Are you living in no-man’s land?

Have you looked at elephants obeying a tiny human and wondered how these giants are trained? Their training begins by conditioning them to believe one rule: a lifetime of confinement with no possible escape. Baby elephants are tied with a rope to a short pole. They struggle to break free but are unable to however hard they try. When they grow up, they can easily escape any time they want to but they never do because they believe they can’t.

I am against the capture of wild animals but this story is instructive. The elephant never tests its strength continuously to use the first opportunity to escape the drudgery of a trained elephant’s life. Based on past memory, it believes that it has no option but to remain where it is. What holds it back is not physical confinement but a self-created mental prison. The elephant is enslaved by its own false belief. Do you have any self-created mental cages that you need to break out of?

“Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one’s own sunshine.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

We make life decisions in the present based past memories instead of applying ourselves to finding an appropriate decision in tune with our current circumstances. We are imprisoned by our memories and continue to be strangled by them. Especially by those we consider ‘bad memories.’ These hamper your entire life journey. Are you going to imprison yourself in your memories for a lifetime? How do you move beyond them?

The only way to move beyond troubling memories is to fully acknowledge and accept them. Why deny them? Acknowledging and accepting every part of you, including your memories, puts you at ease and brings you into what matters – the present. Life is a series of present moments. The ‘past’ does not exist and the ‘future’ never arrives. If you keep denying some part of your life experience instead of fully accepting it, you will be living in no-man’s land, neither here nor there. You will keep brooding while life keeps moving on. This leads to negativity and is a waste of precious time because you can never go back to that place however hard you try.

“Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.” – Henry David Thoreau

When you allow pessimism to invade your mind space, you hand over power to a number of crippling forces including fear, resentment, anger, and overthinking, among others. This means you will live out the rest of your life in awful gloom. Instead, set aside a specified time to think about a problematic memory. Examine it thoroughly, just as it happened. What about the situation makes it occupy such a big part of your life? Is it worth giving so much time to? Does it even matter now?

“Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.” – Buddha

Most ‘problems’ are life experiences. Treat them as part of how life unfolds and move on. When you refuse to move on, what should have been yet another life experience becomes a festering wound. When you leave it untreated, it becomes worse until it takes over all your time. It becomes a big drain on your life energy. The only person who suffers is you. Why keep punishing yourself instead of allowing yourself to be in a more joyful place?

Once you fully accept the memory, you will laugh at it. Why on earth did you spend so much time on this? Acceptance will also help you realize how unfulfilling life can be when you live on memories alone. Keep walking through every experience knowing that life never happens exactly the way you want it to.

The more confidently you move on, the better life becomes. Your memories are washed away by the tide of life, leaving you free to enjoy this moment. You only get once chance to live life joyfully on your terms. Help move yourself into an empowering and fulfilling space instead of living a limited and poorly expressed life.

“Don’t stumble over something behind you.” – Seneca