Deal With it or Repeat it

This is the sixth in the series, “10 mindshifts you must make so that your next partner is your life partner”. In this series you will learn the 10 critical beliefs or mindsets you need in order to manifest your ideal partner and create the kind of authentic, sweet, loving relationship that lasts a lifetime.

The Sixth Mindshift: Deal with it or repeat it

Have you ever noticed that there seems to be a running theme in all of your past relationships? The same issues keep cropping up – just looked at from different perspectives. Here is an example of what I mean: In my early dating years I kept attracting men who were very attracted by my strong personality, but then wanted to control or dominate me in some way. In one relationship I went the opposite direction, he was looking for a “Mom” – someone to take care of and control him; but it was still the same issues: control, respect, taking ownership of my own power and strength.

The reason the same issues keep cropping up in all of your intimate relationships is because you take YOU with you wherever you go. What I mean by that is in every relationship you enter into you are taking YOU with you: your unresolved issues, your beliefs (whether they are serving you or not), your old hurts and disappointments – all of your old emotional baggage stays with you unless you do some inner work to heal it.

I believe we all come into this life experience to learn certain lessons that are unique to us and our personal growth. And until we ‘get’ the lesson, Life keeps handing us more opportunities to work through it. So we run from relationship to relationship, marriage to marriage, repeating the same fights and arguments – just with a different face. We continue to ‘play out’ our issues in this manner until the light bulb finally comes on and we take ownership of all our emotional baggage and work to heal it.

The only common denominator in all of your (bad) relationships is you. You can continue to blame the other person or men in general, but that just keeps you stuck and repeating the same old patterns. Wouldn’t you rather work through all of your old hurts and clear them out so you can get off of the emotional drama Merry-Go-Round?

A note here: I believe that our personal growth is a life-long process and unless you are a monk living in Tibet, meditating all day long and shut out from the rest of the world; you will never get rid of all of your emotional baggage. The good news is you don’t have to be completely ‘crap-free’ to manifest your next life partner; you just need to get your baggage down to a handy carry-on size.

I know looking at all of our old hurts can make most of you feel uncomfortable. And some of you might feel that by looking at your past hurts you are amplifying them – making them bigger than they need to be. That is not really true. Those old hurts are affecting you even if you are choosing to ignore them. I’ll prove it to you: Have you ever gotten into an argument or been angry with someone where you know you were overreacting a bit? You might have yelled, screamed, cried, thrown things, or maybe you just sat there silently seething in anger. Now maybe you had a reason to get angry – maybe the other person said or did something careless; but you know that the amount of emotion you were displaying for the ‘offense’ was more than the other person deserved. That’s because the other person triggered a memory of an old unresolved hurt and you reacted.

Don’t be afraid to take a look at your past – not in blame or judgment, but as a tool so you can learn from past mistakes and grow from it. Get the lesson – and you won’t have to repeat it!

How to Dump Your Emotional Baggage

There are so many tools people have come up with to clear out old hurts and beliefs that are no longer serving them, but one of my favorite ways is good old-fashioned forgiveness work. Here is a simplified version of a forgiveness process you can try:

Write down the name of everyone who has ever hurt or disappointed you and exactly what they did. Obviously old boyfriends belong on this list; most likely your parents too – but also think of anyone else who might have hurt or angered you: your old boss, that bully from school, your pseudo girlfriend who gossips behind your back – list anyone you can think of.

Next to each name write, “I forgive you for”– and then write exactly what they did. It would look like this:

“I forgive you, Mr. Smith, for not recognizing what a great employee I was and for believing Ms. Carrow – my superior – when she lied and took credit for my work”.

“I forgive you, John, for cheating on me when I was working late all those nights to help put YOU through school.”

Now go back and add the most important person that needs to be on your Forgiveness List – YOU.  I think so often times we neglect to ‘let ourselves off the hook’. Write down everything you can think of that you are still beating yourself up for – last Friday night when you drank too much, overstuffing your face with food when you felt emotional, bored or just lonely, not getting that grand project done you know you need to finish, yelling at your kid when you were overly stressed and they pushed your buttons – list everything!

This list is for your eyes only. You need to create a safe place for yourself so you can really express yourself and workout your feelings – and you do that by not sharing this with anyone.

Continue to work through your list and make a conscious decision to forgive every offense. Affirm out loud for each one:

“I forgive you _______, for (what they did). You are free and I am free”.

Make the decision for yourself that you are no longer going to hold onto these emotions so that they can create havoc for you. You are free and they are free. Declare it. Practice affirming out loud, or even better, writing out 10 sentences a day for the next 30 days. Allow yourself to feel whatever is coming up for you – anger, sadness, rage, disappointment. Allow yourself to work through these emotions as you make your declarations of forgiveness, but continue with this process. Continue to keep declaring that you are free and they are free.

You are not doing this for them – forgiveness does not mean you forget what someone has done to wrong you so they are free to do it again and treat you like the proverbial punching bag.  This also doesn’t mean that you now have to be ‘buddy-buddy’ with them. If someone is not contributing to your happiness and is in fact, a drain on your life force, give yourself permission to let them drift out of your life.

Forgiveness means you take the emotional charge away when you think about that person. That’s how you will know your work is complete: when you think of that person and you can honestly say to yourself that there is no emotional charge there. You are not feeling angry or resentful – you feel neutral.

When you are working on forgiving yourself, I’m going to add one more statement to the declaration: “I love you”. So your forgiveness statements about yourself would look like this:

“I forgive myself for (what you did). I love and accept myself completely and I am free”.

This process takes a bit of time, but I have found it enormously effective. I’ve seen nothing short of miracles happen in my own life as well as witnessed miracles in other people’s lives using this process. It’s definitely worth the time you invest into it.

It’s time for you to finally get love RIGHT!

Kelly Ellzey

If you enjoyed this post you might also enjoy the previous post in this series: “Everyone is Your Mirror“.

I would love to hear from you! I value your and appreciate your input, please post your comment below.

Tagged as: 10 mindshifts, 100% Responsible, clear the way for love, clearing blocked energy, Emotional baggage, Forgiveness, forgiveness exercise, forgiveness process