CHAPTER 9
BREAKING FREE OF THE PAST ONE THOUGHT AT A TIME
People’s reality consists of their thoughts passing through their mind. A series of ideas, invented conversations, blessings, accusations, and monologues are racing though their mind at warp speed. A good portion of the time they are not even aware the stories exist. They play a huge role in how people see life and how they relate to others. The stories create both a person’s joy and their desperation in life in general and in relationships in particular.
It is those internal thoughts, those stories, and the interpretations of those stories that people attach to the external events in their lives that give meaning to those events and relationships. Two individuals in the same circumstances can get laid off by their employer at the same time. One sees it as an opportunity, the other sees it as a disaster. An event may happen, but it is the story about the event that makes it positive or negative, safe or scary, joyful or sad. Those stories are more often than not unconscious and unexamined.
People too often come to believe these stories are true, as though they were cast in concrete. They appear in their lives like movie scripts that they are powerless to influence. The scripts seem independent of what people want to do now. They forget that the stories are of their own creation.
People learn their stories from their experiences. Individuals are all a bit like clay, molded by their past. If you grew up in a violent household, your current stories may tend to portray the world as unsafe, scary, unpredictable, and violent, even if your current existence is safe, predictable, and pleasant. If your father was weak and easily manipulated, your stories may support a belief that men are weak and must be controlled and manipulated for their own good. If your mother acted helpless and needed protecting, you may carry that with you in relationships with women. We invite you to explore your early histories with the intention of understanding and taking responsibility for yourselves, not to lay blame, make excuses, or get stuck in the past.
BOX 9-1
Our reality consists of stories we make up about the events in our lives. It is helpful to explore these stories to increase our understanding and take responsibility for ourselves. It is not for the purpose of laying blame, making excuses, or getting stuck in the past.
People’s greatest teachers of who they are, both positive and negative, are those individuals who raised them, their parents or other adults who played a significant role in their childhood. People learn who they are and what the world is like early in life. The lessons they learn stay with them and are difficult to unlearn. It is easy and natural to make the incorrect assumption that people are their past. This is particularly true when they become fearful and can easily lose perspective because of their rigid thinking.
The past is impossible to change. It is what it is, good, bad, or indifferent, and everyone is stuck with his or her past. While people are greatly influenced by their past, however, they are not inseparable from it. Their past does not have to determine their present self-identity. More importantly, it certainly doesn’t have to determine their future.
BOX 9-2
We are greatly influenced by our past, but not inseparable from it. The past is impossible to change, but it doesn’t have to determine our future.
Some people find comfort and security by believing they are powerless to overcome the past. It saves them from even having to try. It saves them from having to face the possibility of failure, and from the unknown. Giving up the known can be frightening. The unknown is scary, but it can also be freedom. It is the freedom to sculpt one’s own future; the freedom to become authentic and whole; the freedom to become the kind of person one wants to be.
Identifying and separating from your negative childhood influences can bring huge rewards, particularly in relationships with others. It is not an easy task, however. No new system, process, exercise, or simple tool can do it for you. They can help, but it is ultimately your job to create change in your life. You are the CEO of your own redevelopment project, which will consist of relearning the implications that your past has on your present and future. This has to be done one thought at a time, one feeling at a time, and one gut reaction at a time.
BOX 9-3
You are the CEO of your own redevelopment project.
CREATING NEW WAYS OF THINKING
This chapter describes eight tools that our workshop participants use to let go of their past and reclaim their future. Their common denominators are attempts to increase awareness and encourage fresh thinking patterns. These tools encourage readers to break away from old, learned ineffective patterns of behavior by focusing attention on more effective ways of being. In some exercises readers will spend a fair amount of time reflecting on the past. The purpose is not to change the past, but to consciously identify and acknowledge the impact that the past has on the present.
This also frees up unconscious energy about the past that people don’t even know they carry around with them. Most people think that their past is behind them. Yet many people carry their past like a shield in front of them, not behind them, to protect themselves from their stories. Then they are perplexed in relationships when they feel that something is between them and others. But something is actually between them, the old baggage of both people.
Many people spend a lifetime dragging around their baggage from the past. A lifetime of feeling like a hopeless victim, or aggressively charging into arguments with sword and shield, pouring energy into fighting, hiding, running, avoiding, holding back, fearful of taking risks, fearful of letting anyone see what’s really going on inside. Thinking it isn’t safe, people don’t take the plunge into the here and now, and it has cost them everything. It mutes day-to-day lives and relationships.
