We all love a Disney ending. Tinkerbell scatters her magic dust and makes everything right in the story’s last chapter. Do you have one of those stories in your life that you wish had the Disney ending? Or maybe several stories?
I had a distinct experience at work many years ago where the employees were asked to offer solutions to solve a company problem and email them to management. Some of our bigger competitors were offering the same products to our customers for less money. A fairly common problem but not always easy to solve when your products are tangible and must meet code compliance.
I offered a less than helpful response and emailed it to the group. My idea to lower our prices to match the competitors upset and angered my coworkers. It made sense to me at the time, but only to me. As a naïve 20-something year-old, I didn’t see any other solution. Our competitors rock-bottom prices wooed many of our customers and caused some to feel gypped and taken for granted. Not fun to get a call from your best customer yelling at you because she has been overpaying for your products. Now she is embarrassed and wants you to know that it’s all your fault.
That was only half of my problem. The other half was being called into my supervisor’s office where she tersely explained that my naivete embarrassed her and management was upset too. Double whammy. Aside from feeling like I totally screwed up, I also felt misunderstood. What’s wrong with going back to our vendors and hammering them a bit to sharpen the pencil? A little break from suppliers could add up to a lot and at least get the attention (albeit with a smirk) of our customer again. I tried the best I could to explain myself but it fell on deaf ears.
That meeting with my supervisor was probably a 20-minute conversation but my replaying of it over and over again in my head turned it into a 10-year conversation. Oh, the things I could have said in hindsight! Year after year, that same conversation would pop into my mind like it was happening right then and there. Every time something else happened in my life that would trigger similar feelings… I messed up, I’m a failure, I did one little thing wrong and now it has become a big deal and it’s totally out of my control… Here we go again. Back on the treadmill.
Oh, the things I could have said in hindsight!
Then one day I stopped it and I no longer replay that scene in my head. It’s gone so far away that it is hard for me to even remember it now as I write this. Why? Because I changed my past. I decided one day to replay the scene but to change it to the outcome that I wanted. I started at the very beginning, seeing myself send that fateful email to management, but this time I am praised for offering such a great idea. That feels good. I bring that feeling to the meeting with my supervisor. I see her smiling as I walk into her office. She tells me how everyone liked my idea. She’s proud of me and feels good about her decision to have me on board. I am happy as I get up from the chair, feeling like my idea was received and that I made a positive impact on the company.
My replay of the new story morphed the energy so strongly in my memory that it never haunted me again. Is it delusional to try to change the past? Maybe. But no one in that situation probably ever gave it a thought after a week or so and I bet they didn’t lose sleep over it the way I did. So why was I continuing to punish myself over and over again? My changing the past doesn’t affect anyone but me. And what it does for me is priceless. It frees me from my own chains of bondage to that moment. It frees me to feel the peace within myself that I long for.
Why was I continuing to punish myself over and over again?
Want to give it a try? Start simple. Not with a big heavy-duty trauma with lots of layers to it but instead with one of those brief, stinging moments, perhaps with someone you will never see again. Start with the time you wish you could go back and say all the things you should have said. How you should have told them off or walked away, or not walked away. Whatever the scenario, it’s yours to change. The other person(s) involved have their own perceptions of it anyway.
Begin at the beginning. What prompted the situation? Who said what? Who sent the first snarky text? Change it right there. Right at the onset of the drama and then change the next moment and the next, and so on. What did they say to you? What is your response now? Make your response eliminate the conflict completely. Keep adding details and making edits until the entire scene is played back in your mind so differently, that it is not even the same scene anymore.
That is your power. You determine the outcome and take control of your past. Try it with one or two of those annoying experiences that you can’t get out of your head and then work on the bigger dramas later.
Spin it the way you want the story to go and give yourself the blessing of a Disney ending.
Spin it the way you want the story to go and give yourself the blessing of a Disney ending.
Leah M. Hill
