 |
Sometimes We Need To Forget!
Author: Garry Zancanaro  | Posted: 10-09-2006 | Comments: 0 | Views: 286 | Rating: (60)  (?) 
Having an outstanding memory is generally considered to be a great gift and a talent we should all work hard to develop. Brain researchers believe that we never actually forget anything, and that everything we encounter in our lives is retained, even if it doesn't register with us consciously. It's not our memories that are less than perfect, but our ability to recall the stored information.
Some people just seem to be able to recall anything on demand. Other people – me included – sometimes seem to forget important things, but seem to be able to recall the most irrelevant facts about TV shows, films, songs, bands, books and other trivia, often dating from childhood, at will.
Unless you are one of those lucky people who never seem to forget anything, you would probably like to improve your recall. One of the most simple and effective things you can do is to never say my memory is terrible or I can't remember or It's gone because that's just like telling your subconscious mind not to bother looking for the answer. Instead, try saying, it will come to me in a minute, and if you believe it will and confidently expect it to, it almost certainly will, often when you least expect in and are otherwise occupied. This has probably happened to you before, and with practice, you'll be amazed at how effective this simple technique can be.
However, this week I'm not actually talking about how to improve your memory, in fact almost the opposite.
There are times that it's much better to be able to quickly forget.
Do you realise, how good we are at quickly forgetting (or removing thoughts and feelings from our conscious minds) can have a direct impact on our ability to perform at our best? It can also affect our mental and physical health.
I'm not talking about being able to forget things we read, see, learn, or important facts encounter during our business or personal lives. I'm talking about how easily we can recover and forget the negative affects we all inevitably suffer from setbacks, letdowns and disappointments.
Some people can carry negative feelings towards another person because of some incident or other, for incredible lengths of time. Trivial incidents can build to unbelievable proportions. Mountains can certainly be made out of molehills. Close friends and members of the same family can become enemies. There are people who spend so much time thinking about how much they dislike someone that it becomes a major part of their life. They often even forget the original incident but the feelings remain.
The other person may not even be aware of the extreme feeling directed towards them. The sad fact is, in these cases, it's the person carrying the negative feelings that suffers. They can even make themselves sick in any number of ways, and they'll probably hold the other person responsible.
I like to think, or at least hope, that these scenarios are the exception rather than the rule. But it's worth thinking about how quickly we recover from things, and to try to increase these abilities
Are you still upset about a minor incident or disagreement with your partner, a friend or a work colleague, hours, or even days, after the event? Do you replay the incident over and over in your head and can't forget about it?
Many people are even harsher on themselves. It's possible to spend so much time mentally beating ourselves up over something, that it totally prevents us from moving forward.
Obviously it depends on how serious the incident is, or how serious we consider it to be. Sometimes we just have to try to be more tolerant and less demanding. But there's no doubt that replaying and rehashing negative events and feelings is destructive and pointless and will do us no good at all.
Think about it, if you went to a movie and didn't enjoy it at all, would you keep going back to see it over and over? Yet this is exactly what we can all too easily do in our minds.
Sometimes we may not be able to totally forget, but at the very least we do need to be able to forgive and move on, whether it's someone else or ourselves. I know this can be easier said than done and that pride and all sorts of other emotions can be involved. Sometimes a frank conversation or complete break may be the only solution.
There are no set rules, except that taking some action is infinitely preferable to just letting things fester and doing nothing! Otherwise we can waste vast amounts of time and energy, or set ourselves up for future regrets.
Life's too short may be a tired old cliche, but it's true. Don't we all deserve to have the best life we can? The quicker we are able to overcome all kinds of setbacks the sooner we will return to our levels of peak performance and make some real, forward progress in our lives. And we'll certainly be much happier.
'One thing you will probably remember well is anytime you forgive and forget.' – Franklin P. Jones
Rate this Article:
Current: 0 / 5 stars - 0 vote(s).
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/self-help-articles/sometimes-we-need-to-forget-54481.html
|
Submitting articles has become one of the most popular means of generating quality backlinks and targeted traffic to your website. Join us today - It's Free! |
|
Got a Question? Ask.
