Ten Lords a Leaping: Preparing for the Future.
The Ten Leaping Lords bringing thoughts about leaving the past behind and moving forward.
In this series of items the Twelve Days of Christmas traditional song is used to find inspiration for some Christmas Musings.
Christmas Passed
photo credit: clappstar
By my calculation it’s the 5th January and you’re thinking now, about taking down the decorations, and resuming with ordinary or non-festive life. We are well in to 2014 and time and life moves on undeterred whether you had the happiest Christmas ever or the saddest; it could have been stuffed full of peace, joy and hope or conflict, sadness and fear. Either way, you are thinking ahead to another year and what it might have in store.
Leaping Forward
These Ten Lords make me think of athletes springing over hurdles to compete in the race. It conjures up ideas of jumping in, catapulting forward and embracing what is ahead. Whilst I might be using an athletic image, I am still thinking about psychological or emotional paths rather than your New Year’s resolution to take more exercise! Life is a whole series of before and afters, and it can take some determination and effort to move on from the past and in to the future.
Jump Out
There’s a phrase used in some models of risk assessment that, “Nothing predicts future behaviour like past behaviour.” What it means is that if something has happened before, it is very likely to happen again and particularly, in relation to human behaviour. But at Brighton Therapy Service, we think that understanding past behaviour is one of the ways to change future behaviours. If you had a successful 2013 then you might want to use those gains to help you identify the things that you are good at and try to repeat it in 2014.
On the other hand, if you had unpleasant or challenging things happen over the last year, you might want to look back and try to work out what went wrong and whether you can do things to stop it going wrong again. There are several things that you might consider and your own view of yourself is critical. Be good to yourself, identify your strengths, make plans for what you want to achieve, don’t dwell on past failures but do try to learn from them. Try to get on top of your thinking and don’t let it control you. Our thoughts travel on well-worn paths and might let us down. If you immediately think something negative about yourself in certain circumstances, it may mean that your thinking is taking you somewhere you don’t want to go. Try to reflect on those moments and see if you can take a different route to a more positive destination.
Happy New Year!
We wish you all the very best as you leap forward in to 2014. If you think that therapy might be something you could consider to help you with the challenges ahead then please do get in touch. Whether you are building on past failures or successes we hope that you will be able to learn from your experiences and that these will prepare you for what lies ahead.
Get in Touch
This was written by Rose and you can contact her here.
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