I’ve noticed lately in a lot of my conversations with clients that the topic of loss and regretting the past has come up. I will admit at times I’ve had a better life than most, and at times I’ve had a worse life than most. Unfortunately that was all pretty much my doing due to poor choices I made.
Point is, throughout the course of my life the universe, or God or whatever you want to call it, has decided to share a lot of really awesome things with me – some really cool people, some amazingly neat things, a lot of great experiences. I read somewhere a while back that the thing to remember is we don’t actually own any of these things.
We came into this world with nothing, and we are going to leave this world with nothing, and in between those two times the universe is going to share a lot of amazing things with us. However, it’s important to remember the universe is just sharing them. They are not ours to keep.
At some point the universe is going to take them away. When that happens we have a choice, we can choose to either focus on regretting that we no longer have them, or we can choose to be grateful the universe thought we were special enough to share them with in the first place.
After my relapse, and head injury, my husband and I divorced and my step daughters severed their relationship with me. I had never been able to have children of my own and I saw my relationship with them as my opportunity to somewhat have that experience. I knew I would never be there mom, but it let me have a glimpse of what being a mother is like, so that was a really hard loss for me.
For a long time after that I was unwilling to get over it, and used my guilt as an excuse to keep using drugs. Then one day I remembered what I had read before, what I just shared with you, and I thought “You know that’s right. The universe didn’t have to share those 8 years with me, the universe could have shared it with somebody else and I never would have gotten to experience all the joyful moments I had during that time period.”
I decided that day to focus on being grateful rather than regretting what I lost and it was a game changer. Loss is hard to accept, and it’s not that it doesn’t hurt ever anymore, but it’s tolerable now. These days when I start to think about it and get sad I tell myself to instead focus on being grateful.
Your brain is trainable, but it takes practice. It’s not easy, but it is simple. So if there’s something you struggle with that you wish you still had, try to keep that in mind and see if it doesn’t make your life a more peaceful place. Focusing on gratitude instead of focusing on what is wrong or sad or not how you want iit to be can always make a situation better.
Sometimes you can’t fix the situation, but you can change your point of view. That’s all I’ve got for today so until next time peace out.
