Moving beyond negative reflection

Learning from your mistakes is an important way to grow as a person.

But being stuck in a loop of repeatedly reminding yourself of all your errors in life can be tiring and depressing.

I am the type of person who will constantly sit and relive past life events. Especially where those events had a significant impact on my life. And sadly, as with many people, many of these events were negative events that forced me to learn harsh a lesson in life.

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You’ll see this trait in my previous posts where I reflect on significant life events and how I plan to recover from these events where they had a severe impact on the quality of my life.

The well known Steemit user @whatsup visited one of my posts recently and reminded me of my tendency to focus on the difficult events of my past by stating:

May I suggest you don't relive your mistakes. What you focus on grows. Instead define what typ3 of a leader you would like to be and write about that. :)

The post that @whatsup commented on was one where I was expressing fear about repeating past mistakes as I move into my new leadership role with my employer. And this is good advice, which can be taken further. Rather than just focusing on what type of leader I want to be, I should be focusing on what type of life I want to create for my wife and I. Rather than dwelling on my various mistakes and misfortunes I should be focusing on what goals I want to achieve and the type of life that my wife and I want to lead.

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Making the effort to make a positive mental shift

I’m not particularly fond of the various movements out there that are designed to encourage people to change their patterns of thought or meditating to create positive energy and all that crap.

But I think in this case, making an effort to think in a more positive manner is important. People do respond more positively to a person who carries a positive attitude. And this will be important as I move into a leadership role.

Of course, changing hard wired behaviour can be incredibly difficult. So there’s every chance that this experiment will fail. But I think it’s important to take note when my mind shifts to reflecting on past events and to try to redirect my thoughts towards something more positive. And when a conversation with a friend or family member drifts towards these topics, I’ll attempt to redirect the conversation towards a different topic.

Rather than practice some silly positive affirmation thing, I think that I’ll simply remind myself to stop reminiscing on negative past experiences when the memories come up. And strive to focus on goals that I am working towards.

This should be enough to hopefully help lead a more positive existence.

And look! It’s only 1 hour until New Year’s Day! I guess I’m making an early resolution.

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Happy New Year, Steemit!