Have you experienced pain? Is it holding you back? Look at it again. Disarm it. Move on.
In an effort to more consistently live with more happiness and fulfillment, and to raise my tolerance for enjoyment and success, I have been addressing past negative experiences and traumas in my life. These experiences have come up in times of impending success to pull me back as if to insist on resolving this before moving on.
As I have recalled, reimagined, and reinterpreted these events and experiences from my life, I noticed that I followed the same pattern or method of dealing with and releasing each emotional trauma. So, I systematized the method to make sure each instance was dealt with in the same way without leaving anything out.
I also noticed it works the same with fears. If you use your imagination to experience it, deal with it, recover from it, and possibly benefit from it, the fear would be disarmed.
- Acknowledge
- Explore freely. Acknowledge it sucked or it hurt. And maybe it was completely unfair. Finally allow yourself the freedom to face and feel this fully and finally. Let it be heard. If necessary, explore with another person. Let it be okay you felt/feel that way. Discuss it and allow yourself to fully emotionally metabolize and feel it. Allow yourself to fully feel the feeling. Fully and finally experience it. Give yourself permission to completely and freely feel the feeling. Make it final. Don’t dwell or spend excessive time in this space. Some people get a lot of pain-mileage out of ordinary things. Do not do that. This part of the exercise should be as brief as possible, but go completely and finally all the way deep. This is the absolute last time to address this. Make it count. Exaggerate it if necessary. Use your imagination. When dealing with a fear, what’s the worst thing that can happen
- Perspective. It is all relative. In the big picture of things, it will become just a blip. It could have been worse or better. There’s the bad, yes, but there’s the good, too. There is always some good that comes from everything. What’s the best benefit I can harvest from this experience? People mess up. Most likely the people involved were doing their best with what they had. Or maybe they were just messed up inside. They were just acting their part. They may not have even know what they were doing and how it would affect others. Forgive them fully and unconditionally.
- Accept it. It happened. It just happened and there are things about it that were and are not in your control. The past is unchangeable. We need to accept the things that can’t change, and turn our focus to the things we can change. We can change how we respond to it, remember it, learn from it, and whether we move on from it or continue to live there. Move on.
- Responsibility.
- Apologize to yourself. Accept full responsibility for the situation. Whether you were the principle instigator or not, there is ALWAYS something about any situation that you have/had control over. And MORE LIKELY THAN NOT, you had enough control to have prevented the entire event in some way or another. At the very least, accept that you have always had the power to interpret and respond in a grateful, peaceful way. You always had that ability to have the same experience without the pain. Apologize to yourself that you responded in an unsupportive way so as to cause pain. Accept your apology.
- Detach from it. Your happiness was never connected to the situation- it was always in you and within you power. Happiness is unattached to what happens to you, but rather how you respond. You will protect your happiness. You choose to be happy even in the midst, or in spite of, what happens to you. Say, “It is not what happens to me that defines me, it is how I respond.” You alone have the power to create who you are.
- Separate yourself from it. You are who you are regardless of what happens to you. What you have or have not, or what happens or not does not define who you are. What you choose and how you respond define the person you are, and you have always had that power to be the greatest version of yourself you could possibly be.
- Release.
- Be at Peace. Forgive yourself and forget the pain. Let it go. Release it and put it finally behind you. Be at peace with the event and experience. Mentally associate a new emotion with the event, a peaceful parting.
- Gratitude. Be grateful for the lessons learned and personal growth and progress gained through it all. Be grateful you have completed and that it is over. If it’s not completely over, be grateful for the path already traveled. Be grateful you are a better person for having experienced it.
- You’re better You are better in some way for having endured this experience and responded the way you did. Be happy and at peace with yourself and love you for who you are. It sucked, but it’s over. Every time you remember this, the memory will be accompanied with new emotions: finality and gratitude. You have re-written your past for the better.
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