This image doesn’t exactly represent the 25% rule, and yet that turtle in the vastness of the sea kind of does.
It acts as a reminder that if you want to trawl through your past you have a long way to travel, no signposts, and it will all get lost in the enormity of your life.
You don’t remember your past – honest!
It’s scientific fact that we only remember 25% of our past accurately, the other 75% is logical deduction, based on our feelings about it, that we use to make links between the facts. That’s why the stories we tell change slightly each time.
People think we’re embroidering, trying to make ourselves more interesting, things more dramatic, but each time we talk about the past we have to fill in those gaps. As we change the fillers change to.
The thing that really gets me though…
Is that every time you revisit the past you trawl through your memories and recreate that past. Which is great if it was a happy time, but if not:
So the BIG point here is – if you don’t remember the past accurately, it’s far better to revisit the good times and enjoy creating beautiful links in those gaps. BUT…
Avoid avoid avoid
Think very carefully about recreating hurtful moments, moments of failure, arguments, when you didn’t get that job, when the love of your life (who probably wasn’t) left you.
This is actually a good example. How many people have you known who’ve stayed in heartbreak for a very long time, recreating a relationship in the full beam of rose coloured glasses, and been unable to date because they’ve lost their trust in themselves, or others. What if they didn’t think back filling in the gaps with a gorgeousness that may not have been there?
How many times have you listened to friends do this and thought “but you were always arguing”. How many times have you looked back and later realised that it wasn’t quite like your spin on the memories?
So people who deserve happiness
If you must think back, choose good times, good moments, happy memories, joyful experiences. Thinking of lost loved ones, friends, and pets, is always a more pleasant experience if you go back to when they were at their prime isn’t it? Those last days really aren’t what they were all about are they?
Choose happiness
Choose now
Because you’re creating your future with every thought
And looking back at the difficult times is how you manage to keep making the same mistakes. what you think about you bring about. Think forward into the new, unexplored, and potentially magnificent.
To your happiness
Deb xx
Deb Hawken 