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One of the ways to getting the love you want and connecting with the people in your life in a deeper way is to let go of past hurts.
These past hurts that you carry around can show up in a couple of different ways…
1. Guilt
Looking back, there are now things you wished you hadn’t done that caused a great deal of pain for others–or maybe things you wished you had done that you didn’t do. Somehow you think that by carrying around this guilt, you’ll be making up for what was done or not done.
2. Resentment
Someone did something to you that caused pain and somehow you believe that if you let go of that pain, you’ll be condoning what was done and pardoning the other person.
So you hang onto pain and most of the time it isn’t even a conscious decision to do it.
Letting go of past hurts seems much easier said than done but here are a few questions for you…
*How much of your life is being driven by the pain of the past?
*How often do you hold back and not go for what you want because of something that happened in your past?
*How often or how much of the time do you hold back because of a decision you made in the past about how “people are” or how “things are” that may not be true in every situation?
If you’re like most people (including us), you’re probably holding onto the past way more than you might think.
And this is one of the biggest challenges that keeps you from having close, loving relationships and many of the other things you want in your life as well.
Holding onto the past almost always stems from very specific thoughts you’ve had…
-About how you do or don’t ever want to experience a certain situation from your past EVER again or…
-About what ever happened shouldn’t have happened in the first place.
Very often this was something that happened in a split second, a moment in time, that you found to be painful. That hurt you.
It was something that was painful enough that you made a decision based on that thought you’re believing about that situation that turns into a “strategy” that you live your life from.
It’s a strategy for you think will keep you safe and make sure you’re never hurt like that again. Ever.
Let’s say you’ve made some “bad” choices in choosing a partner in the past and when you finally meet someone who seems like a nice person, you hold yourself back.
It may not even be conscious but you think…
“I’ll just keep up some walls so that I can’t be hurt again like I was before and those walls will keep me safe.”
Or “I don’t trust in this good feeling and am just waiting for something ‘bad’ to happen–again.”
Another example might be holding onto something your partner or family member did in the past and every time you think of if, you get angry and push that person away. Holidays are filled with stress and anxiety because you’ll have to see that person again or spend time with him or her.
While those are “normal” thoughts to have when you’ve been hurt in the past, you don’t have to keep holding onto them…
Because the truth is that holding on to the past is really impossible.
It’s the constant reliving of the memory of the past event that keeps the pain alive and not the event itself that happened.
What people don’t understand is they mistakenly take events that were painful in the past and bring them into the present moment, reliving them over and over again in their minds–creating a lot of anxiety.
This reliving of the past doesn’t allow anyone to get close to them enough to hurt them in the future–or so they think.
So how do you let go of past hurts so you can allow and enjoy more love and connection?
You can see a few things for yourself…
1. Your thoughts come and go and while you may not have a choice in what thoughts come, you do have free will which ones you’ll pay attention to, believe and act on.
2. You can see that hanging onto your thoughts of past pain doesn’t prevent pain–it only keeps you in a constant, heightened stressful state.
3. You can see the illusion of the idea that holding onto past hurts will keep you safe. It only keeps you stuck in misery.
4. You can see that when fears come up, they will pass if you allow them to and not act on them.
5. You can start to notice that sometimes you’re in a better mood and not focusing on the past and sometimes you’re in a low mood and the past overwhelms you–and know that it’s all okay.
When you see that the low moods come and go if you allow yourself to settle down and not work yourself into an emotional frenzy, you won’t get so caught up in them.
You can see some light and where there’s an opening of light, there’s love and connection–with yourself and with others.
When you can allow more lightness in, there’ll be more ease and life will just be full of more happiness.