Forget About It!
Posted: Wednesday, December 03, 2008
by Barbara Clark
http://www.spiritedstrides.com
I'm not a native New Yorker, but New York City has been my home now for almost eight years. While the title of my column may suggest a topic about New Yorkers and their amazing expressive personalities or conjure up memories of that old television show, The Honeymooners, you can just "forget about it" as my topic is neither!
If you often remember past hurts or recall traumatic events or just enjoy arguing your point because you know you are right, then this is my advice for you: forget about it! Your persistence in insisting can certainly cause pain to another or unnecessary stress for yourself. It can also put you in a place of forever "remembering" the negative: thereby attracting and noticing more negative in your life. When you blame your partner or ex for your unhappiness, you are giving away your power. When you are mad at someone, you are likely to attract more to be mad about! That person who you so desperately want to change will just seem to keep repeating the behaviors that made you mad in the first place.
We all have the power to be happy. The choice is really ours and does not depend on the behavior of another person. We are "trained" to believe that our significant others can make us happy and that training starts young: in storybooks, on television, by how our parents guided us in growing up and continues on in school and in our adult lives. When we give another person that much power, it almost always ends in disappointment for us. So it doesn't matter if we are talking about the past, the present, or the future: blaming the other person for our unhappiness or excessive negativity towards them is most likely due to our own fears and our own insecurities. Do you think you can really control that person?
What point is there in reliving a past that just brings you down? What point is there in beating the drum of your point if it only serves to aggravate you or others? What point is there in focusing on the negative of a person when we know that no one is perfect, including you? We set ourselves up for failure and disappointments when we reach for such "perfections."
If your insistence of your point of view causes your current relationship partner pain, stress or discomfort, then what exactly are you trying to get out of your relationship together? If recalling past hurts of a relationship makes you feel better when others take your side, do you honestly sleep better at night knowing that you are bad-mouthing your ex? While you may feel "relief" from venting in certain situations, if you stay there too long (as in days, weeks, months or even years for some of us), you'll become a negative person. Who wants to be around negative people? Other negative people!
Soon you will find that it seems as if the glass is always half empty, that danger and bad things always come in threes, and that nothing good ever happens to you. The list won't stop there because now you'll be on a roll and you'll keep attracting negativity into your life. That's no fun, is it?
I'm not exactly talking about forgiveness because that implies that the other person was totally at fault and it assigns blame. I really believe that we have to take responsibility for the deterioration of a relationship so I'm really talking about letting it go and forgetting about it! You cannot go back and change what has happened anyway! And you certainly cannot control your partner into behaving the way you want them to for the future. You probably have heard the phrase of "I will forgive but I won't forget" but I believe it's better to let it go by not blaming or forgiving AND just forget about it! Let it go completely. Forgetting is not thinking about it anymore. It take discipline and practice and uses purposeful intentions of appreciation instead.
So the next time you find yourself thinking or feeling stressed because your partner isn't giving you enough attention, why not start appreciating them for the things you love about them instead? Can't think of anything? Try harder! There must be something in them that made you love them in the first place. Begin by finding something to appreciate about the situation or that person, no matter how hard it may seem. Write it down. Refer to it often. Pray for them. Pray for yourself. Start being what you want them to be and you will soon notice a change: not only will your own outlook change, but it will appear as if a miracle has come before you and that person has changed for the better.
I know from personal experience that this really works. But I won't tell that story here, because I've already forgotten it! So go ahead and "forget about it!" Do it often and do it purposefully! Then start appreciating the rest and what a wonderful new life you'll start living!
This Article has been viewed 310 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
Top-level comments on this article: (4 total)Barbara,Great article. Actually I do quite well at this with my closest relationships. It's those "other knuckleheads" that sometimes hook me! LOL I must work at this. Be well.
LOL! Thanks for the feedback, James!
Hi Barbara and fellow EFT'er! It is funny how when you let something go you really do begin to forget about it or it becomes a distant memory. Enjoyed the article.
Val, Thanks for your feedback, fellow tapper! :-) I really appreciate it.
We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.