We all seem to have some things that we have done or neglected to do; failures that have caused regrets.
It is what we do with those regrets in our minds that either cause us to forgive ourselves and move on, or beat ourselves up and never let ourselves off-the-hook. If we allow those regrets and failures to run rampant in our minds, over and over it can cause hopelessness, depression, anxiety and despair, or worse. Doing so creates a groove in our minds of negativity that we default back to whenever anything similar comes up to remind us of it.
We let the negative thoughts about our failures or regrets play in our heads once again causing negativity and torment. A lot of times we get so used to doing this, that we don’t even realize we are doing it anymore, if we ever did!
The answer is to make a new groove in our minds, so that our default will not take us back to our failures anymore.
(Of course, the first thing that is needed is to ask God to forgive us for partnering with lies, if we have not already done so, but after that there is no more need to continually ask for forgiveness.) To make a new groove in our minds make a list of all the failures and regrets that run through your mind regularly. You can keep adding to it as you remember them. When you catch yourself with a negative thought regarding regrets or failures then just add it to your list. Then for every negative failure thought you have, try and see something good that might have come out of it. Look for the treasure or the gold in it. No matter what we go through we can always find something good that might have happened from it or something we might have learned from it. When you remember the treasure, write that down next to it.
If you can’t remember anything good that came out of your failure or regret, than when you have a negative thought come, take notice of it, write it down or remember it whichever works better for you, and then write next to it or remember something positive that is the opposite, something good you can put in its place.
Make it as simple as possible. Even if you change it to RIGHT NOW I AM OKAY every time you think something negative it is beneficial!
The next time you have this negative thought, instead of repeating it in your head like usual, stop and replace it with the positive one or RIGHT NOW I AM OKAY.
This is called cognitive therapy. Yes, there is a name for it!
By doing this we will create a new groove in our minds and then our default will begin to change. It takes a little bit of work to do this, but it is a lot easier than the torment we continually put ourselves through with our negative thinking and beating ourselves up. The reward is amazing!
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