I think one of the hardest things we can do is stop identifying with our past. Our past can fuel us to make decisions in our life, but our past is not who we are. Period. The reason "see my heart, not my past" is such an important phrase to me is simple. Whenever you decide to make a change in your life. Whenever you decide to stop settling for less. Whenever you decide that you want to be the better version of yourself. Whenever you decide to stop being selfish, or flakey, or unkind. Whenever you decide to break that habit that has haunted you for so long, you become someone new.

You become someone on a journey, and a journey is about looking forward and focusing on change. If you are so stuck looking back then you will never be able to make it on a journey because you can't see where you are going. You have to look forward, and remember that your past doesn't define who you are now.

If anything, your past should be a trophy of how far you have come. People need your story. They need to hear how low you were and how you did not let that stop you from getting to the top. Your story has to be complete to make its full impact. All of those bad chapters, those dark times in your past… Those are the most important and powerful chapters in the whole story. They represent all of the things that cannot get you down. You can think I went through this and I went through that because I'm a victim, or even I'm a bad person, but that's not how people who really listen are going to see it. They are going to see those things that happened as how much you can take and still get back up.

I understand that you might be worried about your past because people are going to judge you. So how do you change people's minds? Well, you don't. You can't change people's minds. You can maybe influence them by demonstrating how far you have come in your life, but ultimately whether they are going to judge you or not is completely out of your control. So why worry about it? Just focus on you and your journey. The real people out there, the real friends in your life are going to look at your brokenness in the past and see nothing but the strength that it took to get yourself out of that. You have so much strength. You just have to start seeing it that way.

If you want people to see your heart and not your past then you need to start focusing on your heart and stop focusing on your past. Start focusing on who you are now, and who you are becoming more and more each day. Focus on what you can do to be better everyday. Right. Now.

It all starts with you.