Hi, this is Wayne Brown from Life Back On Track.
 
Welcome to the latest episode.
 
In previous episodes, I've mentioned that if you have any questions you can send them into us and we'll answer them. This is one of those questions. Natalie is from Utah in the States and is a little bit confused. She's sent this in and asked, "How do you get over an ex?"

 Because she split up with a guy nearly two years ago and she still struggles with letting him go. His memories with her impede into her everyday life. Certain things trigger off the memories that generally aren't too good and she basically wants to be able to let all of that go and to move on. The thing is, it's not so much about forgetting it, it's about rewiring it. You see, when we separate with someone, whether we've been with them for six months, six years, sixty years, it's still a very similar journey.

The thing is, our unconscious will have realised we have a certain amount of emotions that get triggered that need to be dealt with, and depending on our upbringing and our culture, we might not be comfortable addressing those things. Certain emotions we're taught, we have to suppress, were not allowed to engage them or be able to put them out into the open. So what we do is we suppress them, we repress them, we try to ignore them. What happens is our unconscious has all of these questions that it would like answers to, and because it has all these questions that it wants answers to, in our conscious mind, it isn't ready to deal with it.

Sometimes it gives us hints of something that we need to deal with. Now I've had my share of breakups, both myself ending them and them ending it. So what I've found is that works for me is, what I do is I go back and I revisit the relationship. Now if the relationship was really terrible, we wouldn't get with them at the start. So what I found was a good way to do it was to go back and visit the good times to try and get a balance between the good memories and the bad memories.

Because a lot of the times our mind will enlarge it, will magnify the negatives and make them sometimes a lot worse than they actually were. Because our human nature is we tend to notice negatives rather than positives, we will fixate on them and because we'll fixate on them, they take up a lot of our mind-set and a lot of our time. Which means we'll go over and over and over in our head, so therefore will negate a lot of the positives and forget that they happen.

So I find that's one good way of dealing with it, Another one is actually acknowledging things. So if for example with myself, I found that I was always subjugating myself to my previous partners wants and desires and dreams and all of that sort of thing. So I ended up having this underlying resentment that I didn't acknowledge because I was taught to be a people pleaser, so it was more natural so to speak, to do that, to put myself as a back seat to their wants and their desires.

It wasn't until I acknowledged that and started dealing with it, that not only was I able to see how I was contributing to the situation, so that I could get some answers as to why it probably wasn't as effective a relationship as it could be and therefore because I acknowledged it, it started to empower me. That enabled me to then make better decisions in my current relationship. So what I would say to you Natalie, is to do that go back and visit the memories and try and find the positive ones to try and bring balance with your negatives go in and find why they were negatives. What were the things in there that you need to address that you might have been repressing or ignoring?

 Sometimes there's red flags that were there at the start and we choose to ignore them because we want to see the good in people. You know, it's part of what some of us do. We try to look for the good in people. So sometimes we ignore obvious red flags, but if you acknowledge them then you can be on the lookout for them next time and be better at dealing with them because you won't be repressing them or ignoring them the next time. Things like that.

They tend to make a big difference and bear in mind that we always attract to us the exact, perfect partner for us at that point in our journey. If we can move forward in our journey so that we become a better version of ourselves, we're less likely to need to attract that person that we attracted last time. So we're always looking for the lessons that our partners can bring. That's why I try to get people to look at their previous relationships. That's why I get people to ask people that they're dating about their relationships because it gives you an indication of how much they've evolved and moved on from them.

This will also make it easier for you if you're doing that. So balance the memories, look for the negatives you might have been hiding from so that you can learn. Also understand that everyone is doing the best they can with where they're at. So I'm sure with the relationship Natalie you did the best you could. If you want your next relationship to be better, you may want to get better tools.

For example, if you had struggles with conflict or voicing your wants, get some tools, some mindsets and processes that will enable you to externalise those things so that your partner is aware of them and you can then have that better relationship that you know you deserve. So I hope those few little tips help and they are relatively simple to do. They can be challenging however, to get past the denial part. So I hope it moves you forward.

If you've got any further questions again, feel free to send them in. That's the whole idea of these episodes. These question episodes is where you can ask me something so I can give you my feedback and what I've learned, what I've experienced and you can benefit from them.

Keep up the good work Nat. Great to have you listening in and we're slowly getting more and more listeners around the world. I notice I've got heaps in the in the States. Now, I've got Netherlands Sweden Germany Australia, obviously, because that's where I am, and that number is growing all the time. So it's really great that people are joining in. Again, if you've got any questions, feel free to send them in and we'll answer them as quickly as we can get to them. All. All right, look after yourselves and remember, here's to a good life.

You can listen to the Life Back On Track podcast on your favourite platform by visiting our podcast website. Click HERE to check it out.
 
You can also listen to my radio show “All About Relationships” which has its own podcast on your favourite platform by clicking HERE

Thanks for listening.