Past-Focused Emotional Stuckness

Greetings!

When we talk about burnout, we have to talk about how our emotional “stuckness” contributes to it.

Recently, we covered 2 different types of future focus–one that is healthy and one that is troublesome at best, and destructive at worst.

If you recall, we described the healthy one as useful forecasting, and the troublesome one as good old fashioned worry.

Go check that article out if you need a refresher.  Too much unmanaged worrying will bring you down . . . hard.  You already know that.

Forecasting and worrying are describing a FUTURE focus.  But what about the PAST?

Let’s stick with our format, and say there are healthy ways to think about the past, as well as troublesome ways.

The healthy ways help us learn from the past, appreciate the past, get feedback, grow, and make corrections, amongst other things.

However, the troublesome ways keep us STUCK.  Period.

The healthy ways of remembering the past could be compared to a RIVER, where there is a current and a flow moving everything forward, or downstream.  The water has life to it.

The troublesome ways of remembering the past could be compared to a POND, where there is no current, no flow, and no movement, no inlet or outlet.  The water is dark, murky, and brackish.

River vs pond.

What are some of these healthy ways of remembering the past?  Feel free to add to my list, but they are things like:

> a thoughtful reckoning and accounting; 

> a non-emotional, fact-based assessment; 

> an appreciative inquiry that has us identifying the things we appreciated; 

> a “hunt” to identify the strengths that we or others exhibited; 

> turning our sights to what we learned, so that we can continue doing what worked, and make corrections and adjustments on what could have been better; 

> trying to see the big picture–seeing the entire pie and not only a couple of the slices.  

You get the idea.  None of this is avoiding “the truth” or the facts, but looking at everything in a way that helps us appreciate, learn, and grow.

And what about the troublesome ways of remembering the past–the ways that keep us stuck, drain our resources, and cause relationship problems and other “spin-off problems”?

Here are 2 biggies:  UNRESOLVED ANGER and UNRESOLVED REGRET.  

Unresolved anger keeps us over-focused on another person and their offenses, and unresolved regret keeps us over-focused on ourselves and our “mistakes”.

Both of these can destroy our lives and the lives of those around us, if allowed to grow inside us to such a toxic degree.  At the very least, even mild unresolved anger and regret can cause us problems.

What’s the solution for these types of difficult emotions?  That’s an article for another day.

In the meantime, keep in mind that our emotions matter–those elicited by the past as well as those elicited by the future.

Staying fresh, strong, and resilient, and avoiding burnout, often has to do with what’s going on in our heads and in our hearts.

That’s it for now.  Have a good week, and stay fresh my friends.

– Sean Cox, Chicago