“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” ―Eleanor Roosevelt

The past has been very much in my mind lately. Everything about the past, past mistakes, past lessons, past opportunities, past hurts, but mostly past friends and boyfriends.

Every time someone pops into my mind I go off surfing the net looking for every little morsel of detail about them.   Lately I have developed this habit of checking on certain people every single day.  This  list of people include ex and other romantic interests.

I am not proud of that!  I am embarrassed of the amount of time I am spending looking at the social media pages of people that do not add anything to my life.

What is up with this curiosity for people that are no longer in my life?  It is not as if I want them back in my life.  I am happy they are in the past.  Why should I care what have they been doing lately and with whom?  Everyone has stayed in the past for a reason, and that is where they should remain.

This insane curiosity has become a very damaging addiction.  Yes it is an addiction!  If you compulsively find yourself typing the same name in Google Search day in and day out then you are an addict.

Any time I revisit the past I bring about all the past hurt and betrayal.  I start second guessing myself.  Feelings come rushing back.  I remember happy moments too, but those are equally damaging as they are gone, not to come back.  Happy moments make me think of what could have been and never was , or was just briefly.

Any time I am focused on the past it is time that would be better spent focusing on my future.  Having my mind and heart populated with the past leaves no room for the present and future.  How can I let good and good people in when my mind is crowded with garbage?

Why do I keep inviting the past back in?

They say one shouldn’t burn bridges in case one needs to go back.  In the case of past loves or past love interests, I think one needs to completely implode the bridge and all traces of it.  Going back to certain situations and certain people should never be an option.  Sometimes leaving a bridge up is just this constant reminder that we would like to go back but our return is not wanted.

It is a matter of faith!  If I really have faith and believe that God has a plan for me and that only good things are waiting for me in my future then I have no business in going back to the past.  Flirting with the past is flirting with disaster.  I realize I haven’t been acting like a person that truly believes in the beauty of her future.

I want to dive into the future head on!  I am making changes.

I now only allow myself to check somebody’s social media if that action is adding to my life and my plans and if I intend that person to be part of my future.

I came up with a list of things that I could be doing online instead of wasting time with other people’s lives (and that goes for Celebrity gossip sites and Instagram of people I know and don’t know).

I can:

• Read about current events
• Take an online class
• Learn a new language
• Improve my geography and history knowledge
• Improve my vocabulary
• Write more posts, improve my blog, read other blogs
• Create Budgets, work on my finance
• Write clear goals and plans to attain them
• Write letters to the people I love and want to be in touch
• Learn more about the industry I work in
• Organize all my picture files
• Clean up and organize my computer files and emails

In cleaning up my mind from the past to leave room for the future, I realized that there are some people in my present that should be a part of my past.  They take space in my present, they occupy my now, and they distract me from what I should be doing.  I am taking steps to correct that.  I completely ignored this one guy that texts whenever he has time and never asks me out (for once I don’t mind appearing rude).  I asked another not to contact me (I confess I didn’t have the heart to say “Don’t ever contact me again”, so I just said: “I need some space, don’t contact me, I will contact you).  This last one has been extremely difficult as there was some history there.

In the end I am not saying completely forget the past and everyone in it.  What I am saying is that for me I have to learn the lesson and move on.  I have to choose who I keep near and dear and who I choose to set free. I have to be selfish!

 “The future depends on what you do today.” ― Mahatma Gandhi