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Letting Go of Conflict from Your Past

by Matthew Trujillo
13 replies
You can learn to let go of the conflict in your life. Everyone has things from their past they aren't proud of. Perhaps you keep thinking about a situation and wonder how things might have been different. The reality is, wishing things were different isn't doing you any good!

Avoid letting past conflict hold you back.

Instead, release your concerns and focus on the present. Today is what matters and you can use today to make better days ahead. There are many techniques you can use to help you leave the past behind, and it's good to experiment with different strategies until you find the one that's right for you.

Release Your Negative Thoughts

Thinking negatively about yourself or past events isn't productive. Even if you've made mistakes, you should see them as learning experiences that brought you to where you are today. They're teaching moments, where you make a choice and learn from what happens next.

Avoid dwelling on your mistakes. It's important to take the information you learned and put it to good use. When you find yourself thinking negatively about your past, try a tactic that makes you focus on the present.

Some ways to help you focus on the present include:

• Exercising to raise your endorphin level
• Helping someone else by volunteering or getting involved in the community
• Meditating, praying, or visualizing
• Using affirmations to realize what positive things you currently have in your life

Conquer Your Conflict

Thoughts have power, so make them work for you, not against you. When you look at your experiences in a positive light, you open the door for more positive energy and experiences to come your way. Maybe something happened that you didn't like, but what did you learn from it? What good things came from it?
There is always good if you look for it.

Most people forget to look for the good that comes in all experiences, so make it a priority to seek joy in the things you're doing today. You aren't required to forget about the past, but you can move away from it. Living in memories is no longer necessary. Live in the present, and look toward the future. It's much easier to see where you're going that way!

Make corrections on your journey if you need to, but avoid going backwards. Moving forward, into a bright future and away from conflict, should be your focus. When disconcerting thoughts of the past appear, gently urge them away with thoughts of the future. Avoid letting that negative voice get to you, because it isn't what's true and real.
You know what's really important, even if your thoughts sometimes try to tell you otherwise.

By focusing on what matters to you in the here-and-now, and seeing how you can extend that into your fabulous future, it becomes easier to shed the conflict that comes from spending too much time in the past.

It's not possible to change your past, but it is possible to live for today.

That's something to remind yourself of each day. Why live with regret and conflict when there's joy and beauty to be found? Live in the light of peace and joy each day, and focus your energies on what you can do to make things better for yourself and the world around you.

You'll find that you have more happiness and that you also bring more happiness to others. When you're looking into the past, it's hard to see the great things on display in the future. By letting go of your past, you're able to change your focus and outlook onto much brighter things!

My Success Principles
#conflict #letting #past
  • Profile picture of the author AntonioSeegars1
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  • Profile picture of the author nurz
    “Let Go and Let God”, that’s the simple rule I follow in my life to be able to move forward lightly and peacefully. In life there will always be rough roads, discontentment and disagreement. Someone can always betray you, hurt you or disappoint you. But it’s up to you to handle frustrations in a way that will not affect your future. I chose to let go of anger and disappointments easily and try not to hold grudges over someone. Not easy to do but letting go gives me peace of mind and clarity to focus on more important things in life.
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  • Profile picture of the author Thesecret2marketing
    Man this is fantastic man! You have to let go of the past pain and hurt in your life bro! I agree wholeheartedly with you man!

    My life didn't start to improve until I released those old conflicts that were not productive for me, and holding me back in life.

    I think if more people really innerstood this concept within themselves, they'd surely be in much better positions in their life.

    Thanks for sharing this awesome post bro.

    All the best,
    Michael
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    • Profile picture of the author heavysm
      Releasing/letting go isn't done nearly as much as it should be.

      It's like trying to clean a house while avoiding all the years of hoarded crap inside. How are you ever going to reveal the beauty without throwing out the old stuff that doesn't serve you anymore?

      It's the same for your mind, but we don't see it as a tangible thing like the house. Rather the issues are kept inside for years and years and we only notice it once it becomes a problem.

