Don't Dwell On The Bad Stuff

People keep asking me how I manage to look 10 years younger than I am.

I begin by telling them about my passion for ‘Health As A Lifestyle’, as we discussed yesterday, but today I’d like to attribute my lack of creases and wrinkles, to my Mindset.

I don’t dwell on the bad stuff.

Bad stuff happens to all of us. Some more than others. The secret  is to know what to do with those experiences AFTERWARDS.

Do we revive them?

Do we relive them?

Do we re-enact them in our minds?

Do we put ourselves back in the same situation in our minds, feeling the same emotions, smelling the same odours, hearing the same voices, seeing the same people, experiencing the same tension and stress, the familiar fear, anger or panic rising, spiralling downwards into depression or despair again.

My response to this is: STOP IT!

Think about something else.

Gracious me, to re-play a bad situation in our minds  over and over again  is a very harmful thing to do!  It happened once, it was awful, leave it in the past.

I can’t alter the past, but I can certainly change my now.

The reason it’s called the past, is because it is now PAST!  It’s over, it’s gone. I let it go. I refuse to drag it up, and think about it again and again, causing myself endless pain and damage for years to come.

I used to catch myself doing this, re-enacting an event, wishing I could go back and say this or do that. My fingers would tighten on the steering wheel, my breathing got faster and I noticed that familiar sinking feeling, so I snapped out of my reverie immediately. To start with, it took me an entire car journey before I realised what was happening, and I had to work hard to pull myself up. But after years of practice, I am delighted to say  I can now catch it as soon as it happens, and arrest it immediately.

I read somewhere that human beings are the only creature on the planet that never forgive themselves. We keep punishing ourselves continually, for things we did years ago.  This really is unnecessary chaps.  It ages us, gives us wrinkles, makes us ill, keeps us bitter and twisted, and robs us of our NOW.  We spend too much time looking backwards; it’s gone, it’s over, it’s finished, it’s PAST.

Remember, time does NOT heal. I know people who closed up when they were children, and refuse to face the real world for the rest of their lives. They have trapped themselves forever. No, Healing comes from a deliberate choice and effort to let things go, and a determination to learn from the past, then leave it behind, stop thinking about it all the time, revel in the NOW, enjoy the Present,  and forge full-speed ahead to our FUTURE!

Awesome.