Taking control by not letting the past dictate your future
You have stopped trying as not to risk future sufferings. As harsh as these words can be, they ultimately reflect a profound truth of the human condition and how our biological programming has hijacked our power to control our future and our happiness.
In fact there is no basis at the logical or scientific level that says that the past has or will repeat itself unless we allow it. Even in random theory (probability method), when something happens does not mean that it will happen again. There are too many variables in life and while we cannot control everything we can surely control how we react to events, and that alone is a great determinant on how we shape our future.
Unfortunately, we do not care about logic and science as the voice inside will hang on to anything and everything, to be proved right. And it is not easy to dismiss this voice as inside of us there are many injuries, scratches, and bad memories left there from the most disparate situations we have lived in our personal life, family, school, work, and especially in romantic relationships.
It is not easy to put these memories aside, especially when dealing with a new or a different relationship with all its hopes and dreams for a happy future but also with the potential to get hurt all over again, so we unconsciously tend to sabotage it to protect ourselves.
Do we know why this happens? This is a built in mind-body mechanism and conditioning to protect us from pain, uncertainty and loss even when there is absolutely no evidence pointing in that direction. It may seem counterintuitive, but the evidence does not have to be on the outside of our mind for us to react in a defensive way. It only needs to exist inside of our mind which will relieve as fact the bad memories of the past, projecting the fear of pain and suffering into the present, thus dictating our future.
How can we stop this vicious cycle? We are more than just our circumstances, feelings and emotions, fears and doubts. In fact we are capable of great insights and ability to choose anew even when conditions exist that alert us to be careful. If you ever got burned by the sun, your skin will react to new rays of light by getting red and itchy before any damage actually occurs, so that you can run in the shade and prevent any damage. Such conditioning is built in to protect us, but unless balanced with our ability to discern from real and imaginary events, can actually wreak havoc on our minds and bodies. In fact, prolonged periods of stress can lead to a weakened immune system and make us more prone to sicknesses.
We cannot avoid life because we are afraid of possible sufferings. Maybe it is time to tell our skin, our scars, our inner voice, that we are much more than this constant doubt that leads to overthinking and feeling stuck by playing over and over in our minds scary scenarios of our own imagining. But how, you may say? Not by denying this ambivalent reality but by stopping to second guess ourselves, by not responding to the inner voice’s fears and doubt. By learning how to take care of our bodies, mind and spirit and especially by freeing the inner child in all of us, and see the world through the lenses of unlimited potential and excitement. We already know how as we did it when we started to learn how to walk and were not afraid to fall down, but would get up again and again until not only we walked but we also learned how to run and jump with joy.
If we are not able to do this, we will start any new relationship by unconsciously saying to the other, here I am with all my faults and weaknesses; please love me but also fix me and make me happy. We are in fact giving away our power to someone else and our happiness will be contingent on the other person’s ability to fully understand who we are when we are not even able to do so ourselves. We would be starting a new relationship with the expectations that the other can and should make us happy when the other person may be having the same expectations of us, thus creating a double dependency situation that in most cases is bound to fail.
We would continue an unhealthy personal, family or work dynamics when triggered by certain words, body language, tone of voice, and other interactions, by participating (even by default) in a vicious cycle of blame and guilt arising from others or even our own actions (good or bad). When we can realize that we have the power to stop the cycle at any given time by taking responsibility for our actions or by not reacting (not in the conventional way), magic can happen.
Some may call this a passive-aggressive response but I will write more on this subject in other articles on how to do it effectively to create better outcomes. Let’s say that being aware of your inner power and inner states of mind, trigger mechanisms and behavior/contribution to your personal, family or work dynamics, will enable you to take transformational action and really feel alive and fully conscious every moment of your life.
