Getting the right impression

We acquire emotional baggage from unforgettable experiences that give us the wrong impression about ourselves, our lives and our freedoms. These negative experiences convince us to feel unworthy, dangerous, deficient, powerless, mistaken or worse. We internalize these wrong impressions into negative self concepts that profoundly limit what we think we can accomplish successfully.

Resolving emotional baggage occurs when we get the right impression about ourselves, our lives and our freedom. We realize we are not what happened to us or how it made us feel. We have always been free of all that in spirit and can keep that freedom in mind. We can let go of the past memories, grudges and self pity. We can get over the negative self concept and move on as if we've become complete with what happened and grown to be big minded about it.

These right impressions are difficult to come by. The wrong impressions are extremely convincing and contagious. They give everyone touched by the experience the sense to do the wrong thing. Some get the urge to compound simple problems into unsolvable messes. Others get enticed to fall into one or more pitfalls. Some opt to endure unresolved issues that spawn reenactments of abuses, losses or other crises. Others find collaborators who mutually distance, manipulate or control their compatriots. None of this makes it easy or obvious how to come by the right impression.

We are one step away from the right impression when we can sense the wrong impression it made on us and all the ways that error compounded itself. We can see that we were not perceived as who we are. We can recognize the error in how we were talked to, opposed and mistreated. We can perceive the others' sense to do the wrong thing resulting from their getting the wrong impression about themselves. We can then extract ourselves from the contagious nightmare with the right impression. We can exercise our freedom and then keep it in mind hence forward.