Painful life experiences — relationship breakups, the loss of loved ones, daily stress, being bullied, jealousy, depression, health issues, and more — all leave emotional scars. These scars, which we often refer to as our emotional baggage, affect how we think, feel, and connect with others throughout the entirety of our lives. And it makes learning how to move on from that pain feel impossible.
Once someone has been hurt or disillusioned by a loved one, that person may focus on the negative experiences in life and become angry, upset, and untrusting. Hostility takes over and replaces any positive feelings, beginning a vicious cycle of injustice against the self. This energy is projected onto other relationships, and self-destruction rapidly descends.
Letting go of the hurt and pain from your past in order to start fresh with a clean slate is the greatest gift you can give to yourself. Closing the door to the past allows you to open up to your present and live a much healthier, happier life day-to-day. It allows you to open yourself up for future opportunities in every aspect of your life.
Here are 4 simple tricks to make your life much happier, according to the pros:
1. Forgive those who hurt you
Choose to forgive those who caused you pain and heartache in the past. Forgiveness is essential to healing sufficiently to move forward. Do this for the sake of self-healing, even if it feels wrong to do it for anyone else.
Holding on to emotions like anger or hatred is like drinking poison and expecting someone else to feel sick. It just doesn’t work that way. Psychotherapist Dr. Lesley Goth agrees, explaining, “Forgiveness is freedom. It’s an act that you do for your own inner peace, not for anyone else’s. The goal of forgiveness is to let go of everything that is toxic about a person or situation that negatively impacts your life.”
A Harvard-led study found that forgiveness boosts mental well-being by reducing anxiety and depression, and other recent evidence shows it can also ease stress, improve sleep, and lower blood pressure and heart rate. As Harvard’s Tyler VanderWeele explains, “Forgiveness acknowledges the wrong and helps you be free from it. It frees you from the offender as well.”
2. Forgive yourself
Let yourself know that you accept the past simply as what has happened and forgive yourself for the choices you’ve made that led you into dark places. It’s time to stop punishing yourself. You’ve been through enough as it is.
The research on forgiveness shows that forgiveness induces feelings of ease and peace and that forgiveness decreases anger, anxiety, and depression and increases self-esteem and hopefulness for the future. Forgiving yourself is about accepting that you’re human, you’ve learned, and you deserve to move forward.
3. Close the door on what’s passed
You cannot go back and change things that have already happened. There is no “do-over” in life. Close that door to the past and let it go. You cannot live your life going in reverse. Life is meant to be a forward motion. Keep the momentum going in that direction.
As psychotherapist Dr. Ilene Strauss Cohen writes, “Stop wishing things could be the way they once were. Bring yourself into the present moment. This is where life happens. You can’t change the past; you can only make decisions today to help how your future turns out.”
While we can’t change a person’s family history or their life experiences, it is possible to help a person change the way they think and to teach them positive coping strategies. Research shows that with mindfulness, an individual might note their negative emotion, but rather than allow the mind to wander into a ruminative state, will attempt to accept it and let it go.
4. Open a new chapter
You are in charge of this new chapter in your life. You get to decide what you will call it, and you get to make it what you want it to be. Be positive, be hopeful, and live your life as you choose to. Then be prepared to enter with fresh purpose — and NO more emotional baggage to weigh you down.
Research shows that hope has strong associations with positive affect, emotional adjustment, greater life satisfaction, enhanced perceptions that life is meaningful, a higher sense of purpose in life, and quality of life. Optimism is related to fewer symptoms of depression, higher levels of well-being, and stronger perceptions of social support.
There is a great quote in the movie The Shawshank Redemption that underscores these healthy choices and mindsets you can employ today: “It comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living or get busy dying.”