People will find, however, that the more they invest in really working these issues, the more they will be able to live in the here and now, not in the past. Working these issues can free the energy that has kept them tethered to the past and instead shift that energy into aliveness and authenticity. This requires compassionate self-honesty and more than a little detective work.
BOX 9-4
We think our past is behind us, yet most of us carry our past out in front like a shield, wondering why we can’t seem to get as close to others as we want.
DON’T FORGET TO BREATHE!
In several exercises, we have you start by taking a few deep breaths. The body needs oxygen for life. Paradoxically, when people become fearful or agitated, they often don’t get the oxygen they need. When they get charged up or fearful, their breathing usually gets shallow as they tense up their musculature. When they get defensive or angry, they breathe inefficiently, depriving the brain of needed oxygen. It’s helpful to develop the capacity to breathe deeply, taking the time to center yourself. As simple as it seems, one of the most important things to remember when you get into a stressful situation is keep breathing.
EIGHT TOOLS FOR LETTING GO OF THE PAST
It is always more effective putting energy into becoming whom you want to be, rather than putting energy into avoiding whom you don’t want to be. Yet, if we are riddled by unconscious and unexamined thoughts and feelings from our past, it will be difficult to be intentional about our future. The eight tools offer different perspectives for gaining self-awareness, wholeness, and authenticity. So try them out to see which ones are helpful. Try them all, then continue to use the ones that are helpful and discard what is not helpful. Stay as open as possible and take note of any strong feelings or thoughts that arise during any of the exercises. Pay particular attention to the things that you resist, because resistance can sometimes tell you where you need to go, rather than where you want to go.
Parental traits exercise looks at how negative traits of your parents may still be playing an important role in your current relationships.
Mental rehearsal can help discharge the impact of early negative childhood programming, replacing the negative thoughts and feelings with a sense of being significant, competent, and likable.
Body-mind imagery creates grounding within the body, building alignment and harmony between three centers of the body: head, heart, and belly.
Developing an objective observer is a practice of self-observation allowing a different perspective from outside the experience to become a part of the inner experience.
Distortion log is a tool for tracking and consciously disputing distorted negative self-talk.
Light visualization is a shortcut to a sense of calmness and grounding prior to an anxiety-provoking event.
Accountable friends is taking the opportunity to gain insight through honest feedback of friends.
Individual daily reflective practice is setting aside a time every day for some method of deliberate self-awareness and self-reflection.
Tool 9-1
Exploring Parental Traits
We start with an exercise to help you gain awareness of just how your past may be influencing you and preventing you from addressing your problems. The following tool will help you understand how the negative traits of your parents may be influencing your current relationships. Start by thinking of a current business problem that seems to involve some interpersonal relationship difficulties. You may want to write out a sentence or two below, describing the situation:
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For most people, their parents played the most significant role, both positive and negative, in their development into adulthood. Those whose parents were not the ones raising them can just substitute the two most significant adults in their childhood. Don’t be put off because the tool concentrates only on negative traits. Most people also received positive messages from the positive, supportive traits of parents. Those positive traits, however, are not the ones that are causing relationship problems. So, for this exercise, concentrate on negative traits.
List two negative traits for your mother and two negative traits for your father that showed up in relationships.
Some people find this exercise easy because of the many negative traits they could list. Others find it more difficult, perhaps because they are not observant or because they are in denial about the negative traits of their parents or because they had positive supportive parents. But everyone has a few negative traits. Even absolutely wonderful parents have at least two negative traits. So, for those of you having difficulty identifying any negative traits of your parents, the following page contains a list of negative traits that commonly affect relationships. It’s not necessary to pick traits from this list, which is only to jog your thinking.
After selecting four negative traits, take a look at how they may have affected your ability to form trusting collaborative relationships. It can work in many ways, so sometimes it’s easy to miss the connection.
The strong negative traits of your parents are most likely still affecting your own ability to form relationships In one of the following ways:
You adopt the trait and become just like your parent.
You rebel from the trait, doing exactly the opposite, but are still controlled by It.
You project the trait out onto the world, expecting the world to treat you as your parent did.
You collude with significant others, teaching them to act as your parent did.
You self-inflict the trait, treating yourself just as your parent did.
The negative traits of people’s parents almost always show up in their own relationships in one of the following five ways:
Adoption. This is the easiest connection to make. Your mom was manipulative in relationships. She was never straightforward, but rather scheming in a deceitful way to get others to do what she wanted. You learned from a master and have adopted her manipulative way in relationships. You may not even recognize that you are being manipulative. This behavior may seem normal because it is the only way you learned to get things done in a relationship. You have adopted her negative trait, and to this extent you have become your mother.
