Don’t Regret your Past … It has Shaped you.

Hello Everyone, the theme that I bring you today is something that I am still learning how to examine and accept.
I am going to explain how my acceptance is evolving and how your past is completely out of your control, but your present and future, you can still control and change it, if needed.
I come from an amazingly simple and humble family, we were never used to have a lot, but my parents always ensure that the fridge was full, which now looking back its admirable. I always blamed them for having three kids and didn’t plan their future, later I understood they are not to blame. They raised three children with minimum wage in Portugal, that is splendid, and I will be eternally grateful.

When I was 20 years old, I didn’t see life with the same perspective so instead of continuing my studies and pursuing a better career, I tried a better life in Samnaun, Switzerland. Working as a bellman, six days per week, in an isolated mountain with no more than a thousand habitants. A completely new world for me, a world where my mind was tested to the limit. A place where I felt truly lonely and incarcerated with my thoughts.

I started making some good money and collecting a full wage every month once I didn’t have any expenses. Waking up every day thinking of the money I would have collected in one year, living with the illusion that money is happiness and not living at all. Happily, when I was 23 years old, something switch and the idea I had about money was not the same, I decided to sell the car that I bought there and try my luck in Palma de Mallorca while having a bartender course for a month.

What a great month that was, felt young, wild, and free. Socializing with young people like me, and being careless … Tardily living my age.

When the course was finished, I wanted to enjoy life differently and risk more, so I moved to Australia, the other part of the world. Moved from the cold and snow mountain to the sunny and beach paradise. Now I was living in front of the beach, running every day with the bright sun on my face, listening to the waves and smelling the sea. Every week there was a barbeque, and opportunities to meet new people, not thinking about tomorrow. However, I was still restless on my mind because I knew my value and I was not fulfilled. Circumstances of life, I tore my ACL and moved to Portugal to get my surgery done, 5 months recovery and living with my parents, I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry. Happy to live with them again, sad because I felt my life was going nowhere.
Now, with 25 years old, living with my parents again, no higher education and not able to walk. Nothing left but thinking about my future, and all the possibilities in front of me. I was not ready to stay in Portugal, went on another journey, this time to Amsterdam, the place I am writing at this moment. With 27 years old, I decided to invest in my future and go back to school.
For a long time, I blamed myself for the trajectory I had “ I shouldn’t have done this and that, I should have gone to university instead of Switzerland…” but thinking about this now, I didn’t have a choice on that, everything has a reason to be and everyone has his/her mission in this world. And this one is mine, so I decided to accept and keep looking forward, and make the necessary changes to become a better version of myself.
Focus on your person and in who you are right now, and if there’s anything you don’t like it, change it.

“Don’t regret your past … It has shaped you. Don’t fear your future … It is yours to shape “ — Louise Hansen

Thank you so much!