When I was three years old I ran a race and won. I remember being too shy to go and collect my winner’s prize - a bag of sugary sweets. Oh, the regret, the tears, the self-recrimination and bitterness! (OK, OK, I was only three, remember!)
The intense feeling of missed opportunity really got me and my grandmother had to comfort me that night. Of course, eventually I had to let this go. It was enough that I’d won the race. Now I can console myself with the thought that my toddler self was, at least that once, saved from an unhealthy shot of teeth rotting sugar. But why was I so affected at the time?
Let go of the past - learning to regret
First time experiences can feel particularly pertinent. Maybe that memory stuck because it was my first experience of regret (and yes, there have been more and bigger regrets since).
But what about you?
Learning to let go of what is gone
Of course to grow and develop in life we need to learn from our experiences. The past can be a great teacher but it shouldn’t be a distraction. Being too focussed on what went wrong before can make us feel hopeless about things working out in the future. Being hung up, bitter or even too nostalgic about past events can stop us living spontaneously and appreciating and fully participating in the present time.
The past is a book that is read, a story told, a journey undertaken, a meal eaten, a portrait painted and work completed. To do, appreciate, learn from and move on is a skill in itself - an essential capacity we have which let us develop and grow. To love in the here and now, spontaneously and with joy and also to optimistically plan for the future without the restraints of past limitations and conditioned doubts.
Let it go - the art of moving on
Hypnosis can help. Maybe there is something you have felt you just can’t let go of. A past injustice or hurt, or perhaps a missed opportunity of some kind. The point is, what’s gone is gone. Of course, it’s easy to say that and you know it with your thinking brain, but maybe your feeling brain hasn’t been acting as if the past is truly past. Hypnosis is all about helping the unconscious mind realign responses so that they feel different without us having to try too hard to think too differently about them.
The let it go hypnosis session
With this in mind I have recently produced the Let it go session for hypnosisdownloads.com. It’s for people everywhere who sometimes find the past more present than the present. After all, there is always another way to view something and - I’m sure you’ll be greatly relieved to hear - thanks to a little story my grandmother told me, I too learned to move on from a particular disappointment all those years ago J
All the best
Mark
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