From the song 'Open Your Eyes, You Can Fly' by Vanessa Williams:

Never be afraid to love,
Never be afraid to just be,
Just cast away the chains of doubt,
Have the courage to be free.

Don't cloud your rise with father's lies,
See only what you want to see,
To stuplicate the simple truth,
Have the courage to be free.

Open your eyes you can fly,
Open your eyes you can fly,
You can fly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkYiQJRh0kk

Vanessa Williams is a star with a dark history.
http://global.christianpost.com/news/vanessa-williams-abortion-learned-to-embrace-past-73442/

"The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be."
- Unknown

"The more anger you hold in your heart towards the past, the less capable you are of loving the present."
- Unknown

"I believe in recovery, and as a role model I have the responsibility to let young people know that you can make a mistake and come back from it."
- Ann Richards

"There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so."
- William Shakespeare

"It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters."
- Epictetus

"Our lives are not determined by what happens to us but how we react to what happens, not by what life brings us but the attitude we bring to life."
- Wade Boggs

MainMessageForToday
How you feel about what happened to you (your reaction) tells whether you accept it or not and determines how much you will learn from it.

From the song 'Change Me' by Justin Bieber:

Girl, I’m ready, if you’re ready, now
Ooh, as I'm ever gonna be,
If you're with it, then I'm with it, now
To accept all the responsibility.
I'd go outta my way
To live by the words that you say,
I don't wanna be the same.

Maybe you could change me,
Maybe you could change me.
Maybe you could be the light
That opens up my eyes,
Make all my wrongs right,
Change me, change me.

https://youtu.be/ZFIM9c48cSM

Some celebrities get in trouble time and time again.
Example: Justin Bieber

Justin Bieber in trouble again: Singer caught on video repeating n-word in racist joke
- The Independent, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/justin-bieber-caught-on-video-repeating-nword-in-racist-joke-9467828.html

Jason Fried believes learning from failure is overrated. Do you agree?

"I don’t understand the cultural fascination with failure being the source of great lessons to be learned. What did you learn? You learned what didn’t work. Now you won’t make the same mistake twice, but you’re just as likely to make a different mistake next time. You might know what won’t work, but you still don’t know what will work. That’s not much of a lesson."
- Jason Fried, http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1555-learning-from-failure-is-overrated

"There is only one thing more painful than learning from experience and that is not learning from experience."
- Archibald MacLeish

"He who lives to forget his past lives to die of his past. Knowing the past, and keeping the past helps us to shape the future and may avoid past disaster repeating."
- Anthony Ugwuoke

"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." 
- George Santayana

"What experience and history teach is this - that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it." 
- G. W. F. Hegel

"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so."
- Douglas Adams

MainMessageForToday
Learning from the past requires figuring out the lessons from mistakes, failures, and even the positive experiences. Have you figured out the lessons from your past?

"I swear, with Chloe Bear once again as my witness...
That my problems and failures will not stop me, nor will they dictate who I am.
That I will continue to be my own person.
That life is too short, and I will live every day as the best person I can be.
That I will grow and that I will change.
That I will smile and hold my head high.
That this is a new start and a new day.
That I will allow myself to cry or sit by myself when I need to.
That I will find things to really smile about."
- Stephen Emond, Happyface

Toni Braxton is another star who has had problems but has recovered.

Toni Braxton's Bankruptcy: Singer Admits Home Decor Obsession Lead To Money Loss:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/03/toni-braxtons-bankruptcy-home-decor-_n_2233458.html