Have You Lost the Dead Part Yet?

I am discovering that many people want, above all else, to live life fully. Or at least to get more out of life. But sometimes the past gets in the way. Unhealed hurts and unnecessary guilt too often suck the life out of people.

Here is a great visual. A schoolteacher tells about when he entered his room a few minutes early and noticed a mealworm laboriously crawling along the floor. It had somehow been injured. The back part of the worm was dead and dried up, but still attached to the front, living part by just a thin thread.

As the teacher studied the strange sight of a poor worm pulling its dead half across the floor, a little girl ran in and noticed it there. Picking it up, she said, “Oh, Oscar, when are you going to lose that dead part so you can really live?”

She could be asking that question to any of us. For you, too, may be dragging around something that you should have left behind long ago. Maybe anger over a past incident. Or some long-ago hurt of betrayal. Maybe you’re dragging around feelings of guilt brought about by poor decisions you’ve lived with for so long you hardly know how to feel without them. 

What an important question for each of us - when are you going to lose that dead part so you can really live? When are you going to let the past BE the past? All the memories of the past that steal your peace today should not be allowed in the present. If you’ve been dragging around something that is dead, it’s time to choose life.  

Let the child's question be your question: “When are you going to lose the dead part so you can really live?” Answering that question today may be the most important thing you have done in a long time.


-- Steve Goodier

'Fessing Up

Image by Aarthi Ramamurthy

A hot, new business capitalizes on people's need to 'fess up, as well as their interest in eavesdropping on the confessions of others.

Fee-based phone services and Web sites allow customers to confess anonymously - anything from admissions of petty theft to adultery and even murder. Or, those who are inclined can listen to or read the sordid tales of others. (This is where most of the traffic is headed, by the way.) After the first year of business, one such telephone service, The Confession Line, reportedly made 17 million dollars. Plans were implemented to expand from 25 telephone lines to 100.

I question how beneficial the online confessions sites are for those who actually need to get something off their chests. There is a noticeable lack of contrition and a great deal of self justification. One gets the sense that these so-called true confessions are little more than verbal exhibitionism for contributors and voyeurism for readers. Yet the need to confess, or more importantly, to own up to past mistakes and misdeeds, is vital if one is to be truly free.

Confession is, as they say, good for the soul. And it is also good for the body. Researcher James Pennebaker, author of Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions, studied health benefits of confession. Some people's secrets literally make them sick. He discovered that criminals who confessed to lie detector technicians were often so grateful for the physical relief they felt after "getting it all out," that they actually sent birthday, holiday and thank you cards to the polygraph personnel who heard their stories.

It seems that what we bury deep does not quietly go away. Like a nasty parasite, it eats us up from the inside. Our secrets become our sickness and we won't recover until what we concealed is finally revealed.

So how do we ultimately find freedom from haunting memories and harmful guilt? The best advice goes like this:

1. Bring it up and bring it out into to light. Talk to someone safe. And if it makes sense, talk to the person you wronged. Remember, an apology must never include the the word “but.” No excuses. No rationalization. Just lay it out there and take responsibility. You may be surprised that others are quicker to understand your misdeed than you are even to admit it. But if not, you still did the right thing.
2. Make amends if possible. This is the step most often omitted, but may be the most therapeutic for you and essential for anyone you may have wronged.
3. Forgive yourself. Regardless of whether or not the other forgives you, forgive yourself. Once you’ve done everything else you can, self flagellation will get you nowhere.

Bring it up, make amends, forgive yourself. It sounds simple, but don’t think for a second that it is easy. Getting free from the tyranny of past mistakes can be hard work, but definitely worth the effort.

And  the payoff is health, wholeness and inner peace. In other words, you get your life back.

-- Steve Goodier

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Choose Your Memories Wisely

Do you know that memory can be a powerful tool for spiritual and emotional rejuvenation? Memories are both helpful and hurtful, and you and I decide what to do with them. Let me explain.

I once attended a conference at a retreat center in the Rocky Mountains. We were given a long break one afternoon to relax and renew our spirits. I decided to go for a walk by myself.

A little way down a secluded, dirt road, I spotted horses in a corral. I carefully approached, so as not to frighten them. When I neared, I breathed in horse smells. With the scent of the horses and the corral came something I didn't expect – a flood of memories.

I took another breath and vividly recalled visiting my grandparents' guest ranch every summer as a child. When I was a teenager, I worked on the ranch. Some of my happiest childhood memories involved horses.