      The best analogy i can think of for this is the feeling of taking off a backpack. Though in this case it's like taking off a huge and cumbersome backpack you never knew you had on. You were just going on your way oblivious to the huge anchors that were keeping you back.

      I've literally released on dozens of past issues and it's felt like night and day. A good test to know whether or not you've properly released is if you can laugh at an issue genuinely or shrug it off as if it's not relevant anymore.

      The best test is to see how your body reacts. If there is any tightness within your stomach, chest, throat, or anywhere else you're prone to feel tension then you simply need to release more. Once the tension is gone, the emotional duress should be gone as well. Emotional tension = bodily tension, so this can be a very useful exercise to practice on yourself.

      Until you try it for yourself you literally have no idea how much better you'll be able to feel about yourself, your past, or whatever is haunting you.
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      • Profile picture of the author unifiedac
        Originally Posted by heavysm View Post

        Releasing/letting go isn't done nearly as much as it should be.
        That's because it is extremely difficult and the mind doesn't work so simply. While I agree with the "letting go of the past" philosophy, success only comes from a deeper understanding of what "letting go" really means to the human mind.

        Most people translate "letting go" to "forgetting about" the past. But that is nearly impossible. When someone or something in the past has caused you pain, and perhaps trauma, it's impossible to forget about it. The way to "let it go" or "put it behind you" is to first understand your emotional attachment to the past and how it affects your present behavior.

        An irrational emotion is an emotion generated from your past experience. When a person experiences a situation similar to the one that caused pain in the past, it often causes a flight response, to avoid such pain again. However, in many cases, the person is erroneously assuming such pain will occur.

        For example:

        As a young child, John attended an all-boys Catholic school. When he failed to accurately recite certain biblical passages, he was ridiculed by the teacher and laughed at by the other students.

        Now, as an adult, when John is asked to speak in front of his peers, he relives this terrifying childhood moment and the fear of failure and humiliation rise to the surface. Even when presenting to an audience of supportive, professional adults, John is paralyzed by his fears. His emotions are irrational because they are based on a past experience, not present circumstances.

        By understanding your irrational fears, generated from past trauma, you can consciously overcome the emotions and fears when they arise (i.e., pulling yourself up by the bootstraps) by literally asking yourself, "Are these emotions I'm feeling caused by present circumstances or from past experience? Are these emotions blocking my ability to make rational decisions?"

        One main problem is people don't like to acknowledge they're acting irrational, even though we do it all the time. This is where humility comes into play. When you allow yourself to acknowledge irrational behavior, you have identified a pathway for personal growth. You now know what to improve. As long as you keep blaming the past for your problems, and not your emotional attachment to it, you can never truly let it go.
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        • Profile picture of the author heavysm
          Originally Posted by unifiedac View Post

          That's because it is extremely difficult and the mind doesn't work so simply. While I agree with the "letting go of the past" philosophy, success only comes from a deeper understanding of what "letting go" really means to the human mind.

          Most people translate "letting go" to "forgetting about" the past. But that is nearly impossible. When someone or something in the past has caused you pain, and perhaps trauma, it's impossible to forget about it. The way to "let it go" or "put it behind you" is to first understand your emotional attachment to the past and how it affects your present behavior.
          It can be difficult but it's definitely not impossible.

          I'm not talking about forgetting in any sense, actually. I'm talking about letting go of emotional tension surrounding an issue. Once the emotion is removed it just becomes a neutral image. In many cases we tend not to think about an issue nearly as much because the emotional charge is gone. That doesn't mean we have forgotten the issue; it means we've removed whatever tension that image carried with it and in most cases that removes whatever "problem" or discomfort we felt toward that image/issue.

