Dump Your Emotional Baggage

We all have emotional baggage of some sort or another. The things that happen to us in our pasts determine who will become in our futures. However, there are times when those past experiences haunt us and pull us down. Emotional baggage can prevent you from being able to move on with your life and find happiness and success in relationships, business and family. You need to learn to dump this excess weight and move on with a healthy and happy future.

What is Emotional Baggage?

Emotional baggage happens when we go through life experiences. For example, if we were hurt by someone close to us in the past (a lover, a parent, a close friend) we may carry that pain on with us throughout our lives. These experiences shape who and what we become in the future. This affects our future relationships because we have pre-conceived notions of what will happen:

“She’ll just cheat on me like my last girlfriend.”

“Women can’t be trusted.”

“If I reveal my feelings and emotions, I will be made fun of.”

“Everyone who loves me leaves me.”Being locked into these ideas and expectations set us up for failure in future endeavours. However, you do not have to suffer with your emotional baggage.

Take Responsibility

Are you still blaming your ex-partner totally for the failure of your relationship? Are you prepared to concede that, maybe, you too were partly responsible? Although you may feel so hurt that you want to pin all the blame on them, if you really want to find true love, you have to own-up to your share of the responsibility.

Were you too needy, too demanding or too willing to please? Were you too insensitive, too quick to rush to judgement or to act unreasonably?

No-one forced you into your last relationship, so why did you choose to enter a relationship with your ex? Did you deliberately ignore the warning signals? Were you so desperate for something which you thought your partner and a relationship would give you? You made the choice, so why did you get it so wrong?

Whatever happened, you were responsible for choosing it. This is not to blame you for what happened, but to get you to appreciate that you created it and to stop you wallowing in self-pity and victim hood  You created the doomed relationship and with some increased wisdom, next time, you can create a successful relationship.

Apologizing. Maybe you feel guilty about something you’ve done in your past. Again, you may not want to or can’t meet with that person. Write an apology, Be specific. You can decide if you want to mail it, or you can burn it or save it. Whatever you do with the letter remember you need to let go of the guilty feelings. You can’t change your past or the things that you’ve done to others, but you can take the steps you need to accept responsibility for the things you’ve done.