Episode 11 Power over the past
Intro with music
Hello and welcome to episode 11. In this episode, we take a close look at the painful past and its potential to limit your life now, or launch you toward a life of your own creation.
Music
The past can be truly horrific. There were mistakes, difficult situations, dark secrets, failures and challenges, and then there was the death of your spouse. As much as we might desperately wish we could change the past, it is never possible. We can expend tremendous energy rethinking and overanalyzing, trying to find a way to renegotiate past events, grappling with what is, wrestling with reality. It’s exhausting, and energy spent this way quickly depletes the finite, microscopic energy levels that most people have after loss.
I recently taught a webinar called Your Brain on Grief. You can still watch it, in fact. The link is in the show notes. I asked those who attended live to share what thoughts they thought often. They were almost unanimously painful thoughts about the past:
I should have been able to save him.
I should have known she needed help.
I should have made him go to the doctor.
I should have apologized to her.
I should have been a better spouse.
I should have spent more time with him.
I should have never sold the house.
So, so painful.
To clarify, it isn’t possible to feel old pain from the past. It’s our current thinking about the past that inflicts pain. Our thoughts create our feelings, so it’s important to learn to observe our own thoughts.
What is your brain telling you about the past? Are these thoughts true, and do they serve the person you are today? If not, perhaps there is a new thought about the past that would still be true, and also more useful.
My thoughts about the past were, “I should have been able to save him.” That thought played like a record in my brain, and the more I thought it, the more it seems true. It limited my options because, if I should have been able to save him, then how could I permission myself to live, if he isn’t? The thought wasn’t technically true, and it certainly did not serve me. Only when I learned to challenge it was I able to break free. I chose the thought, “I did everything I knew to do at the time, and there was nothing more I could have done.” And I directed my brain to practice that thought regularly. Eventually that became the thought I believed to be true.
I want to mention another way that the past can limit the future.
Widowed or not, we can easily define ourselves and our future abilities based on our past. But that would be a big mistake. What if at age sixteen you were limited to only your past abilities? That wouldn’t make sense because you would have so much growth still ahead of you.
It is tragic that, at some random point in our lives, we decide that we can no longer grow.
If we choose to see everything in our past as simply lessons and preparation, (like we did at age 16) then the past can be a launchpad to becoming the next version of ourselves.
A painful event like the loss of a spouse is not what we had planned or hoped for, certainly. But it is what happened. Our hearts are still beating, and we are living this one life we have been given.
You’ve already been through the unimaginable, and it is, in its own dark and messy way, preparing you for what’s next.
Unexamined thoughts about the past can become a life sentence in a prison of our own creation.
Thinking true and useful thoughts about the past, on purpose, can serve as a launch pad to become who you’re meant to be now. Not in spite of the past, but because of it.
That’s my hope for you. And if you need help, subscribe to this podcast because there’s much more to come to help you create a life you will love, on your terms, and on your timeline. And in the meantime, know that I believe in you, and I’m here for you. Take care.
