Get The Lesson… Release the Experience
Today I would like to share one of my favorite lessons. A dear friend of mine, Laura Jacobs, shared this concept with me. This is one of those life changing thoughts that I’m eager to share with you!
Several years ago I had dinner with a woman who had left her husband four years earlier. They had been married for over seven years – a very long and difficult seven years. Even though many years had passed since she had even spoken to him, she continued to harbor tremendous anger and hatred for how he had ruined her life. In fact, she recalled many incidences in great detail – and some of the stories were ten years old! She remembered what she was wearing, each movement each person made, every word spoken. After all that time, she was still very stuck in her experiences.
I have thought about this conversation many times. It’s a perfect example of a person who has not released the experience but rather re-lives the events over and over and over again. Each time the emotions are just as raw – she continues to be angry, frustrated, resentful and hurt from events that should be over and done with. With each recollection of the story, she invests her personal power to keep the pain alive. She is investing a substantial amount of energy into these old, horrible experiences.
How would her life be different if she could have learned the critical lessons that the marriage provided and released the negative emotions she experienced? There were some tremendous lessons for her: how she contributed to the marital problems, what NOT to look for in her second spouse, how she could have reacted differently, how she could have supported her husband through his own personal issues, how her husband’s actions triggered her anger and frustration, and so on. Instead, she choose to stay frozen in the drama of the marriage and keep her anger alive.
Needless to say, she has no interest in another relationship or opening her heart again. How could she? She is still very much involved with her first marriage. The physical marriage is long over, but her emotional involvement is still very real.
How does this relate to you? I’m glad you asked!
While it may not be in a failed marriage, we each have our ways of being stuck in past experiences. In fact, I bet if you start to think about it, it won’t be long before you have many negative memories to choose from. We exert a great amount of energy staying wrapped up in experiences.
Yes, this is the time when you should pull your journal or notebook out and start listing the negative experiences.
Be honest with yourself. Are there memories you continue to hang on to because you either don’t want to acknowledge your contribution to the situation or you subconsciously want to continue being a victim? You may not be like the women in the example and relive the stories on a regular basis. In fact, they may be tucked away where you don’t think about them often. But when they show up, you know! You feel it in your solar plexus.
What happens if you continue to hang on to negative emotions? It’s no big deal. You’ll just end up with ulcers, liver disease, heart and lung issues, maybe even some Alzheimer’s. Oh, and don’t forget, the years of sorrow, depression, anger, fear, lonliness, sadness, heartache, discouragement… you get the idea. It’s time to deal with them!
We are here to learn lessons. We are here to gather knowledge, experience emotions and grow. If we get stuck in a past memory, our progression is stunted. We end up reliving one (or a few) events over and over and never move on. That’s not the purpose of life. We are meant to continually progress.
Let’s take this one step further. Is it possible to get stuck in a “positive experience”? For instance, do you know someone who was a legend in their own mind… 5, 10 maybe 15 years ago. They live in the memory of the good old days? Yes… that can be an obstacle to growth, too. If you find yourself doing that, those memories are holding you back just as much as if the experiences had been negative. You’re still stuck in the past.
I’m certainly not saying to throw out all the memories… let’s be reasonable. Memories are part of what defines who we are. They connect us to people and are a part of our belief system. It’s great to have memories of people we love, places we’ve been and things we’ve done. But they shouldn’t keep us stuck in the past or hold us back from reaching our best.
Today’s Challenge: What experiences are energetically holding you back? What are the lessons you’re not getting?
Sometimes it’s easier to give others advice than it is to coach yourself. So act as if someone you love had gone through “your” experience and asked for your input (as if you were a neutral observer). What lessons did the events hold for the person? What could the person learn from everything that had transpired? How was this experience perfect for your growth and development? Guess what… you’ve got the answers right there before you.
I think we spend far too much time reliving the past, feeling guilty and inadequate and trying to convince ourselves that we have no regrets. Let’s get real! We don’t need to relive sad events forever. We don’t have to remain stuck in old memories that hold us back from grasping our greatness. And guilt… oh, boy! That’s a big topic on its own! If we are going to transform, we have to deal with guilt! But that’s for another day.
One last thought. I believe we are children of a very loving and involved God. You are no accident! True, this journey was never meant to be easy and uneventful… that would defeat the purpose. But, I don’t believe for one second that we are meant to lug around emotional pain and sadness for the rest of our lives. When we accept that we are on earth to learn, it’s okay to make mistakes (and forgive – forgive ourseves and forgive others for their mistakes), we can get the lesson and release the experience. The negatives no longer serve us and we don’t have carry them around any more. They taught us what we needed to learn and now we can let go and move on.
Soon, our whole perspective of “mistake” will shift. Instead of a mistake, let’s call it an experiment. Some experiments work great. Others don’t. No problem… we figure out why the experiment didn’t work and make the necessary changes for next time. We don’t stress about it or wallow in it. We learn from it and move on.
Until next time friends,
Tara