Rebellion. This is also pretty easy to spot. Say your father was a tyrant. He ranted and raved, bullying everyone he had contact with. You hated that about him and the effect it had on you and everyone else with whom he had a relationship. You swore you would never ever be like that. You’ll show him how much you hated that trait by becoming exactly the opposite of him. You’ll never raise your voice or take a strong stand, even when it might be appropriate. You are so afraid that you may be seen as a tyrant that you won’t even stand up for yourself. You are proving to your father that you are not like him. Of course, you are still controlled by his behavior. You are acting the way you do not out of free will and authenticity, but rather to prove to the world that you are not like your father. In feeling compelled to be the opposite of him, you are still a prisoner of his behavior.
Projection. Now it gets a little trickier to spot. You project your parent’s negative trait out into the world and expect the world to treat you the same way. Perhaps a parent was unpredictable in relationships, running hot and cold, and couldn’t be depended upon. As a result of your projection, you’ve come to believe that the world is unpredictable, erratic, and undependable. Your belief is not based on any evidence of unpredictability out in the world, but rather entirely upon your projection. Possibly all your relationships are in fact reliable and predictable. In spite of all the evidence that your current relationships are stable, however, you still mistrust the relationships, maintaining your belief about the unpredictability of relationships because of your projection of the trait of your parent onto the rest of the world.
Collusion. Here you teach others to treat you the way you learned and expected to be treated as a child. Perhaps your mother was a real bitch. She nagged and picked on you in the most caustic ways. She was always on your case, never giving you a moment’s rest. When you married, you looked for a wife who was not a bitch. She seemed caring and kind when you got married. Two years later, however, she has become similar to your mother. She nags you all the time to get things done. She is impatient with you and talks to you using the most caustic language. She wasn’t like that when you married her, but you have trained her to respond to you the way your mother did. You learned growing up that was the appropriate way to be treated, so you have recreated that same environment by training your wife to treat you like the bitch that your mother was.
Self-infliction. Here you’ve taken over the role of your parent, and now you treat yourself using your parent’s trait. Perhaps your father was tight with money, a real miser. You never received the nice present you wanted on your birthday. You wore hand-me-downs not because your family didn’t have enough money, but rather because your father prided himself in not wasting money on his children’s clothes. You, however, have grown into a generous adult. You freely give to others out of a caring spirit, not to get anything and also not out of rebellion. You have both a sincerely generous heart and the money to help others. While you may be generous with others, however, you treat yourself miserly. You wouldn’t hesitate buying your child a new sweater at the start of winter; however, you can make do with the same sweater you’ve used for the past six winters. You convince yourself that you are not like your father because you are so generous with your children. In one respect, however, you’ve taken it upon yourself to become your father, at least to the extent that you lack generosity to yourself. This may well be the most devastating, creating an unconscious sense of self-betrayal in your self-concept.
Instructions
You now have an understanding of five ways your parents’ negative traits may show up in your own relationships (adoption, rebellion, projection, collusion, and self-infliction). Take some time to reflect on the four traits of your parents that you have selected. Think back on the current business problem that you identified at the beginning of this exercise. See if you can identify how the negative traits may be affecting this business problem.
Mental Rehearsal
People learned most of their fears and rigidity during their childhood. They often bring those childhood fears with them to every meeting or encounter and every relationship via their unconscious. By consciously recognizing that they are no longer living in their childhood and that those childhood beliefs may no longer be true and helpful, people can change their perception of their current circumstances. Changing people’s unconscious beliefs into more conscious attitudes about their own significance, competence, and likability can play a powerful neutralizing role. Over time this can free them from phantom childhood fears that are no longer applicable to their present life.
We suggest you read through the example below, then go back and do it yourself.
MENTAL REHEARSAL EXAMPLE
Remember back in chapter 2 when Karen was talking to her boss John about an idea for a company project? As Karen was talking, John turned and reached for his coffee cup. Karen’s immediate reaction in her mind was “Oh damn; he must not want to hear this. He probably thinks it’s really stupid.” Karen experienced a high charge of energy throughout her body and started talking faster, flooding John with information. She became confused and less articulate, creating the very situation that she feared, i.e. that her boss did not want to hear what she had to say. After the meeting, Karen tries the Mental Rehearsal:
Recall a recent experience where you became fearful and rigid in your thinking or behavior.
