Everyone has a podcast nowadays (including yours truly — second season coming soon) and one which caught the imagination was Bruce Springsteen and Barack Obama. Two American icons — but not two people you’d immediately picture together. Which I guess is part of the charm — like when you find out a pinch of salt makes chocolate taste better. Or chilli works with chocolate. Or jam pairs with cheese. (It’s the eating season — apologies!)
With a bit of reflection, it makes some sense — Springsteen is a songwriter, a musician, an artist who has endured for decades. Barack Obama is remembered as a man who could inspire and touch people. You can see that there could be a connection between the two — they would both think about significant, critical emotional issues. A sense of soul. The human condition.
One quote I loved from a recent interview: “The trick is you have to turn your ghosts into ancestors. Ghosts haunt you. Ancestors walk alongside you and provide you with comfort and a vision of life that’s going to be your own. My father walks alongside me as my ancestor now. It took a long time for that to happen.”
“The trick is you have to turn your ghosts into ancestors. Ghosts haunt you. Ancestors walk alongside you and provide you with comfort and a vision of life that’s going to be your own. My father walks alongside me as my ancestor now. It took a long time for that to happen.”
This is such a poetic way to reframe your past. In this instance, Bruce Springsteen talked about his father and how it was essential to view important people from your past as supportive and not something to fear or deny.
It’s such a good phrase — and can be used in reframing many elements of your past.
The trick is you have to turn your past Failures into Lessons. Failures haunt you. Lessons stay with you and provide you with comfort and wisdom to build the life that you want to own.
If we view past experiences as “ghosts”, we will deny that they exist — but they will haunt us in those quiet, darker moments. We can fight the ghosts — but you can’t defeat ghosts forever (see Ghostbusters). It would be best if you used them — reframed them into a positive force in your life.
