13 Things Mentally Strong People Don\'t Do: Take Back Your Power, Embrace Change, Face Your Fears, and Train Your Brain for Happiness and Success pdfdrive com

STUCK IN HISTORY
Sometimes people dwell on the things that happened years ago, while others
tend to dwell on whatever happened last week. Do any of these scenarios sound
familiar?
You wish you could press the rewind button so you could redo portions of
your life.
You struggle with major regrets about your past.
You spend a lot of time wondering how life would have turned out if only
you had chosen a slightly different path.
You sometimes feel like the best days of your life are already behind you.
You replay past memories in your mind like a scene from a movie over and
over again.
You sometimes imagine saying or doing something differently in past
memories to try and create a different outcome.
You punish yourself or convince yourself you don’t deserve to be happy.
You feel ashamed of your past.
When you make a mistake or experience an embarrassing episode, you keep
repeatedly replaying the event in your mind.

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You invest a lot of time in thinking about all the things you “should have” or
“could have” done differently.
Although self-reflection is healthy, dwelling can be self-destructive,
preventing you from enjoying the present and planning for the future. But you
don’t have to stay stuck in the past. You can choose to start living in the moment.
WHY WE DWELL ON THE PAST
Gloria’s daughter often manipulated her mother by preying on her guilt,
reminding Gloria that she wasn’t always there for her as a child, which only
fueled Gloria’s remorse. If her daughter hadn’t yet forgiven her, how could
Gloria possibly forgive herself? She accepted her feelings of constant guilt as
part of her penance for the mistakes she’d made, and as a result she continued to
dwell on the past.
Lingering guilt, shame, and anger are just a few of the feelings that can keep
you stuck in the past. You might subconsciously think, If I stay miserable long
enough, I’ll eventually be able to forgive myself. You may not even be aware that
deep down, you don’t believe you deserve happiness.
THE FEAR OF MOVING FORWARD MAKES US WANT TO
STAY STUCK IN THE PAST
Two weeks after my mother passed away, my dad’s house caught on fire. The
fire was contained to the basement, but smoke and black soot permeated
throughout the house. Everything in the entire house had to be cleaned from top
to bottom by a crew hired by the insurance company. All my mother’s
belongings were handled by complete strangers. And it bothered me.
I had wanted things to stay just the way my mother had left them. I wanted her
clothes to stay hung in the closet the same way she had arranged them. I wanted
her Christmas decorations to stay in the boxes in the same way she’d organized
them. I wanted to someday—way down the road—open her jewelry box and see
how she had last placed her jewelry. But we didn’t have that luxury. Instead,

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everything got rearranged. Her clothes no longer smelled like her. I had no way
of even knowing what the last book was that she was reading. And we’d never
be able to sort through her belongings at our own pace.
A few years later when Lincoln died, I again wanted everything to stay frozen
in time. I felt like if I studied the way he kept his clothing hung in the closet, or
if I could figure out which order he’d read his books in, I’d be able to learn more
about him, even though he was gone. I thought that if things got moved around,
thrown out, or reorganized, I’d lose my opportunity to study valuable clues that
could give me more insight and information about him.
It was as if I could keep him with me if I made sure there were always more
things to learn. Maybe a scrap of paper would have a note on it. Or maybe I’d
find a picture I’d never seen before. I wanted to somehow create new memories
that included Lincoln, even though he wasn’t there. Although we’d been together
for six years, it just wasn’t enough. I wasn’t ready to let go of anything that
reminded me of him. I thought I’d be leaving him behind if I got rid of his
belongings that I no longer needed, and I didn’t want that.
My attempts to keep everything frozen in time didn’t work. Obviously, the
rest of the world kept going. And over the course of many months, I was able to
begin to let go of my desire to keep everything as if it were in a time capsule.
Slowly, I would reassure myself that it was okay to throw away something with
Lincoln’s handwriting on it. And I started to get rid of the magazines he kept
receiving in the mail. But I have to admit, it took me two years to finally throw
away his toothbrush. I knew he didn’t need it, but somehow throwing it away
almost seemed like a betrayal. It seemed more comfortable to dwell in the past,
because that’s where Lincoln, and my memories of him, lived. But to stay stuck
there, while the rest of the world changed and moved forward, wasn’t healthy or
helpful. I had to trust that moving forward wouldn’t cause me to forget any of
my wonderful memories.
Even though as a therapist I help people work on their rational thinking, grief
brought on a lot of irrational thoughts. It made me want to dwell on the past,
because the past was where Lincoln was alive. But if I had spent all my time
thinking about the past, I’d have never been able to create new and happy
memories again.