Ask the community a question about this article:
Frequently Asked Questions
Need a help
By: Bharath | 24-08-2008
hii my sister of age 26 years, loved a guy 3 years back, my parents were not supportive to this, later because of this she lost her academics for 1 year after that sith struggle she managed co pass out, she is still loving him but he is not..now she lost her job.my sister doesnot respect my parents daily there will be quarell between my mom and my sister. my mom will be crying always. now i dono what to do please help me to correct the situation in my family.
Who wrote A Painful Regret
By: bethh1305 | 23-08-2008
Who wrote A Painful Regret
My Wacko Life
By: crystalclear | 23-08-2008
Oh my gosh, where do I start? I need help in the worst sort of way. I am 48 years old. Life started out fine, up until I was 5 years old. Then my brother was born. He nearly died at birth and it was months before he could come home. He is mildly mentally retarded. From the time my brother was born, me and my sister ceased to exist. Everything revolved around my brother. When I was seven, I was sexually molested by a neighbor. It was never talked about. I never had any counseling afterwards, it was 1967 after all. Then a couple years after that, my dad started beating me and my sister. And it was over the stupidest things, like once I forgot to put bannanas in his cereal and he knocked me to the ground and kicked me in the stomach and back until I think I went unconscious. He would whip me and my sister so bad with a belt, that we'd lock ourselves in the bathroom, putting cold cloths on our welts and plot how to kill him. But my brother was never touched, because my Mother protected him like a she-bear. She would set me and my sister up for beatings too. She'd wait till Daddy came home and tattle every single thing we'd done wrong during the day and he'd beat the crap out of us. Then he started cheating on her and she found out and one day, she just packed us all up and took off to Texas.....as a punishment to my dad. It wasn't a year after that, that she threw me out of the house, at age 15. I met my first husband, who carried on the beating tradition, but he was wealthy and I had everything I wanted materially. I never had to worry about money. I stuck it out for 28 years...26 year of marriage, 2 years of living together.....only to have him get a much younger woman pregnant and divorce me to marry her. I was fortunate because right at that time, my grandparents died and I inherited part of a family farm. So I moved back to the town I was born in. At first, it was like paradise. The farm was split between my Aunt...she got 50%, my sister got 16 1/3 percent, my brother got 16 1/3 percent and I got 16 1/3 percent thereabouts. I should go back to my Mother at this point. She never forgave my dad for cheating on her and harrangued him and his parents until the day he died for money. They were wealthy, her family was poor. She felt that they should fully support my brother, even though dad was on his third wife. My dad's parents bought everything for my brother, land, a nice home, a garage, a barn, a vehicle. When they died they left us all money and the farm. It was not enough though. It is never enough when it comes to my brother. They stipulated that the farm should never be sold, that we would start a corporation together and the land and everything is all under all our names in deed and title. My Mother was mentally unstable. She was always threatening suicide. One time I had to call her Mother over to help me because she was sticking her head in the oven, trying to commit suicide. I was 14 then. Once my dad came to visit and they got into a fist fight and she was screaming for me to call the police and I had to have the police come and drag my dad away, crying. I lived through horrors that nobody should ever have to live through. I became an alcoholic and drug addict, until at 28 I overdosed and nearly died, I had a mild stroke. That was enough and I've been clean and sober ever since. Flash forward to today. My Mother has gotten even worse. She's now 74 years old and has craziness going on that makes her younger days seem sane. It started when land prices skyrocketed down here. She decided she was going to make us all sellout, so she could have my brother's share of the farm to take care of him. We're talking probably $750,000 a piece but taxes would come out of that. I don't want to sell, my Aunt doesn't want to sell..my sister is wishy-washy sometimes she wants to hang onto the farm, sometimes she wants to sell, my brother doesn't want to sell. Mother had my brother declared legally incompetent, just to take his inheritence away from him. When I refused to go along with her plot....that's where it all got crazy. She's tried to hire a lawyer to sue me, she sends me hate mail, she sends me hate e-mail, she leaves nasty messages on my phone. She's sent letters to all my neighbors, to my church, telling people what a sorry, crappy daughter I am. My Grandmother (her mother) and I have always written to each other. My grandma is 97 years old and still spry. My Mother threw a fit with my grandmother and told her she couldn't write me anymore because I was