Don’t Let Negative Experiences Control Your Life

Our life is a continuous succession of experiences which we live, share and feel, regardless of whether they are positive or negative.

Like everything, negative experiences are the ones that will mark us the most. Well, our natural state, in which we are happiest, is when everything is going well, “smooth sailing”, and we are hardly aware of time and our own existence.

Negative experiences are necessary in our life. They can help us get on track in our life, learn to make better choices, know how to discern what we want from what we don’t want.

In short, all experiences, but especially negative ones, help us to be better people. But what happens when it is not? What happens when these experiences control my life?

When experiences control me

Surely you feel identified with the fact that the negative experiences that you live instead of making your life improve, later make it worse. What do we mean by this? That they condition you.

For example, look at the following situations that we are going to describe, since you have probably already experienced many of them:

• If someone publicly humiliates me for a comment I have made, I will avoid saying what I think so that it does not happen again.
• If my partner blames me for our breakup, perhaps in my next relationship I will act with caution and submission.

• I always try to think like everyone else so that people don’t pout me and accept me.

These and many more situations cause something very natural, which is the search for pleasure and the avoidance of pain that every negative experience causes us.

But, sometimes, this fear of finding ourselves defenseless in the face of an unexpected situation that harms us causes us to put on a mask that does nothing more than hide what we cannot heal.

Masks that make us show ourselves to be someone we are not and that, instead of helping us face our problem, cause the wound of our pain to get bigger.

In my life I command

Although negative experiences hurt us and affect us in a more intense way, we must prevent them from controlling and directing our lives.

Only we can decide how we are going to lead our life, how we want to act, how we want to proceed … Experiences should make us move forward, improve, but never go backwards. And, of course, experiences should never cause our unhappiness.

How then should we act with regard to these negative experiences?

• Never feel sorry for yourself, or blame yourself that you shouldn’t. What happened is now in the past, it is time to look to the present with confidence and positivism.
• Don’t let your feelings drag you down and sink you into a sadness that is difficult for you to get out of. Feel them, but don’t let them approach you like a tsunami . Shout “enough!” and keep going.
• Do not get carried away by your thoughts as they will go around a thousand times and will make you feel confused and paralyzed by the situation. Put a brake on your thoughts and start acting.

• Actively choose in your life, be the one who chooses how to live it and avoid every negative experience that forces you to change your path.

It is true that negative experiences cause insecurity, doubts, discomfort, sadness … But, all this can be overcome and only you have the power to do it.

If you want to get out of this situation, you must begin to fight against those feelings that try to approach and drag you as if it were a current. Avoid confusing thoughts that will only paralyze you and focus seriously on what you want.

Nobody tells you that you should not feel that insecurity, assimilate it, live it, feel it. But what it can’t do is control you.

Look at negative experiences as situations to learn from. From everything negative, something positive can be drawn, something that only you will be able to find, something that only you will decide to experience.