– Marianne Williamson
We all have stories about horrible things that happened to us in past relationships that we tell ourselves over and over again. Sometimes we do this because there isn’t much going on in our lives; we need something to think about, and that’s the most exciting thing we can come up with at that moment. Sometimes we just feel vaguely dissatisfied, frustrated or unfulfilled, so we go looking for why we feel that way, and like a groove in a well-traveled dirt road, we fall right back into that same old story and figure that must be the cause of our unhappiness. The more we focus on this story as the reason we feel bad, the deeper that rut gets, and the more likely we are to get stuck in it and unable to move forward. When we get tired of feeling bad, we have to summon the will to push ourselves out of that rut by focusing our attention on the road ahead of us and where we’d like to go instead. The surest way to do that is to let go of those old stories and start creating new ones by getting involved in new relationships and new adventures. When our schedules are packed with exciting challenges and pleasurable plans, we no longer have the time or energy to keep spinning our wheels through the same old territory over and over again.