Do you carry around a suitcase wherever you go?

What makes us who we are today is based on who we’ve been in the past. The experiences we’ve encountered create pathways of memory and emotional patterns for thoughts that trigger feelings.

We’ve made our past experiences mean something, often inaccurate for today’s circumstances, and stories have more control over our day to day living than one might think. Also, the collection of these stories becomes larger with age, with each one having effects on the way we think, feel and as a result…behave.

Imagine that you’re dragging a large suitcase with you wherever you go. It’s full of past experiences to help you through your daily interactions, decisions and tasks, and as well, ones that hinder you from showing up in your full power and current problem solving.

Take a listen to this short video…

Stuff like conflicts unresolved, or self-deprecating meanings to old stories can get in the way of how you deal with current moment situations. Can you see how inaccurate assumptions about current circumstances could take place? Wouldn’t that be tiresome? Stressful? Limiting? Imagine not even being aware that we’re packing around stuff that limits us?

Our emotional programming and memory pathways are almost formed by the time we’re young teens. Our mature years involve career life and deeper relationships, and it’s likely that our ability to play in an adult sandbox is being driven from early learning. We tap into those early thought patterns and call for reasoning to make adult decisions and behaviours, and this is where we get into troublesome situations. Not only are we using old thinking to solve new problems, but the old thinking is from a time when we weren’t all that mature.

Everyone has a suitcase, and therefore, interpersonal relationships can get complicated because there are times when our stories get entangled with someone else’s stories. Clash!

To clean out old unwanted thought patterns, we need to follow the threads from behaviours to where the thinking is triggering them. Next time you find yourself behaving from an ‘old story’ or thought pattern, try to think back to the earliest times when and why these thoughts were formed.

Give it some reflection time, and you’ll probably start connecting some dots. Forgive yourself, and apologize quickly if you’ve hurt someone else with your behaviour.

And if you need some help, give me a call , because your greatest leadership day is with Penny Tremblay.

p.s.  Click here to find out more about Penny as a conference speaker for mental health, stress and workplace conflict resolution.