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Memories are the most amazing part of human existence. They are the navigator of our lives. The voices in your head are usually your memories talking to you, reader. So what is your relationship with them?
Keyword: Memories at Work
Takeaway: Memories are an entity of their own, a form of energy moving throughout our daily lives. They account for all human behavior. Not one moment of living happens without remembering something connected to it. Everything we do everywhere is based on memories.
If your memories were an organization with by-laws their statement of purpose might look like this:
Memories keep you alive by matching every moment of your future with an experience of what has happened to you in the past so that you live to see another day.
What you remember keeps you alive. Wherever you go you will always find yourself between the immediate moment and what it reminds you of. You will live in the past and go for the familiar. Your memories will put limits on your future and defeat anything new. They will actually distort your current reality if they sense its necessity.
The brain remembers feelings and applies these feelings to whatever present moment you find yourself in. We have unknowingly programmed our minds and bodies to follow a script of remembered feelings to get through the day. When the provided sequence of feelings is out of whack with your processing of the moment you are in, problems appear. Sometimes the remembrances include ones you can’t forget, as much as you would like to. If the events of the day are positive and your memories override you with a preprogrammed sadness, the incongruity will drive you and others nuts.
Takeaway: Don’t let your memories own you.
The memories operate using the paleo cave-dweller mindset from eons ago. So many millennia of vigilance, of always being on the lookout for that saber-tooth tiger—or in today’s terms, that crabby boss—continually moves us towards an illogical extreme. We have evolved to where we now live armed to the teeth and destroying the earth. The future looks grim. It’s all due to memories of feelings, something we have ultimate command of if we are willing to step up for it.
Who would ever have thought that assuring our existence comes down to managing our memories of feelings? We must recognize how their drive for survival inadvertently sows the seeds for our self-destruction!
In some ways our memories are victims of their own success. Our memories of feelings have kept us alive, but at what cost? In this predicament, they need a little help. Are you up for it?
Blessing: May your memories serve you instead of you serving them.
Daily Task: Take at least two minutes to imagine you and I are in a discussion about the awesome energy of memories. What would you say to me that would help me better understand the role of memories in our lives?
Conversation Kick-Around: Have the discussion in the Daily Task not with me but with one or two others.
Next Up: Memory Management.
