Out with the Old, In with the New

It's a new year, and we are always looking for resolutions to start our year; ways in which we can commit to self-improvement in the year to come. It has struck me through various interactions in this very early year, that the best thing to do in a new year is often to let go of stuff from the last one and the ones before.

As humans, we have long memories. Our memories vary in their accuracy, but to us, memory is a big part of who and what we are. Each of us is largely the product of the many experiences that we have had and the many people we have known.

The problem with being formed of memories is that it is easy to get stuck in regrets. What if I had not done this or that? What if he or she had not died, left, said that? What if........  And, of course, there is no answer.

When we have erred, hurt someone, suffered a loss, or missed an opportunity, there is an opportunity for growth and learning, but there is rarely a do-over.
It turns out that such difficulties are motivators to change, and are overall a good thing. If nothing ever goes wrong, we are never driven to grow.


Psychologists distinguish eustress from distress. Both are meant to stimulate action. Eustress like the birth of a baby certainly triggers many behavioral changes in new parents, but is nonetheless stressful! Distress also triggers activity, from eating when you are hungry to apologizing to a co-worker you have hurt. What we commonly call stress is really when we are overwhelmingly distressed; when life and work get out of balance, when too much goes wrong, or when something goes wrong that feels like more than you can cope with.

This is a good time to talk to someone, whether in your social network, or professionally, to gain some perspective on what you can do to reduce your perceived distress.  When you remain overwhelmed, it can lead to depression, anxiety, or even physical illnesses caused by too many stress chemicals in the body, so it is important to keep your daily stress under control, but that is a topic for another day.

The problem we are focusing on here arises when you cannot fix an old wrong or get over an old hurt, and it reaches out from the past to haunt your thoughts. People whom you loved dearly have died, and you miss them. Friends have inadvertently been offended by something you said that you did not get a chance to right or vice versa, someone has done something to hurt you. Things from your past seem to creep into your attention and distract you from the present and upset you. It is difficult to ignore these persistent thoughts. They seem important. They seem to carry lessons. You have to fight to put them out of your mind and focus on work or get to sleep.

It turns out that trying to ignore persistent, bothersome thoughts from the past is not a good tactic, despite well-meaning people telling you it will get better with time. Often, that is true. But what do you do when it does not? Sometimes your thoughts seem to get bigger and harder to live with each time they resurface. A more successful approach is to confront these thoughts head on--to figure out the fallacy and deal with them when they surface.

If you miss a dead loved one, focus on positive remembrances. Death is, for better or worse, something inevitable in life. Some deaths seem more unfair and untimely than others, but healing is always possible. There are strategies that work to ease your pain. They are positive strategies--facing the thoughts that plague you, and dealing with their meanings. We all have regrets when a loved one dies, but regrets do not move us forward, and that particular issue cannot be repaired. It can, however, be reframed. Was that particular regret the focus of the relationship, or did it have good points? Death leaves us with sadness, but life is full of joy as well, and the time you shared with a loved one is irreplaceable--what does it take to focus on the positive thoughts about him or her? Is there a benefit to focusing on regret or loss? Which tactic has the best outcome? Perhaps even speculate as to which memories your friend or relation would prefer you to maintain.

Let's say you did something wrong--broke a friend's favorite vase; you apologized, but it is irreplaceable. The friend knows you did not break it deliberately. However, you find yourself agonizing  day after day, night after night, about what a bad thing this was. Will this agony replace your friend's item? Will it prevent clumsiness in future? Will it make you a better person? The answer to each of these, is, of course, no. And the value in this is that if we are to learn from our mistakes, then it is important to know where the lesson lies. It does not lie in self-abuse and regret, but in self-improvement and constructive thinking. Obviously, the breaking of a piece of pottery is not a life and death mistake, but it is used here as a symbol for things that we might do in life that we feel are irreversibly harmful to someone. The important thing is remembering that nothing positive is achieved by tormenting yourself forever.

It is very human to get stuck in recurring unpleasant thoughts about past problems and losses. Our thoughts run our lives; they tell us what to do and how to do it. It turns out, however,  that our thoughts are often repetitive and  uninformative. By refusing to follow such destructive thoughts yet again to their inevitable, painful conclusions, you take control of your mind and of your feelings. It is weird to dismiss a thought in your own mind as harmful, but it is also liberating. What if the four-hundredth time you fret about that broken vase is still not going to restore it or make you a better person? Then it is high time you let yourself off the hook and move on.

You, I, and all of us, are fallible humans. We make mistakes. We suffer losses. We handle things poorly. Sometimes. But these issues do not define you. How you choose to deal with pain and regret is what defines you--what choice you make when you have a choice. It is not a deliberate choice to hurt a friend nor fall down a flight of stairs, but what happens next is. How you think about bad incidents and how you act on those thoughts affects your mood, your self-image, and thus your quality of life.

It often goes against your intuition to deliberately control your thoughts. It is natural to run with the thoughts as they pop into your head. But it can lead to rethinking the same destructive thoughts, getting stuck in unhappy thought patterns, and generally being less happy than if you take that odd-seeming step to say no to depressing, negative, self-effacing thoughts and choose to ponder uplifting and positive things instead.  This does not mean go off into the distance in a fantasy where nothing ever goes wrong. To the contrary, what it means is avoiding being unrealistically  negative in favor of being realistically positive.

Try it. You'll like it.

Ellis, A. & Doyle, K. (2016). How to Stubbornly Refuse to Make Yourself Miserable About Anything--Yes, Anything! Citadel.

Spencer, R.L. (2005). The Craft of the Warrior. Frog Books.