Memories Do the Crime, You Do the Time: 4 Steps Toward Feeling the Way You Want to Feel

(898 words)

Takeaway 1: Unexpected breaks in the familiar provide opportunities for a life makeover.

Years ago a stranger came up to me in a bookstore to ask rather shyly if I came from America. His name was Evgeny. I was visiting his hometown, Moscow, during the last days of the Soviet Union. His bright blue eyes transfixed me as he told me of his time in a Siberian prison. He had been a devotee of Hare Krishna, an outlawed religion.

In his slightly broken English Evgeny said these unforgettable words: “You know, I felt more free inside that prison than before I was sent there.”

Finding freedom in a Siberian gulag? How could that be?

While imprisoned, Evgeny had his familiar stripped away from him. He had to start over. When released, he had to leave behind his previous abuse or he would have remained in a prison of his own making. Speaking of unfamiliar, you just received the wisdom of a 20-something, Communist, Hare Krishna jailbird. May what shook me then, move you now.

I have since wondered many times: What keeps me locked up? Who keeps me locked up? I have learned that my addiction to the familiar is the prison and the jailer is me.

Takeaway 2: Starting Over Begins with Reckoning with How Memories Determine the Way We Live

In numerous ways COVID-19 has stripped away our familiar. How shall we start over?

I say “familiar” to refer to how we connect to the future using our memories of what’s happened before. Our memories have more to say about how we live in the present moment than we give them credit for. I call them “boss memories,” a driving force in all living.

And, our memories are more than just what’s happened in your lifetime or mine. Our memories also contain remnants of our ancestors. The inventory of remembered feelings available for the brain to draw from is predetermined by this collective history that traces back over eons of time. This means generations of abuse, addiction, domestic violence, and war have laid claim to the collective real estate our brains rely on to make sense of everything. Digging deeper through these cycles of rape, lynching, poverty, and plague, you get the common emotional landscape we are trapped in. It may be an ugly familiar, but guess what? It’s your familiar and mine, too. Our brain’s reliance on this neurological device we call memory has served us well. But we can and must create a new familiar.

Takeaway 3: Your memories are reacting right now to what you are reading.

When you think of the future, your memories will often put up warnings and uncertainties around the very idea of forthcoming possibilities. I dare say, if you doubt what I tell you, it’s the voice of those memories commandeering your self-talk at this very moment. The memories captures and steals the future from you, and you end up in a prison of limitations. The memories may not even allow you to think about the future. It commits the crime, and you do the time.

Breaking out of this jail cell comes down to how your better future and mine rely on learning to self-regulate our feelings. For this job I rely on what I call the Objective Perspective.

Today, memories and their feelings no longer have the hold on me they once did. I have previously wandered through cycles of depression, unfinished grieving, addictions, and boat loads of self-improvement. With a liberating change of perspective that comes with living more objectively, I now choose the…

4 Steps to Feeling the Way You Want to Feel

Here’s where managing your feelings meets the wealth you are looking for.

1. Catch yourself living in the past.

A memory can be pleasurable or pure torment, but notice it, and acknowledge that you are noticing it. Be able to say, “This is my memory at work. I am so thankful I noticed it.”

2. Be empathic with yourself.

Sense the feeling that goes with the memory. Be able to say, “This memory makes me feel __________.” Of course, the memory of the feeling may come before the memory of the event. But the same process applies: Normalize the memory, objectify the feeling.

3. Replace the feeling with what you want to feel, such as gladness or appreciation.

Your memories may be intent on keeping you in survival mode. But you will see that you can feel the elevated-feelings you want to feel and it won’t kill you.

4. Sense these elevated feelings for the rest of your life.

Sensing and living in the feelings of appreciation, empathy, and freedom attracts abundance. To be abundant, the sensing practice of gratitude frees you to an empathic awareness of what others feel. Love is born from this awareness, and that comes with happiness, healing, well-being, and wholeness. In this experience, material abundance is no more than a pleasant side effect.

Daily Blessing: May the trajectory of your future gratify you.

Daily Action: What family or childhood story could you capsulize in a 1-3 word feeling? Are you still feeling it?

Conversation Starter: Some people say about their childhoods, “My childhood was in the past. It’s not important.” What do you say? Respond in the comments below!

Next-Up: How memories keep us from what we really want to feel.

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“Feel today the way you want to feel tomorrow.”

- Dr. Joe Dizpenza

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