“Hate is heavy and I am tired of carrying all that weight around.” ─ Khloe Kardashian

Going by the composition of the muscles in our body, it is obvious that God created human beings to be happier than sad. In arithmetic form, the ratio of happiness to sadness is three to one; and this is why it takes 43 face muscles to frown or get angry but only 17 face muscles to smile.

However, study has shown that sadness or unpleasant feeling lasts 240 times longer than the other emotions.

That is why we remember the bad that people did to us more than the good. The reason, sometimes if you see somebody that you have not seen for a long while, rather than running into his or her arms, you would become hesitant because something in you would tell you not to be too fast. What is holding you back is the unpleasant emotion that has set off an alarm in your brain and warning you to be careful of the man or woman.

So, negative emotion is so strong that most of the time, it compels man to, instead of using only 17 face muscles to smile, would stir up as many as 43 face muscles just to frown or get angry.

This is no doubt the reason why unhappy people usually look far older than their real age. The reason is because stirring up 43 face muscles every now and then would naturally be having lots of strain on the face, thereby giving them contorted faces and early wrinkles.

Khloe Kardashian captured the Revenge Body star sufficiently when she declared thus: “My life won’t be consumed with hate. I have chosen to occupy my life with positivity. Every day, I choose to find the good in my day. To choose this daily doesn’t mean I don`t have bad days, but my good days are so much better than my bad ones. We all are human and make mistakes, myself included. Hate is heavy, and I am tired of carrying all that weight around.”

Like Jesus Christ who was born in a manger, some of us were products of that poverty-stricken homes where we were not sure of how, where or when the next meal would come. Instead of taking care of us, our parents abandoned us to our fate even, when we never begged them to give birth to us. Rather than send us to school and give us good start in life, we were traded off as house helps and apprentices to strange people, and as such we never grew up with fatherly or motherly love.

Some of us were products of that broken homes, where there were never communication or dialogue between our fathers and mothers, only arguments and fights and when all avenue for peace and harmony broke down, our mothers abandoned us, the children, and left and our fathers brought strange women as step mothers to make life miserable for us.

Some of us were products of that broken relationships, where we sacrificed our all, suppressed our heart desires to make it work but our partners took our love for granted, broke our hearts and walked out on us into the arms of other men or women.

Some of us were products of that marriages that our suitors promised us all the beautiful things in the world, knelt down and proposed to us, took us to church and we signed the dotted lines without knowing that we were signing hell for ourselves. Immediately after marriage, instead of our lives blossoming like a beautiful flower that we were, it began to shut down bit by bit like a computer with a fading battery.

Some of us were products of those institutions and workplaces, where our masters, mistresses and employers never showed us respect. They treated us with disdain, abused us mentally and physically, and even used us as sex slaves, simple because we had the misfortune to be under their authority.

Some of us were products of that homes where the pillar, the only hope of the family, the provider, the shining star suddenly died and left the rest of us in agony and confusion.

Some of us were apprentices/workers who served our bosses diligently with our whole hearts but they never reciprocated our good gesture. Rather, we were treated like scavengers and thrown down the drain and flushed away like heap of refuse without recycling value.

Some of us were victims of rape and other sexual abuses. Those who we trusted to help us to become better in the society, instead of helping us, they turned us into objects for satisfying their sexual desires.

This is, indeed, the totality of the people in the world. Everybody is nursing one big hurt or the other. Some are feeling abandoned, abused, betrayed or cheated. While others are feeling exploited, frustrated and a lot more.

When you weigh the number of people carrying this negative baggage, you would realize why there has never been peace in the world because four out of every five people in the world have negative past stalking them.

Four out of every five people in the world, the mirrors on their walls don’t reflect confidence. Their mirrors don’t reflect positivity. The mirrors on their walls don’t reflect freedom. Rather, their mirrors reflect people who are in chain or trapped by the never-let-go obstacles in their past.

American Rap artiste, Kanye West, also alluded to this when he said: “Memories are like movies in our minds and I like watching the happy ones.”

The world is what it is today because of the negative past that most of us are carrying.

There is no doubt that most of us want a happier world for ourselves and our loved ones and everybody is asking who is going to change the world?

But the truth is that the people that are vested with the responsibility of changing the world is not the leaders but you and I. And the only way to change the world is to change our thinking.

But there is no way we can change our thinking if we are still dragging our past with us.

For us to change our thinking, we have to let go of our negative past.

So, one of the best ways of changing the negative emotions of your past is by turning them into acts of good. If you grow up in a family where there no was no love, the memory would naturally linger but immediately you begin to spread love, you would discover that the thick, dark cloud that is hanging in your heart and affecting your perception of the world would evaporate and the sun would begin to shine in your heart. You would begin to feel lighter and fitter within.

According to Margaret Mitchell, “Life is under no obligation to give us what we expect.” Whatever you want in life, you have to go for it. That is even why the first two letters of God are ‘GO’. The rap legend, Tupac Shakur, said: “To live is to struggle,” and I totally agree with him. Brother, you have to go. In fact, YOU MUST GO if you want something good out of life. An adage says to resign to fate is to be crippled fast.

So, dear reader, there is nothing that you had gone through in the past or that you are going through now that somebody else had not gone through and come out stronger and better. Life hardly gives exception because it doesn`t know you or me. It is our attitude, our effort, our struggle, what we put into life that would determine where we would be.

Please don’t let hate win. Be a love warden.

•Culled from the book, ‘Look Forward And Lean Less On Your Past’ available on Amazon Kindle and Okada Books.

ABOUT THE COLUMNIST

Peter Anosike is a well-known journalist and development economist.

His book, Dangote’s Ten Commandments on Money (Lessons on How to Make Money from One of the World’s Richest Men), was rated as one of the best development books in the world by Wall Street Journal and FORBES. The book has been adopted as a workbook for grooming entrepreneurs by the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN). Anosike’s other of his books include, How To Be The Best You Can Be and Look Forward and Lean Less On Your Past – all trending in Smashwords along with Dangote’s Ten Commandment on Money and How To Be The Best You Can Be. You can follow him on Facebook and Linkedin.

ABOUT THE BOOK Thoughts are things. Read to know how the rich think so that you can begin to think and act like ...

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