Are You Recycling Bad Emotional Habits?
List your negative emotional experiences over any time frame – from a month to fifteen years.
Group these experiences into two categories: “Caused by Me” and “Caused by Others.” If a majority of them go one way or the other, go back through and re-think your answers; you’re either being too hard on yourself or not hard enough.
Think about the causes of the events on the “Caused by Me” list. These are the things you can avoid, the things you can control. What triggered each event? Was it something as broad as fear or was it as specific as empty-nest syndrome?
Do you notice anything? Do you see a pattern? For example, are your relationships ending terrbily? Did you lose your past few jobs? Are you having the same kind of fight with lots of different people?
Isolate a cause. If many of your actions have the same basic cause, you’ve successfully identified an area where you can do some serious self-improvement. Congratulations!
Don’t justify your actions! An easy thing to do while making this list is to justify the mistakes you made. Wanting to justify your behavior usually sounds like “Wouldn’t you have said the same thing if you had been in my position?” or “I don’t think you understand, let me tell you the story again, then you’ll see.”
Instead, when you feel the need to justify your actions:
Don’t ask others, ask yourself. You know how to manipulate your kids, parents, or significant other, but it is much more difficult to truly manipulate yourself. You know the truth. This is why it is so important to quickly get in the habit of asking yourself what emotional patterns you might be recycling. Sometimes it does have something to do with you and you need to step-up to yourself when it does. Best of luck.
(photo credit: babymowgli16)
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