Is the one who’s holding you back the most in your life, yourself? Our media tell us: “Be all you can be”. We are brainwashed from our youth. Get a good education, get a good job, get a great husband or wife, make the money, have a beautiful family, retire in comfort and then pass on surrounded by your loved ones.

Problem is, not everyone’s life goes to plan. Life’s events get in the way. One thing you can’t control is your very early years. You were at the mercy of those around you. So you were affected. You bring these memories and thoughts and feelings to bear in your adult life. This affects how you react to events and how you act as a social being.

One big error people make is assuming that they _are_ their memories and feelings.

By this I mean, you believe that the phenomena of thoughts and emotions are the same as your inner self, your soul. I think of them as bubbles of gas floating up out of a deep pond or like flies buzzing around an elephant. The flies fly hither and thither in a very agitated manner but the elephant moves on slowly and implacably towards its destiny.

It’s important to understand that you are distinct from your thoughts and emotions. That your thoughts and emotions are affected by your bodily state and that they in turn affect your body. Consider what 40 years of constant anxiety and anger can do to a human body purely on a chemical level. The ‘mind’ affects the body and the body affects the ‘mind’.

So what does this mean on a practical level?

It means that most people spend their sleeping and waking moments flitting from thought to thought and feeling to feeling without stopping occasionally to recollect themselves and refocus. This can make them ill.

Some facets of your life you can change. Some are out of your control. With the latter, what you _can_ change is how you _react_ to these events.

So something bad happens. Say it’s not a thing you can fix. You can let it bother you for days or let it go. The same goes for any persistent, distressing thoughts or feelings you have. Examine them in a detached manner, like a scientist, then imagine them dissolving into dust and nothingness, _as long as you are not imagining real people, living or dead_. You don’t want to wish evil on others. It’s wrong.

Modern psychiatrists and psychologists are making a grave error in telling their patients it’s OK to constantly revisit bad thoughts, emotions and memories. This gives them energy and makes them stronger.

Take a moment to recall what happens in your own mind, every day. Your current obsessions and old hurts come to mind again and again. What’s the clever move? To allot them more and more of your time and mental energy or just ignore them? As the descendants of hunter-gatherers we worry about problems as a way of fixing them. When you can’t fix the problem then you have to let it go.

Author Bio: Want to hear more? Go to http://www.onlinecounsellorlondon.co.uk and then ‘phone Tommy. Tommy is an online life coach offering business advice from in London, UK. He has a B.A. in Philosophy and Sociology and is originally from the Republic Of Ireland.

Category: Self Help
Keywords: self improvement,personal development,personal growth,self help,self development,success,advice