How do we learn to remember joy as easily as we remember pain?

How often does someone’s pain bring to mind the pain from your past?

It appears to be human nature to commiserate with others more than we share joy with others.

Misery loves company… but what about Joy?

Doesn’t Joy love company too?

We attract more of what we place our focus on. That’s scary, isn’t it? Why is it that our “human nature” seems to have us more easily remember and talk about our past and present pain, instead of our past and present joy?

I certainly don’t want to be hurt or heart broken again, I’ve done it three times now, two of which were marriages that ended in divorce. Is it possible that reliving and sharing my heart-break memories actually took me to the same place again?

Deja vous!

The men were different, the time and circumstance was different, but the experience was painfully familiar.

Gregg Braden says that it is the power of emotion that brings a thought to life.

A thought that’s imbued with the power of emotion produces the feeling that brings it to life. When this happens, we create an affirmation as well as a prayer, as if the outcome has already happened. Through gratitude for what has already occurred, we create the changes in life that mirror our feeling. – Gregg Braden ‘The Spontaneous Healing of Belief’

That is certainly true when we relive past hurts. There are times when, for no apparent reason at all, a fragrance or a thought leads me back to my parents, who have passed. It is in those times that I have to struggle to NOT go back to the moment of death, for that is when the tears start to flow and the heartache becomes as fresh as if it were happening all over again.

All I want to remember now are the good times, the pleasantries and the fellowship we had together, before their illnesses began to drain the life energy out of them.

If we can remember the pain so easily, how do we retrain or reprogram our minds to remember the proud and joyful moments of our lives? Isn’t that what we really want to recreate and attract?

Next time I hear a friend start to talk about an “old” heartache, I think I will immediately shift their focus (and mine), and start to remind them of a wonderful time in their life, one that hopefully I was a part of.

• I will remember how it felt to make an A+ on a test.
• I will remember how it felt to get a raise.
• I will remember how it felt to find out the one I loved, loved me.
• I will remember how it felt to hold my children for the first time.
• I will remember how it felt the day I moved into my first house.
• I will remember how it felt the day I bought my first car.
• I will remember how proud I have been, more often than I remember how many mistakes I have made.

These are the emotions that will attract similar experiences into our lives.

I pledge to remember and dwell on JOY!

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. – Philippians 4:8 (Bible)

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Tags: Books, Divorce, Health, Human nature, Mental health

This entry was posted on Friday, October 16th, 2009 at 12:17 PM and is filed under Life, Self-Help, Struggles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.