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DWELLING ON THE PAST DISTRACTS YOU FROM THE
PRESENT
It’s not just sad or tragic events that leave people focused on the past. Sometimes
we dwell on the past as a way to distract ourselves from the present. Perhaps you
know that forty-year-old former high school quarterback who still squeezes into
his varsity jacket and talks about his “old glory days.” Or maybe you’re friends
with the thirty-five-year-old mom who still lists “prom queen” as one of her
biggest accomplishments. Often, we romanticize the past as a way to escape
problems in the present.
If, for example, you’re not happy in your current relationship, or if you’re not
in a relationship at all, it may be tempting to spend a lot of time thinking about a
past love. Perhaps you wish that your last relationship had worked out or you
still think if you’d married your high school sweetheart, you’d be better off.
It can be tempting to fixate on how much easier or happier life was “back
then.” You may even begin to regret some of the decisions you made that landed
you where you are today and say things like “If only I’d married my old
boyfriend, I’d still be happy”; “If I hadn’t dropped out of college, I’d have a job
I love”; or “If I didn’t agree to move to a new city, I’d still have a good life.” The
truth is, we don’t know what life would have had in store for us had we not made
those choices. But it’s easy for us to imagine that life could be better if we could
only change the past.
THE PROBLEM WITH DWELLING ON
THE PAST
Gloria couldn’t see her daughter as a capable adult; all she could see were her
own mistakes. Her guilt prevented her from focusing on the present and as a
result, she enabled her daughter’s irresponsible behavior. Unfortunately, her
daughter was repeating a lot of the same mistakes Gloria had made. Dwelling on
the past was not only holding Gloria back from reaching her full potential, but it
was also holding her daughter back from maturing into a responsible adult.

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Ruminating on the past won’t change it. Instead, wasting your time dwelling
on what’s already happened will only lead to more problems in the future. Here
are some of the ways that dwelling on the past can interfere with your ability to
be your best self:
• You miss out on the present. You can’t enjoy the present if your mind is
constantly stuck in the past. You’ll miss out on experiencing new
opportunities and celebrating the joys of today if you’re distracted by things
that have already occurred.
• Dwelling on the past makes it impossible to adequately prepare for the future.
You won’t be able to clearly define your goals or stay motivated to create
change when a big part of you remains stuck in the past.
• Dwelling on the past interferes with your decision-making skills. When you
have unresolved issues from the past, those conflicts will cloud your
thinking. You won’t be able to adequately make healthy decisions about
what’s best for you today when you can’t get over something that happened
yesterday.
• Dwelling on the past doesn’t solve anything. Replaying the same scripts in
your head and focusing on things you no longer have control over won’t
resolve anything.
• Dwelling on the past can lead to depression. Ruminating on negative events
conjures up negative emotions. And when you feel sad, the more likely you
are to conjure up even more sad memories. Dwelling on past times can be a
vicious cycle that keeps you stuck in the same emotional state.
• Romanticizing the past—the grass-is-greener philosophy—isn’t helpful. It’s
easy to convince yourself that you felt happier, more confident, and
completely carefree back then. But there’s a good chance you’re
exaggerating how great things used to be. It can also make you exaggerate
how bad things are now.
• Dwelling on the past is bad for your physical health. Thinking constantly

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about negative events increases inflammation in your body, according to a
2013 study conducted by researchers at the University of Ohio. Dwelling on
the past could put you at a greater risk for diseases associated with heart
disease, cancer, and dementia.
STOP THE PAST FROM HOLDING YOU
BACK
Once Gloria recognized that she could learn from her past, rather than just
beating herself up over it, her thinking shifted. She began changing her behavior
and the way she parented her daughter. This helped her recognize how her past
mistakes taught her valuable lessons about parenting. Over the course of a
couple of months she was able to recall her earlier parenting mistakes without an
overwhelming sense of shame.