A couple of days ago, I had a conversation involving myself, my mom and my sister that proved to be rather therapeutic in nature. I can’t recall what exactly encouraged our chat to go in the direction it did, but we found ourselves discussing the concept of dwelling and how absolutely useless it is in essence.
I am a dweller. It is not something I am proud of, nor is it a characteristic I would associate with positivity. If I had to guess, I would think dwelling is more common than not among people, and this realization is a bit discouraging seeing as dwelling fails to achieve anything terribly advantageous.
Perhaps part of the reason so many of us dwell on negative things that occurred in the past is because of how easy it is to do so. For whatever reason, our subconscious likes to trick us into thinking that devoting time and effort to undesirable events of our past is a better practice than focusing on the present, and furthermore, the positive.
When I catch myself dwelling, I genuinely try, at that moment, to force my mind to shift and direct its attention to something more deserving. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, and sometimes, my mind will wander from that shitty happening to a different one, which ultimately defeats the purpose of self-inflicted distraction. My results haven’t proved to be overly affluent, but it’s a start.
When you think about it, dwelling literally accomplishes nothing. We do not have the ability to change the outcomes of events of our past, so why should we even be tempted by the idea of stewing over something that caused us displeasure of some sort? We know this, and yet, we continue to smoulder in our own heads. It’s pretty stupid, really, yet so alluring.
Don’t be a dweller. Easier said than done, but not impossible.
Photo by Dev Asangbam on Unsplash
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