What Did You Learn?
By Colle Davis
An event may have been traumatic, funny, silly, scary, or boring, and you learned something if you paid attention.
That which does not kill you makes you SMARTER.
Feelings from a negative experience often impact, entangle, or override the learning. When emotions attached to adverse events override the learning, the feeling becomes rigid and starts controlling your life and choices. The learning is forgotten and all we remember is the trauma and the pain from a car accident, dropping out of school, losing money, or from a painful divorce.
Some people never ‘get over it,’ and pull up the memories for years following the incident. Traumatic experiences get stored along with the emotional impact for later review and reliving. How we respond to recalling the incident can be changed.
My own personal experience: I suffered a near-death injury in a war and spent eight months in a military hospital. The injury was severe enough to qualify me as a 100% disabled Veteran.
What did I learn? Wars are dangerous, and recovery may take longer than expected. In the intervening years, I successfully raised a family, had several careers, am happily married for many decades, and I have enjoyed good health in a limited fashion. And I avoid war zones.
Many of us have childhood memories full of good experiences, and those memories nurture and mature us to become adults. Some adults have horrific childhoods and still become productive members of society. They do not let the trauma define them. Seemingly minor experiences heavily impact others, and they have trouble moving past them.
One example is agoraphobia. A client of mine had a traumatic event in her mid-teens, leading to her inability to be in open spaces. She was involved in a boating accident at fourteen and could not be in open spaces to the point she could not drive on the freeway. We removed the old feeling associated with the boating accident; she could suddenly drive anywhere. Yes, the process is that fast.
Another example is the fear of flying. A client wanted to travel, but she refused to travel by air, limiting her dreams of seeing the world. In one session with me, we removed her fear of flying. She traveled extensively to the Middle East and met her new husband, and today, they are happily married and continue to travel together.
Learning is instantaneous, as are the feelings. It all happens in a flash. The learning can get buried in the emotions, never to surface until the trauma is removed.
Less traumatic learning includes learning to ride a bicycle or a horse, play an instrument, or any of the millions of experiences we go through in life.
Remember, it is the learning we want, not the emotions or the memories. Learning is a valuable component of living. The older you get, the more the learning becomes knowledge and wisdom.
It’s your choice: Learn the tricks for learning to live fully without the lingering traces of trauma. Coaching makes the difference. Call me today.
It is up to you to decide if you want help to become a wise and fun person. Some are not called; they are the ones who suffer and cause pain for others—it is your choice.
You will achieve different results by doing anything different than you currently do. Guaranteed. See the rest of our website or follow us on LinkedIn for more tips and tricks.
Contact me if you want more suggestions on how to reap bigger rewards. Or, if you really want to increase the size of your rewards quickly, hire me as your coach.
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