When has the past had enough of your attention?

 

Do you find yourself dwelling on the past?

Thinking about it…….

Talking about it……

Dwelling on it…..

Stewing about it…..?

Whatever we give attention to, we are giving energy to. We are giving past situations, past hurts, past feelings, past failures, past disappointments, and past grudges, life.

We regurgitate it: throw it up and then eat it again…..over and over again. We won’t let it die, we won’t let ourselves get over it. And most times when we do this it is when we believe we are right. And we may be right, BUT, we retard our progress when we cannot move beyond what happened.

Can I say that this sneaks up on us sometimes? Our lives are going in the direction we are looking and we don’t realize which way we are looking (past or future), until we start monitoring what we are saying. After all, our mouths speak out of the abundance of our hearts.

Listen to what you talk about, what you rage about, what you complain about!

About two weeks ago, I actually went home from work and realized that I complained about everything that day. I have been waiting for my work assignment to change and because it is taking way longer than is typical, it impacted my attitude. I said to myself “uh no ma’am, you need to pull this together!”. So I got out a journal and wrote a whole page of gratitude. I immediately felt better. I decided that I would do it for 30 days, or longer, and challenged myself to not complain about ANYTHING. About traffic, the weather, food, work, people, family, church……NOTHING!

I realized how easy or natural it is for us to slip into that negative space, that negative place in our heads unless we have something intentionally in place to point us to ALL that we have to be THANKFUL for.

So monitor your thoughts and words and see in which direction they are driving you……..

Have a blessed week!

Blessings always..

JC