Just get over it!

People say it’s good to share, but not if you’re then told to “just get over it!”

How to “just get over it” is what you really need to hear.

So in this post, and a few more posts to come, I’ll be discussing how to “just get over it,” whatever “it” may be in your case.

To find the solution to a problem we need to see the problem clearly, and that means taking it apart to look inside.

What stops you “getting over” something in your past?

Probably the most important is the conversations you keep having in your mind about what happened.

This is called your “internal dialogue” if you’re talking to another person in your mind, or “internal monologue” if you’re talking to yourself.

In internal dialogue, we are usually talking to somebody who wronged us, telling them how unfairly they treated us and so on, or just venting our rage at them.

Or if guilt is our problem, we might be apologising to somebody we’ve wronged ourselves.

If it’s internal monologue, we’re generally criticising or even insulting and browbeating our self for what we did or didn’t do at some time in the past.

It’s these internal conversations that stop us moving on, because they keep our attention focused on the past, which we cannot change, rather than the present where we can make changes.

We can pull our attention away from these internal conversations by directing it at anything outside our self.

So here’s a simple method for directing your attention.

Every time you catch yourself in an internal conversation, just stop that conversation in its tracks, and look around you.

You know how to stop a conversation with another real person, so you can stop a conversation with yourself in exactly the same way.

Then look, listen, and feel what’s going on around you, at this moment in the real world.

If you’re in a city street, notice how many colours you can see on the buildings and vehicles and peoples’ clothing.

Can you see all the seven colours of the rainbow?

Then notice how many sounds you can hear, including different vehicles, voices of men women and children, dogs barking and birds singing, machinery or music.

Then notice how many sensations you can feel through your body, like the wind, the sunshine or rain, the ground under your feet, and your own body.

You can keep on walking while you do this, or you can stop a while to look around you if that doesn’t draw too much attention.

Half a minute or a minute is plenty, then move on.

You will have to do this many, many times to form a new habit of paying attention to the real world around you in the here and now.

Because repetition is all it takes to make or break a habit.

And because you’ve previously had dozens of these inner conversations every day, you now have dozens of opportunities to practice stopping them.

Try it for a week and see what happens!