Are You Using Your Empowering Memory?

Why should you care?

Failing to consciously work on our memories is a pity because we would be missing chances to put in our memory the kind of meanings, conclusions, and resources that can make life so much better, enjoyable and easy. It would be like purposefully choosing to limit our lives and our potential for achievement and well-being.

“Anything you don’t love about your past will affect your future.” – Dr. John DeMartini

In turn, choosing to work on your memory and making sure it works for you—instead of against you—is proven to boost your immune system, mood, self-esteem, and outlook in life. Research shows that people who have a positive way of looking at their past experiences tend to be less anxious. They also enjoy greater happiness and health.

Your Empowering Memory

When we tap into the positive past quadrant of our Mind Canvas, we use our memory in a self-empowering way. Like when you think about that marathon where you ended in second place and you say to yourself, “Wow! I finished the race in second place! That was so cool!”

In this corner of our mind, we can find our “successes” and the “good” moments that we have lived. I use quotation marks because nothing is really good or bad. Things are what they are, as we saw in my previous article, How Thinking is Making you Unhappy.

This quadrant allows us to learn from our successes in the past and from the successes of others. We can find ideas and options that we can use to solve problems in the present or to make plans for the future -we will see how exactly in the following articles.

“To be able to enjoy one’s past life is to live twice.” – Marcus Valerius Martialis

Access any positive emotion

On a daily basis, we all miss chances to empower ourselves and make ourselves feel great. Many of us dedicate relatively little time accessing and enjoying the Positive Past quadrant of our Mind Canvas—remembering things through a positive lens, however good or bad they may seem.

When we choose to access our memory through the lens of the positive past, we come across a myriad of memories charged with life-enhancing feelings and emotions such as confidence, self-esteem, pride, gratitude, joy, happiness, contentment, and love.

You can test this yourself, and you can do it right now. It will be a basic exercise but it will be enough to show you that it works.

Think about the most amazing memory you can find. When you have it, close your eyes and allow yourself to immerse in it and really enjoy it as if you were there again. Do not continue reading until you do it. Come back to the book once you have enjoyed it enough.

• Did you do it? Great. How was it?
• What did you feel? Name the feeling or emotion.
• From 1 to 10, how intense was that feeling?

Is that feeling different—more positive—than how you were feeling before you started the exercise? If you focused your attention well enough on the memory, you probably experienced a “positive” change in your inner state. In this case, do you realize the implications this has?

Think about it. Where is that memory? Is it really in the past? No, it is not; it is here and now, with you, always! You carry it with you everywhere you go. Still, by directing your attention to the memory, in a matter of seconds you managed to experience the same feeling you experienced back then when it actually happened—maybe even just as intensely.

Whether you want to see this as time-traveling—which I admit I do sometimes—or simply as your innate power to choose what hormones you want to release in your bloodstream, we cannot deny the incredible wonder that is our mind.

But be careful…

Each quadrant has its risks as well; its pitfalls. Like Daniel Ofman -the creator of the Core Quality and Core Quadrant- says, too much of something good can become your pitfall. In this case, too much focus on your successes and the good things about you can make you arrogant or narcissistic.

Donald Trump could be a good example of someone who uses this quadrant a lot, so much that it even becomes his pitfall. This is because he usually talks about his actions and achievements in the past as great, or even as better than anyone else’s.

For example, this is a famous quote from him: “My whole life is about winning. I don’t lose often. I almost never lose.”

Listen to the words

The words you use when talking to yourself or with others clearly show which quadrant you are using more. In this case, you can tell that your mind is in this quadrant when you catch yourself saying things like “I was able”, “I wanted”, “I did” or “I had”.

So, if you are someone who abuses the use of this quadrant and/or underutilizes other quadrants, you might want to start thinking and speaking more in terms of “I can”, “I would”, “I could”, “I want to”, “I will”.

“Thinking is the speech of our mind.” – Thich Nhat Hanh

In this video, MIT researchers use technology to prove how the words we say show the kind of thoughts we have, and the impact they ultimately have on our emotions.

InJoy, Juan Campoo

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