Truth Bomb Tuesday: You can’t run from your past.
“Cancel culture” is one the more interesting trends to emerge in the past decade or so.
Not that I think it’s that new. People have been tossed out of jobs for all sorts of things in the past – being a woman for example!
But it seems to have become weaponised in the social media era.
But it makes me think there’s an underlying idea in ‘cancel culture’ I’ve seen play out time and time again in the personal development space.
I don’t have a lot of experience with the nuances of politics and history, but I have helped a lot of people achieve their best.
And it’s one thing I’ve noticed is that once people have identified where they’re going, they want to turn around and destroy, or “cancel”, where they’ve been.
They want to burn up all the photos of who they used to be. Delete all their social posts from that time in their life.
So maybe you’ve realised that you need to have greater faith in abundance, and be less driven by scarcity and lack.
So you feel that to destroy that fearful and anxious part of yourself so a more courageous and open version of you can take its place.
Or maybe you’ve realised you need to fill your own cup more, and stop relying on the affirmation of others for self-worth.
That makes you want to destroy that part of you that needs to be loved and that was seen as a “bit needy.”
Or maybe you just want to be successful and wealthy. That makes you want to erase that part of you that skipped meals and bought clothes from op-shops.
We want to live in the future, and we think we can do that by cancelling the past.
We think of ourselves like a garden. Destroy the weeds that don’t belong and that will leave room for the things that do.
But it doesn’t work like that.
We can only move forward by accepting our past – by really facing it and accepting what it truly is – and by letting it be the compost that feeds our roots going forward.
Because what we’re ultimately seeking to do here is to put things in ‘right relationship’.
So that part of you that was always hyper-alert for threats and who wanted to play it small? That just wanted to protect you and wanted you to be safe.
That version of you that needed love a little too much? It just wanted to feel safe in its place in the pack.
And that version of you could décor a home entirely out of a $2 shop? That was an ingenious and creative version of you that was just doing what it could to get by.
Maybe these tendencies got out of balance. Maybe that started presenting in problematic ways. Maybe, truth be told, they were actually making you miserable.
Fair enough.
But the answer is not to destroy them. The answer is to face them, embrace them, and let them be part of who you are, only in a more healthy way.
I get cancel culture. I get destroy culture. I get where it comes from.
But it is not how we grow.
Growth is harder. It’s not about destroying. It’s about loving and consciously relating.
And our history, however hard it was, has to have its place in our future.
DB.