Contents
It happens to everyone: we missed good opportunities or made decisions that negatively affected our lives. And, looking back at the past, we fall into longing for the unfulfilled or, on the contrary, we blame ourselves for the unsuccessful development of events. Three tips will help you turn off the repetition of the same route and notice new perspectives.
Without analyzing the mistakes made, you can repeat them again and again. But what if we tend to dwell on the past? There is a huge distance between analyzing the reasons for failures and getting stuck in the endless playing of the same “what if I then” record.
The warning against such fixation is literally as old as time. The biblical myth about Lot’s wife, who broke her promise not to look back at the walls of her native Sodom and turned into a pillar of salt, can be read as a parable that teaches us not to look back too much at the past.
However, the millennia that have passed since the creation of this myth have not changed the human tendency to yearn for what is no longer there.
Perhaps only a time machine in science fiction novels can take us to the past. Becoming the author of a book with such a plot is almost the only justification for mentally fixing on situations that are left behind. By the way, and a good medicine for melancholy. But novels are written by a few, and those who are bogged down in fruitless regrets about past helplessness cannot be counted.
Tip one: take a step
The recommendations of experts can be reduced to a single instruction: “get up and go.”
These words seem at first glance to be too general a wish. Where to go and why, we ask ourselves, and for the thousandth time we plunge into the quagmire of painful memories. However, it is not in vain that psychotherapists recommend increasing physical activity as one of the first steps to overcome life crises.
You go out into the street, you see a bird, a dog, a child on a bicycle, a grandmother with Nordic walking sticks, measuring steps forward and further. Look at all this and gradually turn into the present.
By noticing a sparrow on a branch, you are taking a step towards discovering the opportunities that your work, hobbies, friends and even enemies offer.
Psychosomatics: the body is the place where our past lives
It’s also a good way to avoid being the pessimist that Oscar Wilde wittily describes: “He’s the man who complains about the noise when luck knocks on his door.”
You returned from a walk, from a theater, an exhibition hall – and felt that the world is rich and diverse, and a little loosened the grip of exhausting thoughts about your mistakes in the past. Do not miss this state, use it for your own good.
Tip Two: Give Your Pain to Paper
Write down a past decision or situation that you deeply regret, says clinical psychologist Laura Reagan. Determine why you think about it so much. What exactly do you regret? Have the consequences of your past actions or inaction caused problems in your life?
Write down why you did what you did and not otherwise. Try not to judge, but to empathize with yourself.
Reagan gives an example of how to describe a traumatic situation in order to get a positive outcome, using the example of regrets about an abusive relationship: “N and I started dating, and he was very kind to me. I wanted to trust him and didn’t recognize the warning signs when he got angry and acted intimidating and aggressive.
This is understandable given that my father behaved the same way towards my mother when I was growing up. I didn’t have a respectful romantic relationship model that would help me recognize the unhealthy dynamics of my relationship with N.”
Tip Three: Turn Past Mistakes into the Source of Your Growth
Consider whether you would do things differently if you find yourself in a similar situation in the future. Write down the answer. Focus on controlling your regret today.
Write down one or two changes you can make and the steps you can take to achieve them. For example, Reagan suggests, if you regret past relationships, you should analyze those moments, stages, parts of them that traumatized you. Thus, you will determine the boundaries that you would like to set in future relationships.
Reagan emphasizes that our regrets often have layers that we don’t notice or realize. They consist of fears and shame about the way we were, if it didn’t fit the way we wanted to be.
Let’s thank ourselves for our mistakes, look at the sky and take the next step.
The psychologist urges us to stop being a prosecutor in relation to ourselves, because we have the right to be imperfect, to make mistakes. And the recognition of this fact is crucial. After all, if we did not get the opportunity to make mistakes, we would never be able to do anything useful.
We think about our past, about right and wrong choices. It is necessary to realize and accept that the wrong steps are not only possible, but must be done as often as the right ones. We are made to make mistakes.
If our brain responses were limited to optimal solutions in every situation and never mixed illusions, trust in deceivers, choosing dead ends and wrong turns at forks, then we would remain the same today and always. We would lose the possibility of development, become ossified or turned into that same pillar of salt.
But, fortunately, people can make mistakes. Let’s thank ourselves for our mistakes, look at the sky and take the next step.