probably weren’t. You were human, dealing with whatever was happening at the time.

Don’t let an old version of you run your life

There is another danger in holding onto our mistakes for too long: eventually we start building our identity around them.

You made a bad financial decision, so now you tell yourself you’re terrible with money. One relationship failed, so you decide you’re incapable of maintaining one. You made a mistake at work and years later you’re still reluctant to put yourself forward because somewhere inside you is the fear that you’ll get it wrong again.

A mistake should teach you something, not become your identity. The person who made that decision is part of you, but they aren’t the entirety of who you are now. You are also every lesson you’ve learned since.

What would you say to somebody you love?

Sometimes we’re astonishingly compassionate towards other people and incredibly unforgiving towards ourselves.

Imagine somebody you love came to you carrying the mistake you’re struggling to forgive yourself for. Imagine they genuinely regretted it, had taken responsibility where they could and had spent years behaving differently.

Would you tell them they deserved to feel terrible forever? Probably not.

You would likely remind them that they can’t change what happened. You might tell them to learn from it, make things right where possible and stop allowing one period of their life to overshadow everything that came afterwards. Perhaps you deserve some of that compassion too.

You don’t have to erase your past to move beyond it

Letting go doesn’t mean forgetting. Our experiences, including the ones we wish had happened differently, shape us. Sometimes the worst decisions teach us the clearest lessons about what we value, what we will tolerate, how we want to treat people and what kind of life we want to build.

There may always be memories that make you cringe a little or moments you wish you could revisit with the knowledge you have now. That’s okay.

The goal isn’t to reach a point where you approve of everything you’ve ever done. It’s to be able to look backwards without wanting to live there.

You made decisions then that you wouldn’t make now. You trusted people you wouldn’t trust today. You reacted in ways you’d handle differently. Perhaps you hurt people, perhaps people hurt you, and perhaps sometimes you simply got life completely wrong.

So has everybody else. Take responsibility for what needs taking responsibility for. Apologise where an apology is needed. Learn whatever the experience has to teach you and take that lesson forward. Then give yourself permission to leave the rest behind.

You have already spent enough of your life in the past. You don’t need to keep paying for it with your future.

Keep looking after you

Wellbeing looks different for everyone, and sometimes the most useful thing is simply finding the right information at the right time. Explore more from Daily Round with our dedicated Women’s Health, Men’s Wellbeing and Wellbeing for Leaders sections, or head to the Leaders Library for our latest book recommendations, ideas and inspiration for life in and outside work.

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