Clearly all of us have had positive, fun, rewarding experiences and we’ve all obviously had the opposite – frustrating, negative, painful experiences.
How we put them together and the story we tell ourselves about them, is actually what decides our future.
In the landscape of my life, I’ve seen high points and low points. Times I was treated unfairly, had my feelings hurt, my value was called into question, my intentions were misjudged. I suffered loss, injustice and plain bad luck. They happened and they hurt. Yet, when I look back on that landscape, what I mostly notice are the positives: friendship, love, trust, and opportunity. Am I conflating the good? Possibly. Does that make the negative go away? Absolutely not.
What I get and what you’ll get from positive conflation (some might call it positive selective memory), is a story where I am the heroine of my own life. And this gives me a fantastic launch pad for the next round of good things.
Recently, a dear friend was telling me how she’d had a bunch of challenges including a run-in with an employee, too much travel, a summer cold, and a breakdown in plumbing. She found herself exhausted, discouraged and immobilized, because “all the bad things seemed to get jumbled together.”
Never mind that she had received recognition by her professional association and that she and the man in her life had a wonderful weekend together. Those all seem to disappear in a cloud of the negative conflation.
Each of us is the hero or heroine of our own lives, and we each have a choice about the memories we hold onto. This doesn’t mean we deny that the “bad” happened. It means we can make a decision about where to put our thoughts and energy. Part of that choice may require us to forgive, not only others, but ourselves (but that seems like another blog).
For this week, what you are going to remember, the positive or the negative? Experiment with one, then with the other and see what happens.
Until next Tuesday,
Elizabeth