Put Your Past Behind You - 8 Steps to Implement Now

“Letting go doesn’t mean that you don’t care about someone anymore. It’s just realizing that the only person you really have control over is yourself.”  ~ Deborah Reber

Has this ever happened to you?

You are in a good place in your life, grateful for your lovely house, and happy with most of your decisions and opportunities. The days tick by nicely, until one day someone from your past appears out of the blue. They may be an old flame, an old neighbor, or your friend's creepy uncle. Suddenly, you are transported back in time, back to a day of uncertainty, frustration or grief. 

They say "hello." And their voice brings memories rushing through in technicolor. Or perhaps you never forgot it, not quite being able to let it go.

We all have discomfort in our lives, and much of it is based either in the past or the future. For the most part, we try to learn from our mistakes, or we try not to worry about something that hasn't happened yet. The thing is, emotions are the connectors to strong memories. When we are confronted with our past, those emotions can come flooding back with the memory.

And yet we know, on some level of our consciousness, that allowing ourselves to get pulled back into the past does us no good. When we relive an old moment, our bodies don't know the difference between a memory and a current event. Our heart starts to race as if it is happening now. Our throat tightens, our limbs stiffen, and our thoughts get extraordinarily focused...on this unproductive memory. We lose awareness of ourselves and sink into that old moment. Unfortunately, some of our reactions may also then become old ones. When we have a second to step away mentally from the memory, we may give our heads a shake. "What was I thinking? Why did I just react like that?"

There are other situations in life that we may fall into this unawareness. Where we lose our current consciousness and best decision-making skills. This happens if our brain is hijacked by our fight or flight responses. It happens if we relive a traumatic moment, or if we allow a fear or phobia to take over.

So, how do we put our past behind us? How can we stay present and aware so that our memories, thoughts and emotions don't unconsciously take over?

1. Practice mindfulness throughout your day. This includes being aware of your thoughts, and which ones follow what, down the road to an emotion. Once you can be aware of thoughts and emotions, you will be able to more readily shift them both so that you don't fall into an old reactive habit.

2. Sit in a safe space with a safe person, and, if viable, relive and process that old memory to allow you to work through it and come out the other side with a different frame of mind. If your memory was a serious or traumatic one, please make a counsellor or therapist the safe person.

3. Practice multiple perceptual positions. In a conversation, focus on being YOU. Feel your feelings, notice your surroundings, hear what is happening, use your senses to be as present, in your body and with the other person, as possible. THEN practice observation. Pretend you are the watcher of your thoughts and feelings. What are you thinking? How are your emotions displaying on your face? What are your responses? Ask these questions as the observer of yourself. THEN if possible, observe the observer, as if you are watching yourself, watching the conversation on a movie screen. If this one is difficult, focus on moving in and out between the 1st and 2nd position. If you want help moving into the 3rd position, let me know.

When your daily habit becomes awareness and mindfulness, and observing how you respond and react, you will be more informed of your emotional response and better able to remove yourself from that past moment.

If you are also able to work through some of the more intense emotional moments, you can effectively release the attachment to that memory. There are additional methods to this process that are helpful, but not appropriate through written instruction.

When you find yourself falling back into an emotional memory, try taking these actions in the moment:

4. Take a deep breath, and let it out. Then take another. Focus on your breath. This will help to keep you present.

5. Summon up a positive emotion - think of a moment when you felt love, joy, happiness or peace - then imagine sending a dose of this emotion to the person that created the memory rush. If this feels uncomfortable, acknowledge your discomfort and send it anyways. Like the act of forgiveness, that process is more healing to you, than to them. But there is a chance they may need an extra dose of love, care, or happiness in their life.

6. Like above, Acknowledge your feelings. Allow them to reside in your body long enough for them to dissapate. Stay aware of how they feel in your body.

7. Speak of your discomfort honestly if you can. (“I’m sorry we ended the way we did.” Or “Wow, I’ve thought a lot about you since the last time we spoke.” Or, "I haven't seen you in a while.")

8. Recognize where this emotion is coming from (your past). Then get present.

Life has a way of surprising us, and the surprise isn’t always pleasant. So make an effort to recognize how an old relationship may affect you, and how your current response can inform your future.

Don’t let negative past emotions color the present moment any more than it needs to. Take steps to keep past anxiety where it belongs. If it feels really fresh, then you probably never let go of that moment. Use the steps above to let go of that anxiety right now, before it saps any more of your energy. 

