“Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies”
Nelson Mandela
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What is Emotional Baggage?
Emotional Baggage is often an event you think or talk about, possibly frequently, that creates emotional pain and causes a strong show of emotion and which can affect your everyday behaviour. These can be conscious or subconscious actions.
Everybody has emotional baggage. It can lead to anger, resentment, mistrust, tears and fear. A negative emotional experience can have a lasting effect - if you let it.
Baggage can also be people in your life. Some people are negative influences and triggers. It is important not to allow negative emotional vampires and influences to suck the life out of you.
Some people remain emotional victims. Is the weight of your emotional baggage weighing you down? Is your glass of life half empty or half full?
Why is Baggage Important?
According to many books, 93% of communication is non-verbal. You wear your heart on your sleeve so if you carry baggage it shows! You can try hiding it but all to no avail. It will eventually come out. It’s called baggage because you carry it around, and it can affect your life and relationships.
Allowing past issues to take over and affect the present can keep you from experiencing a healthy, loving relationship and is one of the biggest blocks to intimacy. It’s the excuse you give yourself for not trying something or to excuse failure. From now on accept no excuses only action!
Unpack and Leave Behind Emotional Baggage
The first thing to say is that no-one else can solve your problems. The only person who can do that is you. Accept that and you are a major step on the road to solving them. The only person you can control is yourself.
And that is the basic advice - get over it. Put it behind you and get on with your life. Leave your baggage behind. Decide to put it down. Having baggage and dealing with it is part of growth.
First recognise a problem exists. Damaging attitudes and problems are often hidden and if you knew what you were doing you would stop doing it. In a lot of cases they are not only hidden, they are disguised as thoughts, facts, people or things.
You need to sort yourself out before you get involved with anyone else. It’s like a flight where there is an emergency where the air masks come down. In this event you are told to fix your own mask before trying to help anyone else, whether that is your partner, your child or a stranger. If you try to help someone before you put your own mask on, you risk both of you dying. If you fix your mask first you improve the odds for both of you.
Sort out your own mask first. Learn about yourself before you try to learn about someone else.
You must discover what baggage you have, find out how to leave it behind and so become acceptable to more women.
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“Low self-esteem is like driving through life with your hand-break on.”
Maxwell Maltz
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Your Goal
Acknowledge that these things are occurring and you are allowing past events to rule your current life. Eliminate them from your mind by replacing the thoughts with more positive alternatives. Identify the emotional baggage you carry with you and let it go.
The Plan
Examine what you say to yourself about you, other people or the situation.
Article First Published on EzineArticles Dating and Emotional Baggage
