Relationships: Self-Renovation

Life altering changes in early stages of our lives can stay with us and have impact on our choices and decisions. After all our experiences are what makes us the people that we are today.  We might have empathy for someone suffering abuse, being overweight, quitting an addiction, or overcoming an unhealthy relationship or family because of our own personal associations.  Some of our life experiences were tragic or demeaning to our character and had impact on our view of ourselves.
Removing ourselves from the situation is always the first step, however it is not a permanent solution.  Wherever we go we are sure to take ourselves with us and this means taking our history along with us too.  Any weight or burden we feel does not just go away by removing ourselves from that which affected us.

How does your past set the stage of your future?
Do you have any unresolved business that you need to tend to?  Do you have unresolved issues that you are continuing to avoid because you are afraid of the emotion associated with them?  Taking a moral inventory of yourself is an honest step towards self-awareness.  Think of it this way, we don't heal up a wound on our arm by placing a band-aid on our knee.  We have to know where it hurts at so we can clean ourselves off and begin the healing process.

Knowing who we are helps us understand the relationships we have with ourselves and with others.  The foundation we establish with ourselves sets the stage for the types of relationships we seek out.  So if we don't address issues now, they will only dare to resurface later on.  Chances are they will resurface at a time that we may not feel is appropriate.

How to stop replaying the old tapes?
Once we figure out who we are and where we came from, we have to correct some of the old correlations between unhealthy relationships and healthy ones.  We have to address our own involvements and assess  our roles in our relationships. We also need to look at what responsibilities we own and what responsibilities do not belong to us.   Leaving your past behind you is one thing and taking along guilt that doesn't belong to you is another.  So it's time to put away the boxing gloves and stop beating ourselves up.

We don't have to replay the old scenarios that haunted us.  We don't have to live under old expectations that were never valid to begin with.  We can move on.  We can create a better space for ourselves and become the people we always wanted to be.