Recognize how far you’ve come since that moment, and take steps to forgive, if forgiveness is needed. 

Whatever the current moment brings, give yourself a gift. Face it with courage and honesty, and move on with a smile and with awareness of all you are grateful for now in your life.

How to stop fearful thoughts before they control you

The wind whipped through the house last night. Doors slammed shut and papers flew.

It is the end of September in San Diego and the wind was cold. We propped our bedroom door open so we could enjoy the breeze and sleep in the fresh air. We have done that every night for a few months now. We are so fortunate to have beautiful sleeping weather most nights. So grateful to wear flip flops in the day, and snuggle under a warm blanket at night. Last night was colder than normal, and we snuggled deeper.

Last night I slept the entire night except when I woke up with a fearful thought, "we don't have heat in our house!" It was one of those irrational middle-of-the-night fears and it wouldn't leave.

Two Steps to Lessen Fears from the Past

I am scared.

I am 14 years old and two teenager strangers approach me. It is not a dangerous situation. It is in the school hall in between classes and I am safe. My fear is from shyness. My fear is that I won't know what to say or do, and to make matters worse, my fear is what totally tongue-ties me, making my expectations come true.

Today it seems these two strangers expect me to have a normal conversation as they introduce themselves.

"I'm Brett."
"I'm Beth."

silence....

"And what is your name?"

"Oh, I'm Leigh." And I can't imagine anything to say. Nothing brilliant, enlightening or 'normal' comes to my mind. So I make an excuse as to why I'm feeling so dumb-struck.

"I really ran hard in gym today." Only they didn't hear my fear. They don't know that my thoughts are racing so fast that I don't know which thought to catch and spit out of my mouth. And they certainly don't know what running in gym class has to do with introducing myself to them.

But that is how I am feeling, and how I respond. And given that, as a teenager, I created this situation almost every time I met someone new, I became more fearful each time I stepped into a new social situation.

And so at 14 years old, I sense Brett and Beth's confusion. They don't know how to respond to my irrelevant "gym" comment, and in their own uncertainty, they turn around and walk away.

And my fear increases.

How that Fear Affects Me Now

Ok, so that was thirty years ago, and still, in some new social situations I find myself feeling this same fear. A dark cloud looms that threatens to descend, strangling me so that I can't spit my own name out, so that the words that do come out are like rain showers on a sunny day. It feels strange, and part of me becomes 14 again.

We are moving to a new city in a few weeks. I'm looking forward to the sunshine. I'm not looking forward to making new friends. Those situations are like the dark cloud. And I really like the friends I have.

What if I can't make friends like I did here?

Reality is Always Better than Fear

Reality is, I am not 14 anymore, and I have easy conversations with people, familiar and new.

This helps me to quickly move past brief memories.

1. Real is now - the past is gone and the present is the only reality

Fear from the past can bounce back into our minds and emotional memory, but if we acknowledge that this is from the past, then we can focus on the present.

My present reality is that I know we will meet people we like, and we will connect with them. In fact, my husband and I always meet people we like. People are likable, in general. Our children will also meet other children that they enjoy. There will be playdates, coffee dates, and bbq invites.

These people won't be strangers for long.

My teenage memory has nothing to do with today.

Teenagers seem to always have angst of some sort. Their hormones go wild, dragging their emotions one way and another. Some of those emotions stay into adulthood. Others dissipate with the passing of time.

We are not the people we were at 14. Literally. Our body has had time to shed every last cell that was alive in us at 14, and all the cells that make up who we are now did not exist when we were teenagers.

But emotional memory can stay with us or return at uncertain times. When we face change and don't know what is on the other side, old fears can pop up. but they don't stay there for long. They don't have to, because it is the past that appears, and we have the power to place the past back where it belongs, in the past.

When fear pops up at inconvenient times, I sometimes use Tapping to get rid of the emotion behind those lingering memories. Meditation can work too. And sometimes simply being wiser is all I need to know that who I am today is not anywhere near who I was at 14.

I know far more than that 14-year-old did. She coped in her best way possible, and taught me how to overcome my shyness. She had the strength to put herself into uncomfortable situations and risk looking foolish, so that she could learn and grow past the fear.

2. Acknowledge fear and thank it for its lessons

That 14-year-old taught well. She could be the reason I have compassion for others' fear in strange and uncertain situations. She could be the reason why psychology, coaching and communications have been my career focus.

