Don’t Let Negative Experiences Control Your Life

Our lives are made up of a continuous series of experiences – both negative and positive. We have to go through everything.

For some reason , negative experiences make the biggest impression on us. It seems that when everything is going well, when we sail effortlessly through life, we are almost oblivious to our own existence. Often we only start to appreciate things when everything starts to work against us.

Negative experiences are necessary in our lives. They can help us get our lives back on track, teach us to make better choices, and show us how to differentiate between what we like and dislike.

In short, all experiences, but especially negative experiences, help us to become better people. However, what happens when this is not the case? What happens when these experiences take control of your life?

When my experiences take control of me

You may feel that the negative experiences you are going through don’t improve your life at all, but instead make your life much more difficult.

Perhaps you can recognize yourself in the following:

• When someone publicly humiliates me for a comment I made, I deliberately don’t say what I think so it doesn’t happen again.
• If my partner blames me for the breakup in our relationship, I may be more careful and submissive in my next relationship.
• I always try to think the same as others so that they won’t look at me funny and accept me.

Situations like this show that as humans we naturally tend to strive for pleasure and avoid the pain that negative experiences cause.

Sometimes the fear of being defenseless in an unexpected situation makes us put on a mask that does nothing more for us than hide what we couldn’t resolve. Masks that help us pretend to be different from what we really are, instead of helping us cope with our problems and keep growing.

In my life I’m in charge

Although negative experiences can hurt us intensely, we should try to prevent these experiences from taking control of our lives and determining how our lives go.

Only we can determine how we want to live our lives, how we want to behave and how we want to move forward. Our experiences should help us move forward, improve, but should never, ever hold us back or force us to take a step back.

How then should we deal with our negative experiences?

• Avoid self-pity. Don’t blame yourself for things that aren’t your fault. What has already happened has already been left in the past; it is now time to look at the present with certainty and positivity.
• Do not allow your feelings to drag you along and drown you in a sadness from which you cannot escape. Feel your feelings, but don’t let them come over you like a tsunami. Shout as loud as you can ‘That’s enough!’ and keep moving forward.
• Don’t get carried away by your thoughts. Your thoughts will constantly lead you in circles, leaving you confused and paralyzed. Cut off your thoughts and take action.
• Make active choices in your life, let yourself be the one who determines how you live your life and avoid negative experiences that will force you to change paths.

Indeed, negative experiences can cause insecurity, doubt, discomfort, and sadness… However, you can overcome all of this and only you are in a position to do so.

If you want to escape from this situation, you must try to counteract those feelings that try to take over you and pull you along as if they were a powerful current. Avoid confusing thoughts that will only paralyze you. Instead, try to seriously focus on what you really want.

You are the one who decides; do not allow negative experiences to take control of your life. It’s okay to be insecure sometimes. However, make sure that this uncertainty does not completely control you.

See negative experiences as situations from which you can learn something. You can take something positive out of any negative situation, something that only you can find, something that only you decide you want to experience.