Karen thinks of her experience with her boss.
Identify the negative traits, attitudes, or behaviors that you exhibited. Also identify any fears of being ignored, humiliated, or rejected.
Karen noted that she became rattled and inarticulate, and lost her train of thought. She started talking very fast as though John was disinterested and was going to cut her off at any moment. She noticed strong fears of being ignored and humiliated.
Think about where you first learned these traits, attitudes, or behaviors. If possible, try to remember a specific scene early in your life where you first learned this fearful behavior.
Karen recalled being at her family’s dinner table trying to get a word in edgewise and being ridiculed by her father and siblings. She remembers trying to talk really fast to get her ideas understood before the family ridicule started.
Notice how the circumstances of your recent experience are different from those when you first learned these negative traits, attitudes, or behaviors.
Her boss does not have a history of ridiculing Karen. In fact, all the evidence Karen has indicates that John would be interested in her ideas about the project. He seemed pleased when she first offered to share her ideas.
Imagine yourself in the present as significant, competent, and likable and let these feelings flow throughout your calm, centered being.
Karen relaxes, closes her eyes, takes a couple of deep breaths, and then imagines herself as a very significant, competent, and likable person. She lets this feeling flow through her body and mind for several minutes, basking in the warmth of the feeling.
Now, in your mind, reenvision your recent experience with this new conscious awareness of your own significance, competence and likability. Continue to breathe deeply as you let yourself integrate your new feelings into this recent experience. Imagine yourself reexperiencing that recent experience, creating an outcome you would have liked to have experienced. Notice what is different in your behavior, in your internal interpretation of the event, and in your capacity to respond authentically.
Karen reenvisions her meeting with her boss. She feels confident in her ideas and her ability to communicate them to John. When she imagines John turning away from her to get his coffee, Karen doesn’t see this as a rejection of her, but rather John simply wanting a drink of coffee. Feeling grounded and present, Karen imagines herself continuing to share her ideas with John in a calm, relaxed, and articulate manner.
Notice how you are feeling about the experience now.
Karen is feeling calm, and a little less attached to her old childhood patterns that she will be ignored or humiliated. She is looking forward to the next opportunity she has to talk to her boss, and feels confident she will feel more grounded and relaxed during their next meeting.
Now that you’ve read the example, try doing it. Close your eyes and relax your body, taking several deep breaths. Notice if there is any tension in your body that you can get rid of by shifting your position. Pay attention to your breathing. Settle into a rhythm of breathing deep, slow breaths. To the extent possible, breathe down into your belly. Once you are feeling relaxed, follow the steps listed in the example.
Tool 9-3
Imagine three centers in the body: head, heart, and belly, i.e., your gut. It takes all three centers to support a strong relationship. If one center overpowers another, you have a lopsided contributor to the relationship. You may lack the balance necessary for a strong relationship and can easily overwhelm others or be overwhelmed yourself. Without enough heart you may lack the depth necessary for empathy, compassion, or love. Without a connection to your belly you may lack strength, grounding, intuition, and passion. Without a connection to your head you can do some really stupid and thoughtless things that can ruin even the best of relationships.
When the three centers are in balance, energy flows through the body creating a sense of harmony within the individual and a sense of connection with other people. When the centers are not in alignment, the energy bounces around in your body like a herky-jerky roller coaster, creating chaos and instability not only within you but within all your relationships.
When your energy is chaotic and your centers are out of balance or alignment with each other, fear and rigidity can be the result. The following exercise is a way to create balance among the body centers.1 It also can create better alignment among the head, heart, and belly in a course of action to improve a relationship. You may wish to read this through several times before you try it so that you don’t have to break your visualization to take the next step. Or, you may have someone else read it to you slowly, giving you plenty of time to take each step. Another possibility is to read it into a tape recorder to play back to yourself at your own pace.
Exercise
Create a comfortable, quiet environment for yourself where you won’t be disturbed. Think of a relationship that you would like to improve. Notice how you feel in your body when you reflect on that relationship.
Now close your eyes and relax your body, taking several deep breaths. Notice if there is any tension in your body that you can get rid of by shifting your position. Pay attention to your breathing. Settie into a rhythm of deep, slow breaths. To the extent possible, breathe slowly down into your belly.
Start relaxing your entire body starting with your toes. Moving slowly up your body, focus your attention on each body part as you consciously let the tension release from that part. Take your time, moving on to the next body part only when the previous part lets go of any tension. When you have finally relaxed the top of your head, imagine you are standing at the top of a flight of stairs. As you slowly descend the stairs, notice that you are becoming more relaxed with each step you take.
