Rewriting the past

Ever wished you could do something over? Erase a traumatic event, or obliterate that time you made such a fool of yourself?

Well, you can, in a way. You can retell the story and change how you feel about it, if not literally go back and change things.

Learning from past mistakes means that we must reach into our minds and drag those uncomfortable memories to light. Not play the memory over and over in our minds, but really look at it.

Something wonderful happens when you do that: the memory loses its sting, and you discover how much you have grown, and how deep the wisdom is that you acquired.

This spread¹ helps you look at an emotional event in an analytical way.

1. The event you want to reconsider. What really happened.
2. The consequences of that event; what went wrong, and is still not resolved.
3. Now we let the imagination draw a different picture. What could have been? What if … had happened? In your mind’s eye, replace the event in card 1 with whatever the third card calls up for you. How different would things have been? Is it a negative or positive event?
4. Moving back to the original event, what if your response to the event had been …? How would this alternative path have influenced the situation? What difference would it have made to the consequences of the event?
5. Lessons learned: What can you do differently if it happens again? What different path can you take? Is this the same as in card 4, or would you have done something completely different?

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1. Thanks to my husband, Thomas (Learning in vivo), who helped me fine-tune the spread.