How to Get Rid of Your Emotional Baggage?
When you are stuck in the past, remember rearview mirrors are for glancing not staring. Addressing past traumas, letting go of grudges, and focusing on personal growth can help release and heal emotional burdens.
Whenever you travel, you carry some baggage with you. The size of the baggage depends on the days of journey. If you find it heavy, you hire a coolie and share your load. Suppose, if you have to carry your own baggage throughout journey without putting it down, how long can you do it, for few minutes, couple of hours or a day? Hmnn …. You are right… Not possible for long duration. You may not realize it but you’re carrying some baggage with you for days on days and sometimes throughout your life. It’s emotional baggage of your past.
Contents
- 1 Emotional baggage meaning
- 2 Emotional baggage source
- 3 How to get rid of your emotional baggage ?
- 4 Unload your Emotional Baggage
- 5 Have Patience
- 6 Be Grateful for Negative Parts of Life
- 7 Work On Your Self-Esteem
- 8 Company of Good People
- 9 Focus on What You can Change
- 10 Forgiveness is Vital
- 11 Mindfulness
- 12 Consider Getting Help
Emotional baggage meaning
What is emotional baggage? You may have not probably heard the term “emotional baggage” before. Emotional baggage does feel like you are wearing or carrying a bag filled with emotions. Emotional baggage is the phenomenon of carrying past trauma or so-called negative experiences through life, relationships, or a career. Everyone carries unprocessed emotions from experiences to some degree. However, the emotions that aren’t dealt with don’t just go away. And, if you continue to revisit your painful memories, those can affect:
- the way you think about yourself
- how you react to stress
- your physical well-being
- your relationships with others
“Sometimes the past should be abandoned, yes. Life is a journey and you can’t carry everything with you. Only the usable baggage.” ~ Ha Jin
Emotional baggage source
Emotional Baggage shapes your entire belief system, that influence the way you see yourself and the way you conduct yourself in relationships. This baggage comes from the accumulation of life’s ups and downs. At some point you were given shameful comments, shown that you weren’t lovable, or taught you weren’t worthy – good for nothing. Or, Some past behavior of loved ones may keep bugging you till now. Or, your family did not stand with you in your tough time or you were/are being ignored. Unpleasant but that’s truth of life.
Some of this baggage is pretty old right from the childhood days, where as some baggage is new from the recent past. Some baggage you didn’t deserve and there was not any fault on your end, and some baggage is on account of your fault and comes from your poor decisions. It may also come from trauma experiences
“Emotional baggage is like a black hole in space. It sucks all the light out of your life.” ~ Lesya Li
Regardless of from where your past wounds and scars come from you can still take responsibility and do something about them. Your future success depends on your willingness to unpack and put away your emotional baggage. Are you ready to unpack your emotional baggage? Letting go your emotional baggage can be tough task. It will require lot of changes and inner exploration of SELF.
How to get rid of your emotional baggage ?
Here are the tips on how to get rid of your emotional baggage.
Unload your Emotional Baggage
Life is a journey and while you move on, keep unloading your emotional baggage on the roadsides. If you won’t, this will get heavier and heavier; and it will be difficult for you to move ahead in life. Not only this; day by day your capacity to carry it will also get decreased. You need to break it in to the pieces; and overcome one by one. Make a list of all past incidents, situations, behaviors, loss, fear, grudges and past relations, which keeps bugging you more often. Chalk out a plan how you will unload it in small pieces one by one. Once you start it, journey will get more and more comfortable towards the milestones ahead on the journey of life.
Have Patience
When you start making change in your thoughts and belief system for unloading your emotional baggage, don’t pressure yourself and have patience. Change takes time. One of the things that matter the most is your effort. In between, if you feel like it’s too hard to bring change, do not lose your courage, just keep going on. Don’t quit. You will see that hard work, persistence and strong will power pay off.
Be Grateful for Negative Parts of Life
Start keeping a gratitude journal. You must be thankful to the negative parts of life. Whatever you are right now; is due to learnings from those negative events, incidents, situations or moments in life. If those were not be a part of your life; you could not have made changes and improve your personality to reach the success milestone of today. Shift your spotlight from black dots of life and look those negative parts from different perspectives. Notice what brighter effects those negative events has brought in your life and be grateful for the same.
Work On Your Self-Esteem
Self-esteem, or the way you feel about yourself, is an important feature of your mental fitness. If you keep remembering those negative comments, doubts on worthiness and false blames in relationships etc.; you start believing on those and it affects your self-esteem. Work on improving your self-esteem. It will not only increase your confidence, it will also help you to get rid of emotional baggage. Celebrate your successes, however small you think they may be.
Company of Good People
Start surrounding yourself by good people. Ones, who are happy and living a fuller life , high values and positive relationships. You represent the company you keep. If you Surround yourself with idlers, or druggies, or people with any sort of self-destructive tendencies, it will be doubly hard to raise yourself from chaos. You need to mirror the behaviors of good decision-makers with high self-esteem in order to get rid of your baggage. It doesn’t come natural. You will have to take care of your surroundings by minimizing your interaction with bad people and bad friends. You’ll find you feel best when you choose to be around positive, supportive people who care for you.
Focus on What You can Change
You can’t control everything in your life, but you can control your choices and how you show up for yourself. Walk in nature, meditate, journal, consider which goals you want to achieve, and keep the promises you make to yourself.
Forgiveness is Vital
If your emotional baggage has got heavier due to past relations, damage done by relatives or bitterness towards someone who has hurt you; stop keeping a running score and holding such grudges. Forgive and move ahead in your life. I know it’s tough; but once do it you will understand its importance. Forgiveness is Vital. Mastering the art of forgiveness plays a crucial role in happiness and quality of your life . By learning this you don’t forgive the person who did something wrong but you forgive yourself. Yes, you read it correctly. You forgive yourself.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness is all about living in the present moment. Instead of attempting to suppress emotional pain or avoid difficult feelings, it is about paying close attention to what you are doing in the present moment, noticing when your attention wanders, and bringing it back to what you’re doing. Since mindfulness helps to detach yourself from the past and bring in to the present moment, it is a wonderful practice which helps in unloading emotional baggage.
Consider Getting Help
Most of the people need a safe place to process their feelings. Having someone trained to help you understand what you feel, provide the space for you to feel your feelings, and then help you take the steps you need to change, is very important. Therapists, skilled life coaches and spiritual counselors are good resources for this. Look for recommendations from people you know and trust.
Thank you for reading this. Over to you now, please share your tips and strategies to get rid of emotional baggage. Add your valuable comments in the comment section, they are much appreciated.
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Wow my friend it’s an awesome post.
Thanks Newtan !!!