Living in the moment

Knowing that I have guided someone to heal his or her past - no matter how troubled or abusive it may have been -then forward to creating a more empowering, successful and fulfilling future, is priceless. So rewarding! I love my job as a counsellor and life coach.

It is a far cry from the 15 years I spent in senior management in the motor industry within the UK and Bahrain. However, I feel if you are meant to do a certain profession, then events will conspire, click together and co-operate to get you there.
 
This was strangely apparent in the last few years of my life in my former career. During business meetings, my clients would open up and spill out their innermost thoughts, feelings and fears.
 
It was at this point that I realised that part of my life was over; it was time to change my profession. Hence
began my acute interest in human thinking, behaviour and personal development. 

Over the next five years, I studied extensively to gain the qualifications that would enable me to open my own business offering counselling, life coaching and cognitive behavioural therapy.
 
My aim is to ensure that GulfWeekly readers will have the tools to create healthier, happier and more powerful lives – Kelly Armatage

ONE WAY to ensure you live in a state of depression or anxiety is to focus your mind either on the past or in the future.
 
Dwelling on past events can cause feelings of guilt, anger and resentment and these tend to be directed at yourself (for perceived mistakes) or at others (for what you perceive were their wrongdoings). 

If a past event has caused you pain, does it make any sense, whatsoever, to continue to relive that time again and again, so not only did you feel the pain at that particular time, but you recreate those feelings each and every time you focus on it?

The past has gone, it’s done, and it’s over, never to return again, never to repeat.
 
If a negative event happened in your life that caused hurt to you, isn’t the only solution to accept it so that you don’t suffer anymore pain? Accept and forgive yourself, or accept and forgive the person(s) who caused you hurt.
 
Say, for example, your childhood was less than ‘perfect’ and those events still cause you hurt, anger and resentment on some deeper level when you think about them today.  

Isn’t your childhood just repeating itself here in the now, here in your adult life? Have you ever really moved on? Aren’t you and won’t you always be (within your mind) living back then, always being the victim?

So many of us, haven’t had the best pasts, but by dwelling on that time, means this moment consists of the past, and that you are actually living in the past and never actually just living right now. 

Your thoughts and feelings are so negative that by dwelling on back then, right now, you are just re-experiencing negativity.

While counselling my clients, I’ve found one of the best ways for them to heal and accept the past is to look at the event from another perspective (and who says your perception of the event is fact and entirely true?). It is just your version of events, your viewpoint at that time. By analyzing another perception, and altering your viewpoint, you can create differing feelings of that time. And, that’s the objective; we wish to create a different feeling other than hurt or anger.
 
If you are angry at yourself for an event in the past, a good way to accept your ‘wrongdoings’ is to say to yourself: “Well, at that time, I did the very best I could (with my feelings and my knowledge). Now I am older and wiser, it is easier for me to judge/be angry at myself (my younger/inexperienced self), but who I was back then, I did what anyone else in my situation would have done.”
 
This is a much more empowered and kinder way to view your own past actions.

If you feel this does not work, then asking for forgiveness from the relevant party you hurt could work. Or, if they are no longer here, pray to them, write a letter to them, carry out an act of some sort, whereby you demonstrate your regret at the past event. 

Then let it go, let the negative emotions go; the guilt, the self blame, it needs to be released 100 per cent, not just 80 per cent. If, on some level, guilt is there, it’s only 20 per cent, but it’s still there niggling at you, holding you back.

For those you have anger towards, people who may have created pain in your past, try analysing that person’s experience and looking at it from their perspective. 

Maybe they were less mature at that time, not aware of what they were doing, maybe they had differing beliefs, a product of their own upbringing. 

Holding anger towards them is futile, useless, self-punishing; you allow them/the experience to still hurt you! By forgiving and accepting them/the past situation ensures you MOVE ON from the past.
 
Forgiving does not mean we say that what they did was correct, it’s using forgiveness as a gift of freedom to yourself – freedom from the deeply negative emotions of anger, pain and resentment.  In its place are the emotions of acceptance and peace.

So two simple rules to not live in the past:
l Forgive and accept yourself and others for all perceived ‘mistakes’.

l Turn feelings of anger/hurt/blame/resentment to feelings of forgiveness/acceptance/love. The easiest way to achieve this is to look at it from another perspective.

Remembering fond memories of the past is fine.

But whilst many focus on the past, others find it easier to focus on the future. What is the future? A piece of time that has not even arrived yet, not begun, does not exist. Yet, so many people are ‘living in their futures’ negatively.

If this sounds like you, or one of your loved ones, don’t miss next week’s issue. Visit my website www.kellyarmatage.com