In this article, I dare you to unload the baggage of negative emotions you have been carrying throughout your life to improve your emotional well-being.
Emotions are powerful, left ungoverned can make you powerless. We have been subjected to emotions all our past lives, some positive others negative. Unluckily in school, we weren’t taught emotional intelligence to better deal with the negative experiences. And as we go through life’s unpleasant experiences, one after the other we collect negative emotions that harm us in ways we aren’t even aware of.
Where did this emotional baggage come from?
Whenever in the past you went through an unpleasant experience that caused you pain, no matter how terrible or unjust they were, if you don’t accept those for what they are you continue to let yourself be a victim.
Holding resentment is the biggest cue of not letting go of the past and still be in pain. That’s how you create an emotional burden, which you continue to add by filling in more and more pieces of evidence.
An experience of the end of a relationship with the person you loved could be devastating, whatever might be the reason, you continue to be a prisoner of the pain caused by another human. If you carry this painful experience into the present, blame the person who caused this, it keeps hurting. This is how you create an emotional burden.
And if there happen other instances of pain that you continue to pile up, they eventually become a weight so heavily on your emotional health that it won’t let you move on with the swiftness and peace you deserve in life.
Forgiveness is Freedom
Forgiveness is the key to getting rid of this burden. It librates you.
To live a life as free and light as possible, you need to realize that forgiveness is the answer. No matter how unjust, painful, and terrible events happen to you, not letting go is just as painful as the experience itself. It’s like reliving the pain again and again. You keep yourself suffering in the pain by not forgiving those who cause it.
What happened in the past does not need to be carried into the future. Leave it where it was meant to be. Take from it what is useful and move into the future a wiser person. Negative experiences come in life not to fail us but to give us a chance to grow and become better at living by avoiding bad events.
The world is not short on real stories of people who created great peace despite their adversities, they choose not to be victims of life situations but took charge, the responsibility to create a beautiful life. No matter how hard you might find forgiving others, do it for yourself because holding on to the blame won’t serve you. Blaming life or the person won’t undo it. Being grateful would make you have a positive outlook that due to this experience, today you are where you were meant to be. You could be content that this person wasn’t right for me. And as you know better than before you can make wiser decisions. Look on the positive side of the painful experience, how it changes you for the better.
Find out what experiences you have collected in your emotional baggage:
Just as you have collected the burden, you can unload it by reversing the process. To do that you first need to shed the light of consciousness on your negative experiences. Following are some ways to help you identify such past experiences:
- Ask yourself what are some of the most recent experiences you had that you associated negative emotions with. We don’t usually forget about experiences that made us feel negative about ourselves. Questioning would engage your mind to look for these timestamps in your memory drive.
- Another way is to pinpoint your insecurities because these are based on negative associations about yourself. Ask what about yourself do you feel insecure about. As you come up with something, ask why do I feel insecure, is this based on facts or just imagination (distorted interpretation of past experience)? These insecurities sure would be backed up by an experience that you have added to your emotional baggage.
- Next, find out what type of situations, interactions, things, and places do you avoid? Your avoidance mechanism is to stay away from emotional triggers that cause pain. What you avoid is most likely what you are afraid of.
Once you identify your negative emotions, you can then work with the tool of forgiveness to outgrow all such painful experiences that don’t serve you.
Never Again Collect Negative Emotional Baggage
You may not have control over the painful experiences of life but the choice of letting this event determine how you go through life is yours only. Staying stuck in the pain won’t help you live life to its fullest, moving on will.
Let go of your ego’s attachment to the pain. Create freedom for yourself with forgiveness. Hate, blame, resentment, and anger would only hurt. All these negative emotions create disease in our mind, body, and life. Forgiveness creates ease inside of us. It’s healing and not letting our lives be defined by what others did to us. It’s unloading the burden of other’s wrongdoings that is not yours to carry.
Pain in life is inevitable, when you come across hurtful times remember to forgive and not create an emotional burden for yourself ever again in life.
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Simple, authentic, and actionable read to design your life on your terms, (nothing woo-woo).
