Thursday 24 September 2009

The Power You Give To A Problem

Belinda was depressed and angry.

Five years ago she caught her then boyfriend in bed with her best friend. This devastated her and she ended the relationship immediately.

Problem was, she was unable to release the memory and the associated pain. She was angry and upset as he had told her how much he had loved her. What he said obviously did not coincide with what he felt.

Belinda was now feeling depressed because she was fearful of being in a relationship and getting hurt. So, while she wanted to be in a relationship, it was not going to happen.

Every day, she remembered opening the door and seeing them making love. Every day, she felt the pain, the anger and the hate. She was angry at him, her best friend and herself for not knowing something like this would happen. She hated her ex boyfriend and her ex best friend for what they had done.

I asked Belinda two questions to get her thinking:

Who controls how you feel?
How many times did you see them making love?
To the first question, she replied "I control how I feel".

To the second, "Once".

This scenario is common with most people in that they constantly allow others to determine how they feel.

If someone upsets you, who is responsible for you feeling upset?

If someone makes you angry, who is responsible for you feeling angry?

They are. You are allowing them to determine how you feel.

Other people do not upset you, frustrate you or make you angry. You do. You either knowingly or unknowingly make the choice to feel that way.

Second, how many times did she them making love?

If you answered "once", you are, like Belinda, incorrect. She saw them every day for the past five years - that is, for around one thousand eight hundred and thirty times. This may be even more if she thought of them doing it more than once a day.

Every time she thought about the act, she caught them at it. It is as if she is physically there.

1,830 are a lot of times to see someone doing the wrong thing by you.

Imagine how deep into Belinda's subconscious this is etched.

Where has something happened to you whee you have continued to reinforce it?

It may have been an argument or a misunderstanding.

It may have been when someone has done the wrong thing by you or physically and/or emotionally hurt you.

Think of the control you have given them from the time it happened to now. Think of how much you have reinforced it by constantly thinking of it.



It's Time To Make a Change

It's time to move forward and let go.

You can do this in a number of ways, two of which I will cover here:

Recognise you are constantly playing the unwanted movie in your head. Now change it to a wanted movie. Every time the old movie wants to be played, change it to a good movie.
A good movie may be of someone you currently love, of a special occasion or of some event that has brought you great happiness.

Through doing this, you are no longer reinforcing the old, you are reinforcing the new wanted state.

There are many ways of changing the old. If you are having problems, please seek professional help.

Become responsible for how you feel. This means taking ownership of the way you feel.
In Belinda's case, she learnt about self worth and self esteem. She was able to identify how dependent she was on her boyfriend for how she felt and she needed him to love her (mind you, he also has some major problems with feeling loved!).

She was able identify some positives to come from that experience - like he has some qualities she does not like.

Through building up her self-esteem, she was able to see she deserved better and began to see this break-up as his loss.

She began to focus on the ideal type of man she would love to be in a relationship with.


When we focus on the problem, we enlarge it. We constantly give it more energy which in turn can make it harder to deal with.

Place your focus on the solution.

What do you need to do have peace of mind?

What are the skills you need to learn?

PS It is much easier to learn the skills to deal with a potential problem before the problem occurs rather than after it has occurred.