I inhaled deeply. I recalled hot afternoons of pulling saddles and blankets off perspiring horses then brushing down their backs. The pungent smell of horse sweat filled my mind and let loose a flood of memories I hadn't recalled for many years. I thought about the soft touch of a horse's nose sniffing my hand for a sugar cube, and the warmth of a furry neck as I put my arms around it and hugged it close. Even manure smells brought back good memories – thoughts of hours spent in corrals saddling, bridling and working with horses.

For two hours I let myself think and remember and feel. The memories worked some kind of magic inside me, healing and rejuvenating. I recalled day-long horseback rides, valley vistas of tall grass and pristine mountain creeks running beside horse trails carved in red earth. I fondly remembered those mornings I rose before dawn, saddled up a horse and scoured forest land searching for wandering horses, let out to roam and graze at night, to round up and bring in to the ranch before breakfast.

Until I smelled the horses, I had almost forgotten. And it occurred to me that these memories are important. They give me energy and new life. I should never lose them and I'd do well to visit them from time to time.

Memories are both helpful and hurtful and we decide which to keep alive.

Some people look back and feel guilty. Again and again they remember their failings and mistakes. They scrutinize these painful memories in detail. Like a child with a bag of marbles who holds them up to a strong light, one by one, examining their chips and flaws before carefully placing them back. When they take time to remember, they choose memories that are flawed; memories that evoke guilt and regret and steal peace of mind.

People similarly revisit memories of past loss, or personal rejection or any number of other hurts inflicted upon them over the years. They bitterly remember each incident and relive old feelings of loss and grief before locking the memory back into a secure place where it can be easily retrieved. The memories they choose to call up leave them sad and forlorn and rob the present of its power.

I don't suggest that you ignore pain. Feel it, understand it and do whatever is necessary to heal from it. Guilt, mistakes and pain are part of living. But why cultivate a habit of regret or bitterness? Those memories you choose to visit day after day will either flood your mind with strength-giving energy or drain it of power to live.

Choose wisely which memories to call up. Pick memories that will rejuvenate your spirit with new life. Revisit them often. You earned them, and they are a treasure nobody can steal.

-- Steve Goodier

My Favorite Computer Key

Image courtesy of Alvimann

Do you know what my favorite key is on my computer? It's the DELETE key. All kinds of problems go away when I press DELETE. I use it all the time. Junk e-mail? DELETE. Misspellings? DELETE. Unwieldy sentences and confusing paragraphs? DELETE. DELETE. I sometimes wish my life had a DELETE key. One click on the key and I wipe out a mistake. Maybe another click and I could start the day all over again.

And being one who blunders in grand fashion, I have empathy for others who wish they could go back and start over. Like the couple that phoned a neighbor to extend birthday greetings. As the phone was answered they belted out the song "Happy Birthday."  But when they finished their off-key rendition, they were informed that they had dialed the wrong number. After listening to their embarrassed apologies, the recipient said, "Don't let it bother you. You folks need all the practice you can get."

According to Tara Kelly Walworth (Reader's Digest), she and her new husband had an afternoon they may have wanted to take back. They arrived exhausted at their honeymoon destination in Daytona Beach, Florida (USA) and decided to refresh themselves in the motel pool. She figured she'd lost a few pounds leading up to the wedding when she discovered her skimpy, new bikini fit too loosely. Every time she dived into the pool she seemed to lose either the top or bottom. But since they had the pool to themselves, they just laughed and retrieved the pieces.

They later dressed for dinner and decided to eat in the motel restaurant. Waiting for a table in the lounge, they noticed a huge, empty, glistening fish tank above the bar. "Why is such a beautiful fish tank empty?" her husband asked the bartender.

The man grinned broadly and said, "That's not a fish tank. It's the swimming pool."

I think it was New York City Mayor Fiorello Laguardia who once said, “I rarely make a mistake. But when I do, it's a beaut!”
   
Have you ever wanted to take back an embarrassing moment? Or more importantly, how often have you regretted a hasty decision that ended with disastrous consequences?  Or an unfair and angry outburst that caused unnecessary hurt? Some of my worst mistakes were not the embarrassing moments (later on they make the best stories), but pain I caused other people and poor decisions that did damage I could never repair. 

The problem is, some mistakes really can't be corrected. Some hurts just can't be undone. As they say, it's like trying to put toothpaste back in the tube. Sometimes the best we can do is to make amends. And no DELETE key can erase the past so we can do it over – do it better.

