Break free of memories!

Scientists are still trying to understand how and why different types of memories are formed. Neuroscience is a complex field with very few definitive facts that we can actually work with as a lay person. However, as human beings we’ve come to understand that a healthy memory is vital to our success on all levels, particularly as it pertains to our life coaching practice.

Being able to remember people’s names, for example, or appointment dates, personal or professional issues, and the myriad of business details . . . these are all important.

But your memory isn’t always accurate. Have you ever noticed how witnesses in police shows remember very little about the suspect or they all give different facts? Eyewitness memory has been studied extensively for obvious reasons, and its accuracy is dependent upon many factors. Little things such as leading questions have been shown to alter a person’s “memory” of an event.

Most people have so-called “flashbulb memories” of where they were and what they were doing when something momentous happened . . . But as clear and detailed as these memories feel, psychologists find they are surprisingly inaccurate.” (How Our Brains Make Memories, Smithsonian Magazine)

Once you accept that memory isn’t usually accurate, it is easier to accept that centering your life and future on your memories is like building your house on sand, i.e., not a solid idea.  But you – like me and most other human beings – do this unconsciously all the time.  We act on memory every day.  It’s a part of how we make even the most mundane decisions, like where we go out to eat or which faces we trust. All that we do is partially based on memory and familiarity. This is key to understanding why your life coaching clients may be engaging in the same self-sabotage over and over again.

Perhaps you’ve seen this in your practice:  a client comes in with a relationship problem, ranting and raving about what this person did “to” them.  As a coach, you probably know that projection is the way in which we push our memories out in front of our eyes and treat them as if they were real.   Usually they are not . . . the pain and anger arise from deeper memories of past hurts, insults and abuse. 

Subconsciously, both you and your clients probably have old, painful memories still generating negative results in your lives after years, if not decades.  While extreme examples of this, i.e., Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is the most obvious tie-in, memory doesn’t have to be extreme to have a strong, lasting effect. Most people hold deep memories from childhood – or even through ancestral links – that still direct their decisions, whether they are conscious of this or not!

The good news is that we can access these memories by communicating with the subconscious mind through a simple feedback mechanism like muscle testing. The subconscious remembers everything, but we have to communicate in such a way he or she is willing to release the accumulated garbage. This is the foundation of the Logical Soul Method® that Dr. Craig teaches. It’s a great life coaching technique that has helped me alter life changing decisions that were based on nothing more than hidden memories and decisions.

By interviewing the subconscious and allowing memory to naturally arise, we can soon earn its trust and suggest it be willing to make a new decision. By coming to terms with an old memory, the subconscious can either alter it, resolve it, or simply accept and let it go.

This is a simple yet powerful process that can change the lives of your life coaching clients instantaneously. By making peace with memories, you can make peace with yourself and the world. Why let memories control you when there is so much more available to you?! By treating memories as a story or a useful tool, you can begin to distance yourself from the harm they cause and free yourself from most destructive cycles.

As Douglas Adams wrote in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, “How can I tell that the past isn’t a fiction designed to account for the discrepancy between my immediate physical sensations and my state of mind?”

You can present your life coaching clients with the opportunity to let go of the past and break free of memories quickly and easily with Dr. Craig’s Logical Soul Method®. For even more life coaching tips, check out his FREE report for coaches.

How do you let go of the past and put memories to rest? What techniques work best for you? Please share your story with us by leaving a comment below.