Never Let Your Past Hold You Back

Post written by Daniel Richard. Follow me on Twitter.

Besides having fear that holds one back from making any progress, the other culprit that causes an individual to continually stay in the rut is his / her past.

There were people who may have spoke negative words into the individual’s life, taught wrongly, belittled in public, constant discouragement, failed, and had a heck lot of garbage stored up as bad memories for the person—breaking free from that is seemingly impossible.

I have my fair share of run-ins with such bad experiences. But the good news is that, change from a bad past to a good present is possible!

Allow me to share some of my bad past that turned good.

Bad: When I was 11, I had created my first product for sale. They were drawings on A3 papers that were cut into smaller “cards” where people could play as a points challenge game on the face side with the other side acting as a piece of a full sized puzzle where the first person who managed to build the full picture would get a bonus from me. I was berated by the family members of the buying parties for selling my friends stuff.

Good: Turn came when I was 19 and started a bazaar stall with my friends selling cookies. It was an instant hit!

Bad: At 18 I was told by my parents that I had no future and that I should be normal like everyone else. I became disgruntled with life and started stealing (read more in my book: Breaking the Gambling Addiction).

Good: I helped my parents (yes, the same people that said I had no future) get started in their business when I was 21, brought it up to the web at 22 (or was it early 23) that evolved and grew over the years; with notable clients such as Charles and Keith to National Geographic.

Bad: At 23 I was nearly sentenced twice for going up against commanding officers. But I got transferred to work in the lock-up and immediately got into trouble in the first week.

Good: Within 2 months after being pardoned, I worked the place and saving the whole organization from a bad rep that was about to be given by a well-known figure, and earning a positive reputation along with a couple of good reports through to the end of my service.

Bad: At 24 I failed in my sales job.

Good: In 1 month I went to a new job (also in sales), learning a newly introduced product from scratch in the first 5 days, received 11 to 12 new sales job offers by the 16th day, and hitting 30 sales each day (while others were averaging from 3 to 5) in the end. I left the sales industry for good when they had to round down my sales records to “be realistic”.

Bad: I was called “incompetent” in Nov 2009. Apparently I had brought up the issue that the tech work (I was a web developer) would be difficult for the end user to use and update on his own, which fell to deaf ears and hence being called as that.

Good: I left that job and since then, I had released my first book in Dec 2009 and receiving a couple of glowing reviews for it, started and launched 3 web businesses (2 of them turning profits in 3 and 5 days respectively) along with another blog in Jan 2010, and gonna get working on 3 more online startups right after writing this blog entry.

No one should be holding you back. Neither yourself, nor your past should determine your present.

You take the wheel that steer the course to a better tomorrow—today.

Never let your past hold you back.

—

The book mentioned, Breaking the Gambling Addiction, can be downloaded here.

I am running a christian blog (titled: Praisewall), and the 2 featured businesses that I had helped set up are: Singapore Otah (wholesale BBQ and delivery—I’m the co-founder) and The Hair Wig Shop (an online hair wig shop)—it’s actually my mom’s, that I helped in building the site up for her, both which are targeted to a Singaporean audience.