The Power of Your Past: The Art of Recalling, Reclaiming, and Recasting [Paperback]

There’s nothing wrong with “living in the now”—except that it’s only part of our story. If we underuse or misuse our past, we’re losing a tremendous source of wisdom and self-knowledge. The problem isn’t the past itself, it’s that we don’t use it well.

John Schuster exposes the many ways we ignore, distort, or become captive to our pasts and explains how we can tap into this underutilized treasure trove. He shows how to systematically recall key images and experiences that have influenced us, for good or ill, and reclaim the positive experiences—deepen our understanding of their impact and use them to guide our going forward. The negative experiences must be recast—reinterpreted so that they no longer lessen our possibilities but rather serve to expand our understanding of who we are and what we can be. Schuster’s enlightening and entertaining stories as well as simple and compelling techniques will enable you to make your past sing and play and work for you.Preface
Introduction: Your past can work for you

Part I: Discovering the power of your past
Chapter 1: The underused past: the price of forgotten yesterdays
Chapter 2: Good and bad news: evoked and compressed

Part II: Tapping the power of your past
Chapter 3: Recall
Chapter 4: Reclaim
Chapter 5: Recast

Part III: Channeling the power of your past
Chapter 6: A big question: When to say yes and no
Chapter 7: Using suffering to grow
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
About the Author“John Schuster’s latest book evokes in each of us our own complicated and colorful pasts and offers them to us as rich assets to be reveled in, appreciated, and learned from. What a gift, in an age of focusing on the future or living solely for the now, to access our pasts as a rich lode of insight and guidance! Schuster is a master coach and master storyteller; this book should be read by everlC3