The past is what it is – past. And that, too, is good to remember. It is past. Over. Finished. There is no taking it back, yet no purpose is served in reliving and rehashing old memories. It is gone. My best self says to me, “Let it be a teacher.” So I try to learn from its harsh lessons as well as its joys. Then (and this is important), my best self adds, “Now just leave it. Leave it where it belongs – in the past.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson put it this way: “Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day.”

Yes, tomorrow is a new day. Full of hope and promise and new beginnings. And that is something I might forget if life had a DELETE key.

-- Steve Goodier

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In One Day

In Turin, Italy, an anonymous citizen wrote the tax office enclosing 10,000 Lira in the envelope and explained he had cheated on his income tax. He said it caused him to lose his appetite. Then he added, "If my appetite doesn't improve I'll send the rest."

It sounds like an easy weight loss program, but I don’t think it could work for me. Guilt doesn't keep me from eating. It has kept me awake more than once, however.

William Wirt Winchester's widow Sarah built a bizarre mansion in San Jose, California, to assuage her feelings of remorse. It is a house built over a 38-year period at a cost of over five million dollars. The 160 room house has stairways that lead to blank walls, corridors that lead to un-openable doors, 13 bathrooms, 13 stair steps, 13 lights to a chandelier, 13 windows to a room…strange.

Her husband was the son of Oliver Fisher Winchester, manufacturer of the famous Winchester repeating rifle. The house is referred to as the "guilt house," and was conceived as a never-ending building project to provide a home for spirits of those killed by Winchester rifles. Instead of addressing her grief and remorse in more therapeutic ways, Sarah’s project occupied the rest of her life.

The late Erma Bombeck called guilt "the gift that keeps on giving." (She also said she came from a family of pioneers – said her mother invented guilt in 1936.) And it CAN be a gift that keeps on giving when it isn't laid to rest. It can keep on giving problems to everyone it touches - emotional, physical and spiritual. It seems that if we don’t find a way to deal with it, guilt may deal with us in some frightening ways.

Do you have unresolved guilt? I'm not talking about "good" guilt, the feelings of shame or remorse that keep us from doing something incredibly stupid or hurtful. I mean unnecessary guilt. Over-anxiety and self-loathing about that which can no longer be changed.

If so, it may help to remember that:

• In one day you can recognize where your feelings of guilt come from.
• In one day you can decide to make necessary amends to those you may have hurt.
• In one day you can decide to ask for forgiveness from others.
• In one day you can exercise your spiritual power and choose to be at one with God and the universe.
• In one day you can decide to be gentler with yourself and allow yourself to experience the healing balm of acceptance.
• In one day you can resolve to learn from the past and not repeat your behavior.
• In one day you can choose to do something constructive with that guilt, and then continue every day until it is only a memory.

And best of all, that one day can be today.

-- Steve Goodier

Image: flicker.com/Aude Lising

Blowing Out the Guilt

I read of a New Jersey artist who capitalized on people’s need to let go of the past by selling them “guilt kits.” Each kit contained ten disposable brown paper bags and a set of instructions which said, “Place bag securely over your mouth, take a deep breath and blow the guilt out. Dispose of bag immediately.” Amazingly, about 2,500 kits sold at $2.50 each. But perhaps not so amazing when you think of the guilt many of us carry around.

Of course, guilt serves its purpose. More than once I made a better decision so that I could look myself in the mirror without blushing. And the kits probably also serve a purpose – if nothing else, to remind us to get rid of those unnecessary and destructive feelings we seem to have so much trouble shaking.

But if blowing in a bag doesn’t do it for you, then you might try another man’s method. He hired a friend to go into therapy for him. He says he always hires other people to carry his baggage.

And if that doesn’t work, here are a few simple steps that that should get at the problem:

First, if you make a mistake, resolve to try never to repeat it. The whole function of guilt is to change behavior.

We underrate our mistakes as effective learning devises. When possible, welcome your mistake, learn from it and decide to do things differently next time.

Second, seek forgiveness from any others who were affected. If possible, make amends.

Finally, forgive yourself. No purpose is served in continuing to whip yourself over past events you can do nothing about. And how will you truly learn to love when there is one person in your life you refuse to completely forgive?

If you follow these steps, you can rid yourself of unnecessary guilt. You will find that you are happier and healthier – and you can save all those brown paper bags for lunch.

-- Steve Goodier

Image: flickr.com/Smallest Forest