Wednesday Words of Wisdom #124
Do you believe in ghosts?
I don’t.
Not in the way that most folks talk about them anyway.
I don’t think that there are any spirits or Caspers floating around trying to scare the bejesus out of us.
No, I don’t believe in those type of ghosts.
But I do believe that we can allow ourselves to become haunted by the ghosts of our past, and in particular, the ghost of who or what we once were.
This train of thought all came about yesterday as I listened to a song on Spotify and the lyrics were something to the effect, ‘writing letters to ghosts’. It relayed the story of a woman who was obsessed with her past and the people in it, thus she felt as though she were continuously writing letters to ghosts.
I’m willing to go out on a limb here and say that we all have aspects of our past that we aren’t too happy with.
We all have regrets.
We also have glory days that we relive time and again.
Glory days that make us feel like a kid again when we play them back.
Ghosts from our past.
Here’s the thing about the past though, its done. Gone. There is nothing we can do to change it and we can’t exactly relive it, not really, not genuinely.
Here’s a little doozy for you to think on.
How many of you have weighed yourselves in the past month and when you saw that the number was higher than you hoped, said to yourself, “Oh my god, I remember when I used to be insert ideal weight from the past 10-15 years here and now look at the shape of me!”
I get it all the time with new Heroes that join us at Hollywood Fitness. We do an initial weigh in and immediately they feel the need to reassure us that they didn’t always weigh this much and that before they had those 4 kids they weighed 3 stone less.
My response is usually the same.
Its OK. There’s no judgement here.
You weight what you weigh. You are where you are now. Your previous weight might as well be a ghost. It might as well not exist.
Sometimes ghosts need exorcised. They need purged from the host and that person need to be shown the light in which that they see growth possible.
That’s what we do.
We show them that the past is just that, the past. Ain’t nothing we can do with it other than learn from it.
The present is a different kettle of fish. If we banish the ghosts of the past and focus solely on the present, then we can shape a future that you can look forward to experiencing.
I’m not afraid of ghosts.
You shouldn’t be either.
Instead, face up to them. Acknowledge them for what they are and then flip them the middle finger and set your mind to affecting your present.
You’ll thank me for it, I promise it’s not as scary as you think…….
Now, who ya gonna call?