Too many of us like to think that we are simply prisoners of our past. Too many people are under the impression that if you screwed up in the past, there’s really no way you can make things right.

If you made all sorts of bad decisions and you unleashed all sorts of negative consequences, you are basically forever tainted by your past.

In fact, people take things so far as to say that you are your past. You can never really escape it. You can make the pain go away, you can play all sorts of games with yourself, but ultimately, when it comes down to it, you are your past.

It’s a done deal. It already happened. What can you do now? There’s nothing you can do short of getting into some sort of time machine, like the movie “Back to the Future.” But other than that, you are stuck.

Talk about depressing. Talk about demotivating. Talk about soul-crushing.

This is the kind of mindset a lot of people have about their past, and that’s why the only thing that they have available to them, or the only thing that they make available to themselves is guilt.

They’re constantly tripping over themselves, apologizing for things in the past or, worse yet, they’d remember certain things that happened.

Maybe they got pregnant as a teenager. Maybe they committed a crime. Maybe they hit somebody that unleashed a tremendous tidal wave of negative effects. Maybe they pissed somebody off.

Whatever the case may be, they keep going back to those negative experiences and ending up no closer to any kind of closure or resolution.

It’s like stabbing yourself in the hand over and over again, and then seeing your hand heal slightly overnight, and then repeating it day after day. You end up with a whole lot of blood, and not much else.

I know that sounds crazy if you were to do that physically, but unfortunately, people do this psychologically each and every day.

You have to understand that as powerful as the guilt that you may feel, it is still a choice. Guilt is an interpretation.

When you look at what happened in the past, and assuming that the past actually happened according to how you remember it, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to end up with the same interpretation you currently have.

If you feel disempowered, depressed, discouraged or diminished by your guilty and remorseful interpretation, take hope from the fact that this is just an interpretation. There are many ways to see the same set of facts.

Believe it or not, there is a way of looking at what happened in such a way that it doesn’t drag you down and make you feel small, weak or ugly. This is called changing your mindset.

Please understand that your mindset is like the lens or the eyeglasses that you use to view reality. Depending on the lenses you put on, you will see reality differently.

When you see reality differently, you feel different things about reality. These go hand in hand.

But the good news is, you have a lot more choice over the matter than you give yourself credit for.

Do yourself a very big favor and look at the possible interpretations that you have and look at the beliefs systems that they lead to. By making the right strategic choices, you end up in a better place.

To learn how to do this in a quick, easy to understand, and self-empowering way.