Looking Back...Moving Forward: You Hold the Power to Forgive

By Byaruhanga Solomon

You can deal with an issue all your life, but until you choose to move on with a positive attitude, you will remain stuck in your past. There's power in a single positive thought. Therein lies the flashlight to shine your path to recovery, which reveals that you hold the power to your mind because it's you who feeds it, and you hold the switch to a brighter day. So turn it on.

My experience in moving forward in life began with me looking back and understanding the hurts of life I went through, which led me to discover the power of forgiveness. And when I did, I made the decision to forgive and understand that everything happens for a reason-it could be a life lesson. Your future has a lot to do with your past. You might not have had the chance to determine your past, but you have a choice to turn your life around, as well as the lives of the people around you. So choose to use it wisely, and so it matters with what attitude you are reflecting on your past. I give you two options: (1) the positive or (2) the positive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098063887

Book preview

Insight

In life, we all want to move forward, not just in personal issues—to you it might be business, politics—you name it. The only way you are going to have different results is when you look back, not to stay, but to clean up your mind and freshen yourself up for your journey.

I want you to take a moment and look back at your life, specifically at what was not done right, what failed you, who wronged you, what you missed, why your family rejected you, what business deal flopped. It is probably going to bring back memories that might be hurtful, but remember, it is just a past! Before you hate again or give up, look at yourself back then and recall. Well, if you are honest enough with yourself, you will realize that for the most part, you had a lot to do with it.

The point is, what do you learn from those memories? Whatever you pick from your reflection will either equip you or fail you. Notice that I am not talking about you failing, but rather about you knowing why you failed and what failed you and essentially moving on.

The only way you can move forward in life is by looking back at your mistakes and making things right or learning from those mistakes so that you do not make the same mistakes in the future.

Your future has a lot to do with your past. You might not have had the chance to determine your past, but you have a choice to turn your life around, as well as those of people around you; use it wisely. It matters with what attitude you are reflecting on your past.

I am somebody.

Having grown up in a muddled or dramatic family, as a young man, I suffered a lot of consequences. I experienced so much trauma that my childhood is something I never enjoyed at all. I have no good childhood memories. I grew up in a family that never cared about my existence. A life with my sisters, brothers, father, and stepmother for a few years that triggered me to search for a life worth living—a life worth telling.

Having been raised in a home where I was referred to as a bustard as my second name, I felt that home was not the best place to be, most especially when the place you thought was home is the very place where you carry signs of abandonment, forgottenness, abuse, neglect, rejection—you name it. Now as a young man, growing up with such a load in my heart, by the time I was eighteen years of age, I felt like I was forty-five, seeing that I had by then become an expert in handling stress just because I grew up in such an environment that made my life miserable at that time. However, I held on to faith, believing that there was a better life even when I was denied education by my own father, for I had dropped out of school for over seven