Actually, I do have doubts, all the time. Any thinking person does. There are so many sides to every question.

You think your past defines you, and worse, you think that it is an unchangeable reality, when really, your perception of it changes as you do.

Most people are always doubtful as to whether they are happy or not, cheerful or not. This is the normal state of happiness, as doubt is a most natural thing.

A lot of people see doubt as legitimate philosophical posture. They think of themselves in the middle, whereas of course really, they're nowhere.

But a lot of our thinking is caught up in dwelling on the past, trying to control the future, generating misperceptions, and worrying about what others are thinking.

We all have history. You can think you’re over your history. You can think the past is the past. And then something happens, often innocuous, that shows you how far you are from over it. The past is always with you.

You think your past defines you, and worse, you think that it is an unchangeable reality, when really, your perception of it changes as you do.
Because experience is always multi-dimensional, there are a variety of memories, experiences, feelings, “gists” you can choose to recall…and what you choose is indicative of your present state of mind. So many people get caught up in allowing the past to define them or haunt them simply because they have not evolved to the place of seeing how the past did not prevent them from achieving the life they want, it facilitated it. This doesn’t mean to disregard or gloss over painful or traumatic events, but simply to be able to recall them with acceptance and to be able to place them in the storyline of your personal evolution.

Most of us are confused about what is real.

The past is what you remember, imagine you remember, convince yourself you remember, or pretend you remember.

When pondering how the past affected us, we rarely look for OUR effect on it. We think about what we were up against versus what we stood for. We remember what we feared but not what we dreamed. We ponder how much we were loved versus how much we loved. We think, why did all that happen to me? What did I get out of it? Where will it lead me? When perhaps we should wonder, what did I make happen? What did I give? Where will I direct myself now?

The basic stimulus to the intelligence is doubt, a feeling that the meaning of an experience is not self-evident.

One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.

The first step to thinking clearly is to question what we think we know about the past.

You realize that our mistrust of the future makes it hard to give up the past.