And I can thank her for developing strength and risk-taking, for it is still part of who I am. She is the one who at 20-years-old was determined to lead a song in front of 140 kids and 28 camp counsellors, despite her shyness. She is the one who skydived at 30-years-old.

She is the one who grew to train a couple thousand adults in life and job skills, and who still felt the fear of speaking in front of those adults, yet did it anyway. (And understood why fear might have held those students back from living their life more fully.)

Is it fair to expect all our fears to leave us completely?

I don't think so.

They remind us of who we were, of who we are, and of the journey we traveled in between. I am still traveling my journey, and learning as I go. I know in my gut that life is good, and that on the other side of that fear is something better than I could know from this side. I just have to travel there.

What are your fears? Are any of them holding you back from saying, "yes"? What single step can you take to get to the other side?

How to Face Change to Reach Your Goal

I love change. I love new people, new places and new knowledge. I tell people that change keeps me looking forward to the future.

However, when I don't know all the answers for something within my control, then I have a tendency to ignore change. Yes...I pretend it isn't happening. Until I'm forced to deal with it in some way.
Not long ago I was faced with change on my blog. On Metaphysical Mom (and Dad) I didn't post an article in a critical month, and I had committed to myself to post each month. At the time of writing this, it is the last day of the month. If I don't post something today, by tomorrow the calendar will change to a new month and it will be too late to post this month's article.

Why is it important to take the next step?

A year before I made a promise to myself that if I was going to create change in my own world and with my own writing (and by extension connect in a more meaningful way to the world of colleagues, clients, friends and family), then one of my targets is to post at least once a month.

So why did I take me 30 days to get here this time?

Because of fear.

Over the prior seven weeks, in between business, a couple major volunteer events, and many childrens' activities, I had been busy migrating my blog over to a self-hosted wordpress site. In non-blog language, this means that I will have my blog, business, coaching and classes all on one site. The website has been on the internet for a few years, but it was underused, practically untouched.

Only now I realize that every time I make a change on my new Leigh Harris site, my email system will think the change is actually a new "blog," and end up in your inbox. That wasn't my intention. I want my blog subscribers to get my blog...only. I haven't investigated every possibility, so there may be a simple solution, but without knowing the solution (and feeling a lack of control) I simply ignored it... for 29 days.

But now on day 30, I still want to stick to my goal - one or more posts each month. This will give me another 29 days to figure out the answer (and hope I don't ignore it that long!).

For the moment (and the moment is all that matters, right?) by sticking to my goal I learned a few things:

1. Goal setting really does help us to achieve what we set out to do.

Even though this blog slips in right before the deadline, it still helps me to accomplish my goal. And now that I have written it, I am more likely to create another one, and another one.

2. Facing fear means making a decision, even if it is a simple...or single...step forward.

One step is all it ever takes. We don't reach the moon, climb to the top of the corporate ladder, or earn the big income we set for ourselves without taking one step at a time. And there is no doubt that each goal requires moving through fear. After all, the corporate or income climb requires stepping out of our comfort zone. And if the astronaut doesn't reach the moon.... well, there is no half way point.

As long as we take action, we move past our fear.

3. Reaching a goal feels satisfying, no matter how small.

It is like eating one small square of really good chocolate, instead of a whole bar of some inferior substitution. Mmm...good.

4. You need to change to reach a goal.

If we take a step forward, we irrevocably change our life. We create change. But change is good.

I love change, with fear and focused goals mixed in. They keep me accountable to myself and to my readers. I don't know if I'll be able to segment my blog from my business, but that is my plan. The only way I'll know is to take the next step forward, and the next, and the next.

What is your next step in your goal? Take it tomorrow, no matter what fear you face.

How to Deal with Regret

The last time I felt a true sense of regret, I was struggling to keep my car under control as it hydroplaned up a Vancouver Island highway.

Read the full article (How to Let Go of Regret) on Think Simple Now.

More about my role and the rest of the team on Think Simple Now's About page.

Namaste, Leigh

Cluttered House: A Sign of a Cluttered Mind?

Get Rid of Clutter and Change Your State of Mind by Leigh Harris

Clutter affects the environment and energy of your house. What appears as simple overabundance of physical objects triggers energetic and emotional responses.

Think about your own home environment. How do you feel in different areas of your home?

Often you walk in from the garage, and an automatic to-do list hits your mind. Jackets need to be hung up, dinner made, and laundry sorted. Just once you would like to grab a cold drink and head out to relax on the patio, but distractions beckon. With increasing irritation, you notice the hall filled with shoes thrown off haphazardly, or the bathroom floor covered with scattered towels. You would like to sit down and enjoy a moment of peace on the patio, if the mess would just go away.

