You don’t need to burn the dock to push off your boat.

You don’t need to dis’ how you’ve done things in order to do things differently.

There’s no need to criticize the past to validate the future. @DanielleLaPorte
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But we do.

We look at how we over worked it, or how we missed the mark, or all the reasons it, they, you, me, we fell short. We start to shrink the value of the past so that we can justify taking new aim, or giving notice, or taking the leap that will move us in a new direction. We give ourselves and others logical — and often deprecating — reasons that it’s time for a change. We take a perfectly good essay of our life-learning and accomplishments, and we red pen it with margin notes of all that could have been done differently so that we can well do it differently next time.

Not only does dissing how you got to where you are dishonor your past and make for some negative juju, it weighs on your transformational process. How you regard your past influences how your future unfolds.

You did what you needed to do at the time with what you had to work with. Thankfully, praise be, alleluia! Now let’s move on to the part when you have a break through and wake up knowing more. It’s not about knowing better, it’s about knowing more.

And now you know
where you want to go
next.

Danielle LaPorte is the outspoken creator of The Desire Map, author of The Fire Starter Sessions (Random House/Crown), and co-creator of Your Big Beautiful Book Plan. An inspirational speaker, former think tank exec and business strategist, she writes weekly at DanielleLaPorte.com, where over a million visitors have gone for her straight-up advice — a site that’s been deemed “the best place on-line for kick-ass spirituality”, and was named one of the “Top 100 Websites for Women” by Forbes.

You can also find her on Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter @daniellelaporte.

Image courtesy of Jeremy Ricketts.