Many of us live as if on a quest for the perfect tomorrow, forgetting we cannot create our next moment out of resentment for our past and frustration with the present. The key to a happier future is letting go of the past and moving forward. Rescu. talks to motivational speaker Maria Boznovska about how to live gratefully and be thankful for past mistakes.
Even when faced with a painful situation of a failed relationship, we must choose to focus on how we can reframe this situation into gratefulness. How? Know the moment before you is filled with beauty even if you can’t immediately see it. Make it a habit to look for the good things, amongst the bad.
The key to moving forward to a more whole, fulfilled life, lies in seeing the blessings in the bad, the good in the troubles and consciously recognising there are valuable lessons to be learned and experiences shared as a result of the relationship, regardless of how real the pain once felt, or continues to feel.
Finding Blessings in the Bad
How does one find gratitude amid one or more failed relationships? Stop thinking of them as failed relationships. Relationships do not bring obligations but provide opportunities to grow. This is your opportunity for full self-expression and to reach your highest potential.
Express love of life, people, creativity, work and all aspects of your being, which genuinely bring you joy. By recognising the relationship itself was a gift, it can be shaped by the mindset we bring to it. It’s about changing perceptions to alter experience.
The power of living gratefully is life-changing and changes your perception. Gratitude can help you transform your fears into courage, anger into forgiveness and isolation that often follows a failed relationship into belonging.
The purpose of relationships is not to figure out what the other person wants, needs, is thinking or should be doing. Rather it is for you to “be” who you are and make choices that will allow you to grow and evolve and become the person you wish to be. The reason relationships get tricky is too often we are trying to figure out the wants and needs of someone else and in the process feel justified to determine their choices.
Finding Security
Often we use relationships as a means of guaranteeing security instead of creating security from that which is inside of us. Real security is not in demanding or expecting or even in hoping that what you think you need in life will be supplied by the other party. But rather in knowing that everything you need in life, all the love, all the wisdom, all the insight, all the power, all the understanding, all the nurturing, all the compassion, all the strength, resides within you—and that you are not in a relationship in the hope of getting these things, but in the hope of giving these gifts, and that the other might have them in greater abundance.
Reframing the situation, you come to understand that letting someone “off the hook” on a commitment or promise may look like it will hurt you in the short run. However, the reality is it never hurts you as when you give another freedom, you give yourself freedom as well. Now you are free of the agonies and attacks on your self-worth that inevitably follow when you force another person to keep a promise to you that he or she do not want to keep. More damage has been done to the self and others by living a life of quiet desperation, and staying in a relationship that is not healthy.
When you look at the world through the lens of gratefulness and your circumstances for what they are, there’s a certain freedom in knowing that you are doing the best you can. Affirmations of the heart are statements of something at a deeper level you already know to be true.
Gratitude is the best affirmation and brings peace for:
New beginnings
Be encouraged to accept the impermanence of all things and that when something comes to an end… awaits a beautiful new beginning!
Valuing your story for the wisdom gained
Be encouraged to consider your story and the valuable gifts received in the form of lessons and wisdom gained!
Taking responsibility
Be encouraged to take responsibility, it’s not a question of blame, it’s a question of choice!
Forgiving
Be encouraged to free yourself from the heavy burden of blame, excuses and bitterness!
Using your pain to make a change
It is your absolute need to look within and bring comfort, healing and love to unresolved issues.
Be encouraged to use your pain to make a change!
We all have the power to make ourselves happy or choose to play the victim and self justify where we are. Nothing and no one is responsible for your happiness but YOU. Your life is guided by the decisions you make.
Allow yourself to connect with the contentment of peace, love, joy, and happiness, that is your birthright.
Maria Boznovska is author of Live Gratefully, a story from caterpillar to butterfly.
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