sending subliminal messages to my Mother in my letters (I didn't even know Mother was reading my letters to my grandmother, she doesn't live with her). My Mother has harranged and harrassed me for over 3 years now. I haven't spoken to her or replied to any of what she is doing to me other than one letter, telling her to get psychiatric help as soon as possible. That made it even worse, as I've heard she carries that letter around like a cross, telling everybody what a crappy daughter I am. My attitude is that my happiness is just as valuable as my brother's well-being and I shouldn't have to sell my shares of the farm if I don't want to. I don't know what to do about my Mother. Why won't she leave me alone? I'm not bothering anybody. Next problem, I married again. My husband and I don't fight or argue. All the same, we've got a bizarre relationship. All of our money is separate. I don't even know how much he's got in the bank, but at one point I saw a savings statement for over $100,000. I work, 10 hour days. I'm poor as a church mouse. Sometimes, I don't have money for food. He buys his groceries, I buy mine. We split the bills. We split the taxes. We split the insurance. Everything 50/50. Except he makes 3 times what I make. If I run out of money before payday, well, that's just too bad. I get a lecture on how I need to manage my money better. I constantly get reminded of how I "never have any money" when it comes to something we want to do together and I say "I don't have the money". And since I married him nearly 5 years ago, I've gone through the change of life and it was bad. I still have not gotten my weight under control, no matter what I have tried. I've been to doctors, I've been to dieticians, I've followed STRICT diets to the letter and I'm still 50 pounds overweight. My hair fell out until I was bald in patches. My skin is so dry and itchy that it just peels. It's miserable. I could not sleep more than 20 or 30 minutes at a time for waking up sweating. I have managed to correct that by going to a sleep specialist. But I have to sleep with the air conditioning going full blast and the ceiling fan and a box fan blowing on me at night, it's like an icebox in our room. My husband has been merciless about my menopause weight gain. He's made no bones about the fact that he finds me repulsive now. I am lucky if I can get a hug out of him. He won't touch me, not to rub my back, no sex, no kissing, no nothing. It's like I've got leprosy. As you can imagine, my self esteem is shot. I was always thin. I'm 5'11. I was never waif like but a healthy and weight for me was about 150. Now I weigh 208. I was a beautiful woman. My husband's comment is that I "Hit the brick wall". That's his saying for a pretty woman that got fat and ugly. Sometimes I fire back with ugly insults to him but that doesn't make me feel better. Mostly, I just retreat, leave the room. I don't like to fight. I never have. Mostly, now, he just ignores me. I've become nothing. And it's not like I can put him out of the house and kick him out, though I OWN this house. I can't afford to be without him because at least he pays half the bills. But that's the problem. We are like roommates. Really, that's all we are. And I feel like I'm so ugly now, that I'd never find another husband. I have no friends. In fact, I've NEVER had a single friend in my entire life. Even my Koo-Koo mother has friends, lifelong friends that she goes and does stuff with. I have trouble trusting anyone. I don't trust their motives, I don't trust them not to be talking about me behind my back, I don't trust them not to be stealing my spouse, I don't trust anyone period. I had one wonderful love affair one time. The love of my life. One day, out of the blue, he said "I don't love you anymore...in fact, I don't even think I know what love is." and just like that, it was over. I thought I was going to die. That was one I didn't see coming. I still don't understand what happened. I'll never know. I'm sure by now, you think I am a pretty pathetic person. It's not like I haven't done my "time on the couch". I've had years of therapy. It's like it never gets better. I'll think that finally, I'm going to get to be happy. Then something else happens. There is so much drama in my life, it could easily become a Lifetime Movie. People have even told me that I should write a book. Especially about my Mama Drama. I tell them I couldn't write a movie about her...she'd SUE ME. I mean seriously, how many people have Mother's that try to sue them. And she still hasn't given that up. She just hasn't found an attorney that will sue me to MAKE me sell my land. I expect anytime for her to put on a Pamper and drive the thousand miles down here to try to assault me or kidnap me and hold me hostage till I sell. It wouldn't surprise me at all. She's that nuts. So does anybody have anything to say that might at least make me feel better. My nerves are shot...menopause doesn't help in these situations. I think I've done really well not to hit the bottle again. Believe me, there are times that I've thought about going down and buying some booze and just getting stinking drunk. But I realize that that won't solve the problems. Thank you.