Each moment has its share of joy and frustrations, but there are moments in a parent’s life when the aggravation of clutter is overwhelming.

Send Love to Japan - But Do This First

This weekend I wanted to write a post to help Japan's crisis. It would have been a post you might expect from Metaphysical Mom, focusing on promoting volunteer opportunities, sending financial help, and sending healing thoughts to the people and communities of Japan.

I stumbled because I didn't want to write about the fear of devastation, the overwhelm of cleanup, the worry of radiation, the heartbreak of lives lost. This event is overwhelmingly catastrophic, I can't imagine how someone still alive in Japan can begin to deal with the events and move forward. I wanted to focus on helping them think positive, but I didn't know where to start.

Then a wise friend reminded me of something important. Rahi, a member of our Think Simple Now team, told me this: "For any healing to happen, one very important thing is acceptance of the fear. The minute you acknowledge fear, you bring it to your conscious mind. The terror associated with fear at the subconscious level, constricts your energy. When you bring it to the open, the grip starts loosening...when that happens you have a foothold to work with."

She speaks a profound truth, one we often forget to acknowledge.

TSA X-Ray Backscatter Body Scanner: Not Enough Safety Research

This blog was written by Jason Bell, a molecular biologist and biophysicist. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Steve Kowalczykowski's lab at the University of California, Davis.

His review of the TSA scanner raises concerns. He says, "I fear that inadequate safety evaluation of these machines could unduly expose my family (and myself) to levels of radiation that might be harmful should this high familial cancer rate in fact be hereditary."

Read more:

Review of the TSA X-Ray Backscatter Body Scanner: Hide Your Kids! Hide your Wife!

Small Gestures Make a Big Difference

When I was 10 or 11 years old, our family spent many Sunday afternoons skating at the local ice rink. My sister, brother and I took lessons, and then we would skate during the public skate.
 While my siblings skated and chatted with their friends, I circled the ice looking for black flies, helpless, frozen on the ice. I would pick one up in my mitts, enclose it in warmth, and breathe a little warm air into its temporary cave. After a few minutes, I opened my mitts and it would fly away.

Saving flies.

“What’s the point?” I heard. “With millions of black flies, you’re not really making a difference.”



And I didn’t think I could make a difference, at least to other people, when I was young. I remember the cool kids in school. I tried not to notice that some "cool" kids had a way of teasing others. They didn't appear to be malicious, but they left others feeling broken by their words. But how could I make a difference? I was too meek to rush to someone else’s defense.

When someone I knew was being picked on, I felt torn between wanting to help and feeling my own insecurity and need to fit in. Any words that escaped my tightly gripped lips were jumbled in emotions of nervousness, self-consciousness, and pleading to be nice.

I was frozen, a small fly in a big world.

And yet, when I skated alone on the ice, surrounded by children enjoying themselves and smiling, I could pick up a lone cold fly, and with a gentle touch and breath, bring it to life. When I wasn't surrounded by school yard expectations, I found clarity in this small task.

I still felt helpless on the playground. However, growing up I discovered I could make a difference to others. I could help them with small gestures or a gentle touch. This became important in my first few jobs. A smile to restaurant patrons. An extra minute with a lone child at the community center. I may not have been effective on the playground. "Effective" felt momentous to that 11 year old. I wish I knew then what I know now.

What have I learned?

1. Small steps can make the greatest difference. It only takes one step.

2. Changing another person’s day only takes a moment. If we all took a moment to stop and help, imagine how we’d all feel at the end of the day.

3. Those that don’t smile back, or acknowledge the gesture, probably need it the most.

4. If I didn’t make an effort, or take a moment to smile, it would probably go unnoticed in the hundreds of tasks we do, or in the dozens of people we pass by each day. So we lose nothing, whether we try to make someone else’s day or not.

5. If I had known how simple yet transformative a smile could be, I may have shared more smiles on the playground when I was young. A person feeling uncertain in a situation might feel better receiving a smile.
In giving a smile, it isn’t about me. It is about how I’ve left others feeling. We each have a responsibility to do what we can for others. Often, it comes back to us anyways, as good karma tends to do.

6. Sometimes the kooky things children do (like picking up flies) have a purpose, as they sort out how the world works.

What small gesture do you enjoy sharing with others?

