I’ve often found it hard to live fully in the present; accepting and appreciating the person I am in the here-and-now, rather than being distracted by mistakes I’ve made – and hopefully learned from – in the past.
I suspect that many of us carry around negative ideas about who we are, all too often given us by the people who were supposed to be nurturing and protecting us as children. We absorb and remember those messages about ourselves and they shape what we expect from ourselves and from the world. They get ‘stuck’ in our neural pathways and are as difficult to shake off as a candy wrapper stuck to our fingers – even when we have a mountain of evidence proving that we’re not the stupid or bad person our parents might have told us that we were.
I never managed to make these feelings of self-doubt disappear by ignoring or burying them, but one of the best antidotes I’ve found to being held back by them is to become more consciously aware of where they came from – even though it can be painful – at the same time reminding myself that they’re not ‘true’. I try to balance this reflecting on the past and the effect it’s had on me, with putting my attention fully into the here and now as a way of getting a more realistic sense of myself.
Another approach to self-connection that works well for me is choosing to act in a way that ‘contradicts’ any false beliefs about myself which are holding me back. I try to behave like the strong and wise person I know I can be, even when I don’t feel that way. It seems weird and not quite ‘real’ at first; but I ‘fake it till I make it’, and slowly but surely become more like that ideal version of myself.
Sometimes I slip back or feel overwhelmed by painful memories; but the combination of reflection and action has set me free from most of the effects of any past pain. It’s about finding the sweet spot between refusing to bury painful feelings– because anything buried always gains power and sooner or later explodes – and spending so much time analysing and ruminating that I lose touch with the simple pleasures of being alive. This approach has worked in my relationship too. My partner and I can get caught up in a cycle of arguing about the same sorts of things without really getting any of them resolved; so we decided to focus at least three quarters of our time together on being loving and having fun together – acting ‘as if’ everything was good between us. And only the remaining time on figuring out what’s been getting in the way of that, and why?
By paying attention to what’s positive between us, we’ve been able to steer our relationship back to being the way we’d like it to be. We spend less time talking about our relationship, and more time just enjoying being together – dealing with problems in an open and trusting way if and when they come up. It’s a good reminder that that though I can’t control what anyone else feels or does, I can always choose how I respond. And as the saying goes – energy flows where attention goes!
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