Who You Are Becoming is More Important Than Who You’ve Been
Monday Motivation
Human nature makes us look back at our past and judge ourselves for all of the mistakes we made. You don’t like who you are becoming because you don’t like who you’ve been, and you can’t draw a mental line to separate the two identities. The truth is, the more we don’t like about who we’ve been can inform who we are becoming. The most valuable aspect of making mistakes is to learn from those mistakes and change your thought processes to evolve into a new and better self.
Perhaps we look back at our decisions and behaviors earlier in life and we are embarrassed, we feel we’ve wasted time or wronged others. We can see how the decisions we have made have had negative consequences on our current status in life. Fortunately, even if we made mistakes literally yesterday, they do not define who we are becoming today.
The human brain has a natural tendency to recall and give more importance to negative experiences and interactions than positive ones. “Negativity bias” is the term given to this human tendency by psychologists.
Our brains are wired to scout for the bad stuff and fixate on the threat. [Lingering on the positive] improves the encoding of passing mental states into lasting neural traits. That’s the key here: we’re trying to get the good stuff into us. And that means turning our passing positive experiences into lasting emotional memories.
Rick Hanson – psychologist and author
So, we can see through cognitive biases that humans tend to focus on the negative rather than the positive. Studies say you can take steps today to change that behavior within yourself. Look instead at the lessons you’ve learned and the progress you’ve made. Realize you’ve come a long way since “those days” and the future is bright with so much potential.
Final Verdict: Love Who You Are Becoming!
There are many steps you can take personally to make improvements for today and for the future. Some steps can include behavioral changes, thought process improvements, and introspective cognitive analysis.
- If you’ve hurt a friend or family, make amends.
- If you’ve made bad decisions with money, invest in more stable assets.
- If your work performance is suffering, improve your time management.
- If you keep failing to exercise, change your daily routine with the latest fitness trends.
- If your nutrition is poor, educate yourself and make changes to your eating habits in 2023.
You are not your old self. You are not even who you were yesterday, let alone many years ago. You are the sum of your experiences and the lessons you have learned from your mistakes. Starting today and moving forward try to love who you are becoming because it is far more important than who you’ve been.