Every man charts his next step in life by virtue of the direction in which he is looking, because whatever direction you are looking is the way you naturally go. You can’t look in two directions at the same time, you are either looking backward or looking forward and the direction in which you look determines the direction of your motion. If you want to remain hopeful, you must regard the past as past and refuse to look backward. Free yourself from the thoughts of how things used to be or what is popularly called ‘the good old days. 

The Bible says in Ecclesiastes 7:10, “Do not say, Why were the old days better than these? For it is not wise…” (Amp.) If your past was not so good, you need to erase the negative experiences and all the things you have suffered from your mind, otherwise your attention will be divided; you will be unable to maintain focus. And without focus, there is no attainment in life.

Stop referring to ‘the good old days’ rather picture the bright days ahead. As the name rightly implies, they are ‘old days’, so forget them, because what is old cannot be relevant to the now! Don’t destroy your future with the past!

Look, you need creativity to breakthrough into higher realms in life. That is why you must free your mind from the strongholds of past failures in order to be creative. If you keep observing the things that have been ruined, your life may become ruined eventual-ly. Look at Isaac’s story in Genesis chapter 26, every time he dug a well, the Philistines covered it, but he never looked backwards once. 

As soon as one well was covered, he went forward to dig another one without a reference to the previous. No wonder the Bible says, “..The man…went forward, and grew until he became very great” (Genesis 26:13). Isaac went forward because he was ever looking ahead not back-wards. People who keep making reference to the past always go behind.

We can only pick lessons from our past to enhance our present position and prepare ourselves for the fu-ture, but never settle down with the sorrow or failures of the past. This is the trap that so many people have fallen into in life and they have remained on the same spot. Maybe you have missed some opportunities, or some targets you couldn’t meet as you thought you should, leave them behind and reach out for what is ahead of you. 

Pick lessons from your past mistake and do your best to be sure that you avoid such pitfalls in the future, but move forward from there to achieve greater things in your life. Keep looking ahead and you will naturally move forward into your next phase in life.

You must fight everything that strives to keep you in failure. If you will refuse to celebrate failure, nothing will be strong enough to keep you from moving forward. Don’t announce, think, discuss or even look a failure, because it is not the event itself that makes one hopeless, but reflecting on the event and bemoaning the situation. 

That is why you must keep your heart from such pollutions with diligence! Anything that reminds you of past disappointments and failures must be kept out of sight as much as possible, because they are traps of the enemy to keep you in stagnation. Sometimes, you find people keeping the remains of a car that has been wrecked in an accident in front of their houses. 

Such continuous reminders of sad events will naturally keep a man constantly depressed. My view is this, whatever breaks down around you that cannot be repaired or replaced immediately, should be disposed of, because the longer it stays the more it deteriorates. So, why not let it go so that you can reorganise your life for something better?

Stop reflecting on past failures and disappointments! Stop reflecting on the things that somebody said about you! There is no level you will ever get to in life that Satan will not attempt to remind you of the past, but as he is saying it, keep looking forward, because those who reflect on their past will be held back in failure, but those who look ahead will keep going ahead…

This text is an extract from the book “CREATING A NEW BEGINNING” written by David O. Abioye. 
We invite you to read the following article “HAVE A SENSE OF APPRECIATION!“

LET THE PAST PASS! LET THE PAST PASS! LET THE PAST PASS! LET THE PAST PASS!