Calming a Scared Seven-Year-Old

My seven-year-old boy used to get scared at night. He would climb into our bed at 3am, or ask me to come back to his bed until he fell asleep. Every night he asked that the light be left on.

We talked about his fears. One questionable children's movie (which I regret turning on) has given him a few nightmares. However, he has also mentioned hearing his name called, and hearing noises.

Since I believe in spirits, in our souls surviving death, I believed he could be hearing them. For a child, this is very scary. Any medium that I know reports being frightened as a child, even as they now embrace their unique ability to speak with spirits.

Last month I told him a trick.

Surround yourself with white light. Imagine a glowing ball of light surrounding you and connecting with the ground. Good feelings can go through this light. Bad feelings can't. Also ask God or a higher power to protect you all night.

This, along with keeping the light on low, seemed to work most nights.

Last weekend I went to a conference on the science of afterlife. I bought a children's book from one of the mediums who presented. I gave it to my son, and the same one to my daughter. I passed on some advice from the author, Debra Martin. She said, "tell your son to ask someone he knows - a great grandfather who has passed on, for example - to stand at his doorway and keep him safe all night. No one will be allowed past him without your son's permission."

When I told my son, he said, "could I ask lots of spirits to stand there and guard me?"

I said, "sure, but it is probably better just to ask one or two, then you don't lose track of who you've asked."

Before this chat he was pretty quiet about his fears. On this night, and the next morning, asked me many questions.

I feel pretty confident he will sleep better.

A side note: Yesterday I spoke with a friend-of-a-friend. She was concerned her seven-year-old boy was waking up every night, terrified. Before I knew her own beliefs, I decided to tell her what I'd just said to my own son. She revealed that when her son was two, he seemed to see her own father frequently, shortly after he passed away. She thinks this new advice is worth trying. Stay tuned.

The Terry Jones Event: Will Fear End our World?

Last week Terry Jones, a man running a church with 50 members, sparked an international outcry. World leaders and business people felt compelled to respond to stop fear from escalating.

When the public discovered a New York City mosque was to be built two blocks from the World Trade Center memorial site, people were upset. They staged protests and rallies decrying this move. Others voiced equally passionate responses, stating that freedom of religion is one reason America is so wonderful, and stopping the mosque from being built would put this freedom at risk.

Out of nowhere Terry Jones, who runs the Dove World Outreach Center in Florida, announces he will burn the Quran, the religious text of Islam, in protest to this mosque.

Of course those of Islamic faith are upset. Of course they shout for response and reaction.

Surprising, however, is the speed this information traveled around the world, not because it was lightening fast, but because this information was derived from such a small part of the world.

Why did this man's threat cause such an uproar? Set aside the obvious reason that the Quran is a sacred book and symbol for Islam. Were people upset because no one could actually stop it? He was breaking no law, after all. Was it because it hit us at a point in our memory where two towers fell and thousands died? More likely these were trigger points to something deeper. Yes, his actions were an affront to Islam. But his actions dug deep at the root of fear.



Photo: Veer Images



Fear brings two reactions: Flight or fight. We couldn’t move away from this crazy fodder for worldwide media. Therefore we had to fight, or at least react towards this pending symbol of anger.



But if this is just a symbol, to what would we really be reacting? Our response is to fight against the perception that something might happen if we chose to do nothing. Kind of a circular argument, don’t you think? Yet this may be how fear continues.

Worldwide, Jones' statement splashed across the internet, on TV screens. The furor spread fear through followers of the Quran, among those that wish for peace, and to world leaders. People were fearful of what may have occurred if one person burned this religious symbol. State and religious leaders feared that their followers might question their strength.

Fear is the base of all trouble and turmoil. Fear of loss of control, fear of survival, fear of terror, fear of societal regression. The action of Terry Jones hit the heart of some very human fears. Jones' fear. Americans' fear. The world's fear. Fear is False Evidence Appearing Real. And did it ever appear real for a brief moment in time.

But what would have happened if each person did not allow fear to take hold? What if each person felt empathy, love and understanding?

What if the media turned off their cameras early on and walked away, letting Jones do what he may. What if people saw his actions as one silly stunt and ignored it. And instead let love, understanding and compassion travel the world?

What if fear gave way to love, the only other emotion with which we are born?

Love makes the world go round. Fear one day may stop it.

Let’s keep the world turning.

Leigh Harris discovers the juxtaposition of metaphysics and concrete solutions in life and in her writing.