When you reach the bottom of the stairs, suspend all of your thinking. Transform all of that thinking energy that you are no longer using into a river of cascading energy. Let it flow down into your chest and through your heart, feeling your heart open as the energy flows through. Imagine the river continuing through your chest and flowing all the way down into your belly, warming your belly, keeping it soft and relaxed, and then flowing down into your legs and through the soles of your feet. The energy leaves your feet and flows deep into the ground, so that you can feel what it is to be connected to the earth by a giant web of roots.
Imagine the energy creating a stable base that grounds you solidly to the earth, then let that energy flow back up through your feet and legs, back into the belly, which supports your strength, passion, and intuition. Then it flows up through the heart, the place of compassion, forgiveness, empathy, and love, and up to the head to achieve mindfulness.
The river of energy continues to flow up and out the crown of your head into the universe like the branches of a mighty oak tree. Notice your solid connection with the earth below and the universe above.
From this place of connection and harmony ask yourself three questions:
Ask your head, “What thoughts can I express to strengthen this relationship?” Then take your time and wait to see what answer you receive.
Ask your heart, “What feelings do I need to express to strengthen this relationship?” Then take your time and wait to see what answer you receive.
Ask your belly, “What action should I take to strengthen this relationship?” Then take your time and wait to see what answer you receive.
After you receive your answers, and when you are ready, open your eyes and spend a few moments reflecting on the experience and any insight you may have gained. Notice how you are feeling in your body and remember that feeling. If it feels helpful, you may wish to write for a few minutes about the experience.
Tool 9-4
Developing an Objective Observer
In any relationship, people can often get caught up in the moment and lose track of what is happening within themselves. If people had just a little more awareness of what they were doing and feeling in the moment, they might be able to make a slight correction in their demeanor or direction that could have a big impact on the outcome of that particular interchange. A slight increase in awareness, in the moment, might be enough to keep them operating in the Green Zone, rather than sliding unconsciously into the Red Zone.
Developing an Objective Observer is not so much an exercise as it is a practice to develop and use regularly. It encourages you to be present in any experience, but also to have a small part of you outside the experience, observing the experience from a slight distance. It is a practice of self-observation. It is as though you are stepping outside of the circle of what is happening in the moment, while it is happening, and noticing the experience as if you were an objective observer. Your Objective Observer should not be concerned so much with the content of any interchange, but rather with the process and feelings that are having an impact on the experience.2
Ask your Objective Observer to be on the lookout for the following:
Am I participating from the Green Zone or the Red Zone?
Am I listening effectively by summarizing and feeding back what I am hearing?
Am I being open and truthful?
Am I calm, present, and relaxed in my body?
Do I notice any defensiveness? If so, can I become more centered?
Do I seem open to new ideas or am I rigid in my thinking?
Am I being inclusive?
Am I helping my partner feel significant, competent, and likable?
Tool 9-5
Distortion Log
Self-talk is the ongoing conversation people have with themselves, but only in their own mind. They almost never share it with others. It is usually the most truthful and accurate picture of what people are thinking. Since people never share it with others, they never have to worry about censoring it. When this self-talk comes from a grounded, intelligent, and reflective voice, it can be motivating, encouraging, self-enhancing, and energizing, and create a positive life force.
Some people, however, are filled with self-critical self-talk from an ungrounded, demeaning little voice. It can sound like stream-of-consciousness self-bashing: Nobody at work likes me. Of course, why would they like me? I’m really not as smart as they are. I wish I were better looking. I don’t contribute much to this relationship. I’ll bet they’re avoiding me. They probably go to lunch all the time and never ask me. I’ve never been popular. Not much chance I’ll ever find a good relationship. I’ll probably never make friends here at work. People’s heads are filled with noise from their own worst critic.
Who you become as a person is to a great extent a reflection of your internal self-talk. It can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Positive self-talk can build your confidence and help you be more open and available to positive relationships. Negative self-talk can be one of the worst things you can do and the best way to sabotage yourself. If you keep telling yourself that you will never find good relationships, you certainly decrease the chances of being open to relationships when the opportunity arises.
People can be unaware that these self-critical thought processes are conditioned from childhood and can be fraught with distortions. Too often people mindlessly accept the thoughts as true, without subjecting them to the same content analysis that they make regarding the comments of others. The next exercise encourages you to examine some of your critical self-talk, searching for possible distortions. It requires you to subject your negative thoughts to the same scrutiny that you would subject the assertions of your relationship partners.
