How To Stop Being A Prisoner Of Your Past

Choose Your Attitude | Do You Want To Be Bitter or Better?

"Sooner or later, you must give up hope of a better yesterday,
yet never give up hope of a better today or tomorrow."

Marion. S WIkhom

What is an Attitude and where does it come from?

How many times have your heard a mother asking "What's up with your attitude?" or "Where did that attitude come from?" How many times have you caught yourself with a bad attitude towards someone, something, someplace, with no apparent reason? Attitudes don't just occur, they are created. An attitude is:

• how you express your likes and dislikes...
• your point of view about a person, a thing, a situation or event...
• attitude is closely linked to behaviour and comes from your past experiences...
• experiences that you have judged and believe to be right or wrong...

If you judge a person as right, you will probably have good feelings about them and form a positive attitude towards them. If you judge that same person as wrong, and believe they should change, you will probably have negative feelings about them and form a negative attitude towards them. Your thoughts, feelings and beliefs get knotted together and become your attitude.

No matter what the situation, it is human nature to have an opinion (unless you are an enlightened). People with opposite opinions can’t see it from the others point of view, because they are locked in their position.  It’s basically one person’s opinion versus another person’s opinion. It’s a bit like you are standing on one side of a tent and the person with the opposite opinion is standing on the other side of the tent. You can’t see the tent from their point of view because the tent is in the way and your locked standing in the position you are in.

The thing to remember about your opinion (aka judgement) is that your opinion is only your opinion and it may not be right. We all have the right to have an opinion, and we all have the right to draw appropriate conclusions, but what if your conclusions aren’t based on fact or reality? What do you do then?

To go beyond your opinion you have to put your judgement to the test. You need to test not only if your opinion is valid but also what other information is available, such as the behaviours, features, what you will see from another point of view; how you will know that the problem is resolved. To test if your opinion is valid, you will need to put it down, but only for a moment, while you take a look – and then you can pick it up again if that’s what you choose.

Consider walking around to the other side of the tent to see what it looks like from that angle.  You might find it’s quite different than you thought, it may even have a great big gapping hole in it. (Now wouldn’t you prefer to know that BEFORE you make a scene). With ALL the information available you are able to draw a conclusion, and predict outcomes. 

It isn't having an opinion that becomes problematic, it's holding onto it that causes problems!

• When you become bitter, you are not accepting the past for what (or where) it is
• You want to change the past instead of accepting it (which of course you can't)
• You are fighting against reality, and that is a battle you're never going to win.

Someone once told me resentment is like holding a burning coal in your hand. It's the person holding onto the coal that gets burnt. You are holding onto an opinion, a belief or an attitude that is burning you? Is it time to let it go yet?

Thoughts come and go but feelings catch your attention.

Thoughts, they come and go, all day, everyday - most of the time we just let them go, like leaves blowing on the wind, or drifting away downstream on water. Occasionally a thought will generate an emotional response, and catch your attention.

Bitter Attitudes stem from painful experiences in the past that you couldn’t accept at the time and have been unable to let go. Bitter attitudes are based on believing a person / thing / situation is wrong now, based on what they did back then. This becomes an emotionally loaded event in your mind and your mind runs the event over and over again as if were happening now.  Feeding this torment, there is often a sense of debt to be recovered.  Are you holding onto a hot coal?

It is easer to change your thoughts or the way you behave than it is to change your feelings. But it is your emotions that get your attention, your anger, your resentment, your pain.

So what have you tried so far?

You may have tried to change your feelings, and if this was unsuccessful, you may have tried to push these feelings away or tried to get rid of them. You may have engaged in behaviours such as trying to push the uncomfortable feelings down with food or alcohol, or covered them over with smoke, or perhaps avoiding the emotional distress by over working or excessive shopping. And it hasn't worked!

As long as you struggle to internally change reality, you will struggle.

So what Do You Want To Be - Bitter or Better?

While you can't change the events of the past, you can change your attitude towards them and your relationship with them.  But the reality is that you probably won't do so until the pain of holding onto the hot coal becomes so great that you need to drop it and stop hurting yourself.

You may have become so conditioned to being "attitudinal" that you don't know how to be any other way. Your response has been learnt from experience and reinforced by time and repetition. This behavioural response needs to be unlearned and the emotionally loaded event needs to be returned to a state that is non-emotional.

How Can You Change Your Attitude?

If you have tried all the things mentioned earlier with no success and you have found your way to this website, then it is probably time for some professional help.  Counselling and Hypnotherapy can help you.

The process I use will help you clarify and change your attitudes. You will be able to address the pattern, identify what the goal of this attitude is, what expectations and principles or dogmas are involved, and you will be able to feel better instead of bitter.

So What Do You Need To Know In Order To Have An Attitude Change?

• Is this attitude part of a cluster of attitudes or behaviours? What are the other attitudes or behaviours involved? When dealing with the attitude you will need to address how it is clustered.  Its pointless changing one attitude if there are others still feeding it. It would be like pulling a weed out of the garden but only pulling off its head and leaving the roots in the soil - the weed will just grow back. You need to pull out all the roots feeding the weed.

• What is your target in relation to the subject? By this I mean what do you want: do you want an apology; do you want someone to change so that you can be happy; do you want revenge? Let's be clear, you do want something or you wouldn't be struggling to accept what is.

• In terms of your target, are you open minded or closed? Are you locked into one point of view and because of that unable to see the big picture? One of the main influences on attitude is "open mindedness", as it allows learning, whereas closed mindedness, such as racism and cynicism, lock you in and keep you a prisoner of your own mind.

• Are you saying “if only I had” or “if only I hadn’t”. This is called being counter-factual, where you fight against reality and struggle to accept what is.

• Are you being idealistic? Idealistic people often feel disappointed and don’t really know why. This is because they have "ideal expectations" but they're not aware of what their expectation are. By becoming aware of what you are expecting, you can then check if this ideal expectation is realistic. Perhaps you are expecting too much.

• The second part of ideal expectations is that you can lift your game. This is about how you present yourself to the world, the packaging. Why do you think marketing companies spend so much on packaging – it’s so they get the results they want. How are you presenting yourself in relation to this event?

• Finally, is your attitude currently valid? How long ago did this event happen, have times changed, has the person changed (are they even still alive), has technology changed? Perhaps you haven’t even spoken to the person for 10 years but you still have this conversation with them in your head every week. Is it time to let it go!

Changing your attitude doesn't need to be complicated - it can be easy, natural and simple. It can even be fun!

What Next?