          Some issues are bigger than others and need several angles of release in order to fully dissolve the tension. I'm not saying it's easy. I just think people would be way better off dealing with their issues rather than carrying them around for an entire lifetime.
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          • Profile picture of the author unifiedac
            Originally Posted by heavysm View Post

            I'm talking about letting go of emotional tension surrounding an issue.
            This is the crux of the issue in my opinion. The problem is, people don't know how to "let go" of an emotion. That's because you can't let go of an emotion, you can only acknowledge it and understand its origination. By confronting it you can control it. There is no way to simply release yourself from emotions, especially if they originate from years of learned behavior associated with past trauma/pain.
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            • Profile picture of the author heavysm
              Originally Posted by unifiedac View Post

              This is the crux of the issue in my opinion. The problem is, people don't know how to "let go" of an emotion. That's because you can't let go of an emotion, you can only acknowledge it and understand its origination. By confronting it you can control it. There is no way to simply release yourself from emotions, especially if they originate from years of learned behavior associated with past trauma/pain.
              I'm guessing you haven't been introduced to holistic releasing? It covers how to release on issues, both big and small. I didn't think there was a way of releasing emotion either until i learned about holistic releasing.

              That covers the "how-to" at any rate. This is definitely not a process that is impossible but undoubtedly people will attribute great difficulty to it unnecessarily because they must confront those past issues.
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            • Profile picture of the author tobyjensen
              Originally Posted by unifiedac View Post

              This is the crux of the issue in my opinion. The problem is, people don't know how to "let go" of an emotion. That's because you can't let go of an emotion, you can only acknowledge it and understand its origination. By confronting it you can control it. There is no way to simply release yourself from emotions, especially if they originate from years of learned behavior associated with past trauma/pain.
              unifiedac seems to truly understand what is going on here.

              This sounds like the Sedona Method again. Letting go. Here is a whole thread (two pages) of whether letting go works or not:

              http://www.warriorforum.com/mind-war...d-my-life.html

              People are better off dealing with their issues instead of just being in denial by letting them go. Sure, "getting off it" can be very helpful at times but more often than not just letting go of a problem does not mean the problem will let go of you. Emotional entanglement is often very complex to deal with. Just letting go in those cases does not resolve the problem.
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  • Profile picture of the author Sandycmy
    My small story:

    Being quite successful in my early 20's and One failure at 24 which consumed over 5 years ( both financially and emotionally) made a prey for this past conflict syndrome.

    At age 29, Though I again started my firm, I always felt I screwed up a lot of time and really wanted to do something big or nothing.

    Now 36, I feel the same, and now it is real, I laugh at myself why I felt so at 29 and some time regret too, I'm I repeating the same mistake ? Yes, the feeling has really NOT helped.

    Tried a lot of approaches, love to listen to others their story and how they managed to come out of it.
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  • Profile picture of the author Matthew Trujillo
    One thing that helps is just focusing on your future and your current goals. Realizing you cannot change the past and you can only learn from it is all that matters. Beyond all that, the past is the past.

    I've always remembered this saying :

    "Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, and today is a gift"
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  • Profile picture of the author ironcommando
    Thanks for these tips, I've always had my past conflict within me these few years. After I did a few of the tips you mentioned, it's made me feel a lot better and dwell a lot less on my past school experiences.

    I've been trying to get rid of these conflicts for years and am only starting to get rid of them recently. There's been a noticeable change too.
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  • Profile picture of the author Daniel Kerby
    Fantastic post. Highly recommend the book "Letting Go: The Pathway To Surrender" - David R. Hawkins for more on this. It's a heavy read and well worth it.

    A lot of our identity in this present moment can be made up of past experiences and situations that are lodged in our psyche like a myriad of bullets that never made it through.

    We often live our day to day in a fight or flight mode (survival instinct) because of a past violation done to us. Whether that was physical or verbal, consistent or one big blow, we start to believe that life is that way and eventually we attract more situations to fulfill this expectancy.

    Something that makes a great difference is to ask yourself WHY?, why am I feeling this way? Why am I behaving this way? If you dwell on the how of letting go you focus on the problem but directing attention to the cause of your effect (for example:cause of your fear of failure) is becoming solution orientated, objective about yourself, you start a process of self discovery and eventually you lead yourself to the event that started it all. Then it is a question of acceptance and forgiveness.
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