In the first column, identify the self-critical thought
In the second column, test that self-critical thought against all the objective evidence that you have about the substance of your negative thought. Scrutinize the thought to see if it has any basis in fact or if it is merely distorted thinking based on old childhood conditioning and fears.
In the third column, identify the possible consequences of your distorted thinking. It is important for you to realize that your distorted thinking has significant implications for your behavior, attitude, and your ability to be in collaborative relationships.
In the fourth column replace your distorted thought with a more realistic positive thought. Whenever you catch yourself engaging in your original negative distorted thinking, immediately substitute, in your mind, this more realistic positive thought. Review the example in Box 9-8, and then try it yourself with one of your possible distortions.
Tool 9-6
Light Visualization
Indulge us for a moment with this next quick little visualization. It may seem a little too “California” for you. But, If you are open to It (I.e., you don’t get rigid In your thinking about visualizations being stupid), It can be an excellent way to feel more grounded and centered right before you have to deal with any anxiety-provoking event. Try It at least once. You may find it “enlightening.”
Exercise
Close your eyes and take a couple of deep breaths. Imagine a shaft of soothing golden light entering the top of your head and slowly filling every space in your body. Imagine the golden light displacing all your negative thoughts and energy, cleansing your whole body with a warm glow. Fully experience yourself as calm, grounded, present, and authentic. When you are ready, open your eyes and notice how you are feeling.
Repeat this exercise right before you go into a stressful event.
Tool 9-7
Accountable Friends
Nothing improves a person’s self-awareness like a good friend telling him or her the truth. Time for self-reflection with friends is a powerful tool for growth. If people are open to it and can stay nondefensive, they can gain a great deal of wisdom from feedback about their mistakes as well as their successes. The times they have failed themselves and others, being inauthentic and not living up to the values they profess, can offer rich insight into who they are, as well as who they are not. People can also learn a lot about themselves from their successes, the times they did live out their truest values, when they had clarity of thought and purpose and a powerful combination of passion and focus.
Knowledgeable and courageous friends willing to give you honest feedback, hold you accountable, and celebrate even your smallest victories can support individual growth by creating a cultural norm within the relationship. Members of the relationship not only commit to “I want to be authentic in this relationship,” they also commit to “this is the way we expect to be treated.”
Think of a good friend or two whom you could approach about creating an opportunity for genuine feedback. Perhaps you and a colleague can spend an hour a month at work reflecting upon one area where you want to grow and develop. Start small and let it develop as you find it useful.3
Tool 9-8
Individual Daily Reflective Practice
One of the most valuable things you can do to support yourself is to cultivate daily reflective practice. This means setting aside a time every day for some method of deliberate self-awareness and self-reflection. Many meditation practices recommend setting aside at least twenty minutes a day. Research is clear that if you want something to become a regular habit, you must practice conscientiously. It is strange that most people know that if they want to become good at something, like putting a golf ball, the centerpiece of improving performance would be regular practice. Even after they had achieved high performance, they would still set aside time for continued practice.
It is much the same for developing the quality of mind of the Green Zone. So, each morning, you might find a calm place to just sit and practice breathing or some other meditative technique. You may wish to read something inspirational or restate a personal vision statement. You may wish to use this calm, centered time simply to reflect on the path you have chosen for your personal growth.
OTHER METHODS
There is no correct or best way to gain self-awareness and reduce fear. Life is a series of trial and error, and so is growth. We’ve said before that any method that fits you is a good way to proceed. From meditation to the martial arts, or therapy to theology or spirituality, perseverance is the key, building the future one thought, one feeling, or one gut reaction at a time.
CHAPTER SUMMARY
It is people’s internal thoughts, their stories, that they attach to the external events in their lives that give meaning to those events and relationships. People learn their stories from their experience. The past is impossible to change. It is what it is, good, bad, or indifferent, and everyone is stuck with his or her past. While people are greatly influenced by their past, however, they are not inseparable from it, and it doesn’t have to determine their future. Most people think that their past is behind them. Yet most people carry their past like a shield in front of them, not behind them, to protect them from their stories.
The common denominator of the tools in this chapter is an attempt to increase awareness and create new patterns in the brain, which can encourage fresh thinking. The tools encourage readers to break away from old, learned, ineffective patterns of behaviors by focusing attention on more effective ways of being. Working these issues can free the energy that keeps people tethered to the past and instead shift that energy into aliveness and authenticity. This requires compassionate self-honesty and detective work.