As you flip through the pages of your passport, what do you see?
Are the pages frayed and the spine weakened from having been handled often? How many pages are stamped with visits to other countries? Our life experience is like a passport and the memories of past events become pages in our life story.
People travel for a whole host of reasons; we plan vacations to relax, we travel for business, we visit distant friends and relatives to celebrate milestone moments such as births, birthdays, weddings, anniversaries and funerals. Some people leave their home countries to study, to do missionary work, to start a new life. Whenever we cross international lines, our passports are marked. And, as we live through those experiences we too become marked by them.
Imagine you are a passport booklet. What does it say about you and what stories and memories are held within the pages of your life? Which would you rather be? The one stamped with many marks on the pages or the one with blank pages?
Holding onto only the happy memories while running away from feelings and events that help shape us interferes with the development of our full potential. When we hide our negative experiences we’re not allowing the gifts of our well worn, oft-stamped passports to be revealed. Happiness is a state of being that we can create for ourselves.
Beauty lies in how we remember what happened in the past; in how we perceive these events. Those perceptions affect how we experience life in the present time and that is how we evolve and grow as human beings; that is the path to personal growth. We learn from experiences, not from books.
Action Steps:
Revisit the parts of your past that unsettle you
Make a list of all your thoughts and feelings surrounding those events and then ask and answer the following:
Thank the people involved in this experience for playing part in your personal growth process
Thank the universe/God whatever you believe is out there for having the opportunity to learn what you have learned.