What were the changes in the every day life of ...
By: shapes2400 | 23-08-2008
What were the changes in the every day life of Americans when self-governing was started?
Help! what should i do!!
By: pinkylove | 23-08-2008
My bf is exchanging mails and pictures with girls he meet online,they are all overseas but they all have the same kind of work(including my bf) so theres a chance they can meet someday and i think this girls are desperate coz most of them are divorced and have kids and older than my bf.When i told my bf i know what he was doing we got into a big argument and almost broke up but he said he will change and he will never do it again blah blah....the thing is hes been doing it over and over again and the mails are getting intimate and the pictures naked but he told me that they are nothing and they dont mean anything to him just internet thing but its been going on for almost 2 years now and im really getting tired,i told him im really leaving him but once again hes begging me to stay,he said im the only one he wants and that if i want hes going to a counseling to help him deal with this coz i told him hes sick.what if he really do counseling should i give him a chance again? or should i really just leave and not waste my time anymore?Weve been together and living in for 2 years now and weve been dependent on eachother,its hard to let go thats why so many times i tried but ended staying.Do you think hes just saying those things to me(im the only one he wants,he will go to counselling,begging me to stay) just so ill stay? Please help im really really confused.....
Can anyone help me find psyciartric care?
By: Karen | 23-08-2008
How can I find information on finding free psyciatric care? I have a friend I believe is severley depressed and he needs attention. Can anyone out there help me?
Q&A Powered by: 
More from Garry Zancanaro
Are You Feeling Lucky?
By: Garry Zancanaro | 18/10/2006 | Self Help
With positive expectation, optimism and belief you can be as lucky as anyone. What would you like to experience in your life? It really is all about attitude and belief and it's really your choice.
You've Got To Laugh!
By: Garry Zancanaro | 18/10/2006 | Motivational
Taking life and ourselves less seriously will go a long way towards developing our sense of humour, and there's no doubt that a good sense of humour will make our lives richer and more enjoyable.
You Can Stop Worrying!
By: Garry Zancanaro | 13/10/2006 | Advice
We all have our worries, but they are rarely as serious as we think. How many things you were worried about a year ago, even if they did happen, mean anything to you or anyone else today?
You Must Take Action!
By: Garry Zancanaro | 13/10/2006 | Self Help
Eventually, we all have to take the plunge and act! Good intentions and the best laid plans mean nothing -without taking action none of us will every achieve anything!
Why Attitude Is Critical
By: Garry Zancanaro | 03/10/2006 | Advice
If your attitude is not working for you, it's probably working against. No one else can control your attitude; it's all down to you. Change your attitude and it will change your life
Who's Controlling Your Life?
By: Garry Zancanaro | 01/10/2006 | Self Help
If you work on your thinking and self confidence so you totally believe you can do anything you commit to, and always focus your mind on what you want, you really can achieve anything.
The Importance Of Play
By: Garry Zancanaro | 29/09/2006 | Advice
As we grow into adults we leave behind many things that were important to us as children, but we can still be curious, playful, and optimistic and let ourselves get excited and experience joy.
How to Rediscover Our Amazing Powers Of Imagination
By: Garry Zancanaro | 27/09/2006 | Advice
If we take time to think and dream, try to think in different ways, and ensure we think positively, we will not only increase our creative powers, but also our ability to deal with day to day life.
|
|
Self Improvement 
