I love sleep. I mean, I REALLY love sleep and now that I’m in my middle age, oh how it can elude me! Can anyone identify?
I dance a little “happy dance” when I have a night where I sleep all the way through.
Most often I can wake up and go right back to sleep but the nights where my mind turns on and all of the sudden I remember something that went wrong from the day before – those are the worst!
How many of you have had the 3 am curtain call where you wake up, your mind turns on (Oh no!) and the game is on? You are replaying everything that went wrong in your day? Maybe some sort of faux pas (real or imagined) or perhaps a major blunder and you are coming up on a panic attack, quickly!
You just can’t believe that you said that…
You did that…
That happened!!
You are focused on every single thing that went wrong. You are stewing on and dwelling on your defeats.
Dwelling on defeats is a HUGE confidence killer and it’s something that you need to have resources to deal with, because it will just replay again and again, making you feel much, much worse. Keeping your focus on what went wrong keeps you stuck just where you are, unless you do something about it.
“What should I do?” you ask?
You need to shift your FOCUS and here are 7 tips to help help make it right – day or night!
1. A little self-compassion is in order. If you made a mistake, a blunder, or an error, remember that it wasn’t done intentionally. You didn’t set out to do this, it was merely a mistake, and in the case of any mistake you have a chance to make a different decision the next time.
2. What would you do differently the next time? If you can answer this question, then you have learned your lesson from the mistake and you are now operating with new and improved information!
3. Who or what is on the other side? It takes two to tango, my Mother always said. If you made an error and are feeling really bad about it, how do you know what the other person feeling? Do you know if they are upset about it? Often, you’re beating yourself up and the other person has already dismissed it, moved on or didn’t even consider it an issue to begin with. This is where a Qtip comes in. QTIP = Quit Taking It Personally!
4. The other person/side has an issue with it. Maybe the choice you made had a “doosie” of a consequence. If they have a problem with it, it’s just that – their problem. You don’t know the reason this is an issue for them. You don’t know their experiences that contributed to them feeling this way. You don’t know what’s going on inside their head. They have to work through it and all you can do is take responsibility, make appropriate amends and know the rest is up to them. It’s not your job to make them OK, OK?
5. You have to release what is “weighing” you down. Negative emotions are useful to a point. When you have an emotional “charge” around a situation it can motivate you to make a different type of decision that you normally wouldn’t make. It can get you moving. Holding onto negative emotions for the long term, however, is a recipe for stress and eventually dis-ease in your body. You could journal or talk it out to help release the negative charge. My favorite strategy is to do a negative emotion release meditation, which is easy and can be done anywhere and anytime!
6. Forgiveness. Withholding forgiveness is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to suffer. Forgiveness is also for BOTH parties. The process of forgiveness benefits you the most because it allows you to move forward from the place of being stuck and frustrated and into a space where you can utilize what you have learned from your decision. You need to forgive yourself and forgive the other party to be able to move forward. This is something that needs to be done for as long as there is an emotional charge around the situation. I use Ho’oponopono and have created a guided meditation for my students to be able to do this anytime, anywhere!
7. Gratitude. What is going right? Maybe it’s the “lesson” in all of this that you are grateful for. Maybe it’s the fact that you now have a chance to make a different decision the next time. Maybe it’s that the weather cooperated today or that your boss was on vacation. Whatever you can focus on that is going right will help to retrain your brain to focus on the positive instead of the negative. A daily gratitude journal is very helpful for this. Take 5 minutes each day to write something you are grateful for and a couple of sentences why. When you put the pen to paper the Universe takes notice!
I hope you enjoyed these tips. Send me a reply and let me know which one you’ll incorporate.
Until next time, here’s wishing you the clarity you deserve! Be well,
Deb
