Hey all! I hope this blog post finds you living your best BAPU life!
Whatever kind of life you are living, I know one thing for certain: you have a backstory. A lot has been written about how our pasts play a role in our present. Sure, we would love to think we can just shove our past to the side and move on with our future. But that is often easier said than done.
It sounds really cliche to say, but the first step to thinking and acting clearly in the present is by acknowledging your past. You need to know your backstory!
There is a lot that has been written on this topic from both spiritual and psychological perspectives. One of my favorite guiding pieces of literature is the Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. Ruiz speaks at length about past experiences that create automatic habits or “agreements” in our lives. For example, if you were raised with teachers as parents (like I was), education will probably become an important part of your life. You have accepted the agreement that “education is important.”
Think about the countless agreements you have created over your life and how they affect your daily lives. Most, perhaps even all, of your thinking and decisions are based on the agreements with which you were raised. That’s not necessarily a bad thing…unless you determine these agreements are holding you back somehow.
Another author from a very different background who echoes this is Maxwell Maltz, the author of Psycho-Cybernetics. Maltz explains that our self-image determines our automatic responses to the daily issues we face. How is this self-image created? Our past experiences! But more importantly, he tells us that we have the power to change and create a self-image that can help us improve our responses.
Do we have to know our backstory? Yes! It has created our agreements and our self-image which guide our actions. We need to acknowledge this in order to move forward.
Must we keep those agreements and self-image? No! We are free to work on new habits and new ways of thinking in order to better serve our lives. How? We will tackle that during our next edition of the BAPU Life Blog.
Can’t wait and want to start now? The Four Agreements is a great place. ;) Short read, powerful message…highly recommended to support your BAPU Life!
Cheers,
Chuck, AKA Padre