Build a relationship with your past

There is only one person that truly matters in the end, and that’s you. Because you are the one that you have to put up with at the end of the day. If you are doing well, then all the rest falls into place. And it may not seem “likable” or “right” to say this but we’re all motivated by what makes us feel good.

Even the most caring person that you know ultimately does this because they “feel good about it”. Feeling good about yourself is what keeps you going. You need ambitions, sure. You need to chip away at something. You need to get bigger, get stronger, you need to evolve, you need all of these things. But if you can’t feel good about yourself then you will not be able to do any of those things.

More than anything else, the way that you see yourself has to do with the way that you “see” what you did in the past. The trick is simple: feel better about your past, feel better about yourself. It’s sometimes referred to as “building a relationship with your past”, and there is something to it. It means that it takes constant work, care and it needs to have a purpose. If you manage to build that relationship in such a way that it makes you feel better in the present, then you are golden.

It hooks in with one of my other favorites, and that’s the “narrative identity”. The way that you see yourself has to do with the “stories that you tell yourself”. If you have a better story of your past, then you will feel greatly better about the present. What I like especially about the “narrative identity” is that it is rooted in the past, but it is aimed at the future. The “narrative”-part implies that it’s an ongoing process, and if you can forge that process towards a certain direction then it becomes a sort of fly-wheel that keeps on spinning, almost by itself.

So to begin, start with principle 1:

Combine this with “building a relationship with your past”, then hook in the “narrative identity” and you are well on your way to feeling better about yourself. Add some exercise, healthy diet, sensible sleep-rhythm, nurturing the best possible relationship with your wife and kids, and well then one day it’s just like booooooom: your life is way better. Now ain’t that something?