Self-Esteem and Past: Take the Handbrake Off Your Life 🆙

"To have low self-esteem it is like walking the path of life with the handbrake tirato” Maxwell Maltz

A few nights ago I found a box of old photos and it occurred to me to write an article about how our relationship with the past affects our self-esteem.

It wasn't planned, nor did I expect it, but here it is.

I think what made me think was the fact that, among those old photos, there were a lot of images that made me smile with happiness and satisfaction.

And this seemed to me really strange and paradoxical, since, I remember it very well, in those days I didn't like me at all.

Yet, I thought looking at the photos, my past myself wasn't as bad as I sometimes remember it.

Here I am, for example, super fit and happy in the high school class photo.

And then, again:

… .On a very cool white sand beach, while I act as a barman and pretend to smoke a big cigar in a thatched hut-bar….

.... fresh from my mother's license on my mother's car, while I go on vacation with my old friends ...

... on a school trip with an unlikely hair ...

… .And so on, obviously including all the official moments with my family: communion, confirmation, diploma, degree….

So I relived joys, pains, successes and defeats, and I realized that it is impossible to build a real one self-esteem, understood as knowledge and perception of real value of themselves, without making peace once and for all with how we were.

And yet, unfortunately, when it comes to self-esteem, the past is often treated as an enemy to be fought.

Yourself: yesterday, today, tomorrow

If you read any article on self-esteem, the most popular tips are those focused on the future: become more assertive, work on your strengths, surround yourself with people who make you feel good, establish healthy habits ...

All very fair.

Perhaps you have read it myself, I just covered in a recent article how starting new habits is a very important aspect in the self-improvement process (you can find the link here).

In this way, however, there is a risk of passing the concept that self-esteem depends on contrast between the yourself a bit 'loser of yesterday and the super-cool one of today.

As if, in the true self-esteem journey, there was a before to be ashamed and an after to be finally proud of.

Here, for me this is crazy stuff, that it only risks creating hypertrophic Egos but with feet of clay.

The past should not be denied, forgotten or mystified, quite the contrary!

Whether your past was happy or full of suffering or, as is so often the case, a compromise between the two, you must have the courage to consider it a fundamental part of yourself.

In this way, you will get something that goes far beyond the usual mantras like "I run every morning, how cool I am!", "I read every night, how smart I am".

When in fact you build your self-esteem on contrast between who you were yesterday and who you are today, a week without going for a run will be enough to make it fall under your feet.

Just as a wrong exam will be enough to go back to feeling like a slacker or a fool, or an unkind comment to go back to being the shy child and tormented by the fear of making mistakes, or not being liked.

While when you are able to really look back, to recognize who you were, to serenely accept that you have been that way, you have taken a huge step towards real self-esteem.

This reinterpretation of the past, however, is not at all simple.

All the more so because, when we think about the past, it is convenient for us to use it as the best excuse….

Take responsibility

Let's face it honestly: the past is the perfect alibi.

How many times, for example, do we hear people complain about all the things they have had to go through?

And how many other times, too, do we attribute to things of the past a fundamentally negative influence on our present actions?

"I do this because as a child my classmate made fun of me saying I was fat"

"I'm like that because at 17 my high school sweetheart left me for a college graduate"

"I say these things because my father was very strict and did not let me out and I suffered a lot"

Now, let's admit that the ones I mentioned are trivial examples, and they are, in fact.

But, in any case, whatever your past was, you can't agree to get stuck on it.

I'm not talking about forgiveness if someone has hurt you, nor about forgetting if something bad has happened to you.

I'm talking about stopping blaming the past as well take responsibility instead how you react to what happens to you.

You see, as Mark Manson argues in the book "The Subtle Art of Doing What You Fuck", we often confuse the concept of responsibility with that of guilt.

Still, they are two completely different things.

Because if it is true that many things do not happen through our fault, it is equally true that the decision of how to react to them it is entirely our responsibility.

So, it is true that our past - or of the people who have been a part of it - can easily have some faults towards us.

But the responsibility of how we decide to act, day by day, moment by moment, is something that concerns only and only us.

It is our decision.

So: do you finally want to have full awareness and perception of your worth?

Then decide, immediately,