Welcome to Gretta Krane's Newsletter, "Life is a Choice"

This monthly newsletter is written with the intention of showing there really are nothing but possibilities in our lives. Our lives are filled with choices most of us are not even aware that we have. We get to choose how we feel, what we believe, and what to create in our lives.

This newsletter is all about the creative power that we all hold inside of us...

You know I had been hearing the phrase " let go of the past", and "live in the now" for years. And I've always really liked the way it sounded and I believed it was good advice. But I didn't have a clue what that meant for me. What I thought it meant was just stop dwelling on the bad things that have happened in my life. Okay, but how do I do that? And if I would just stop thinking about them then maybe they would go away. So I started saying positive affirmations, thinking that would make the thoughts of my past go away. Nope! No cigars!

Let me tell you about a time in my past that created my need to find out what letting go really meant. My husband committed suicide. Afterwards, I was flooded with emotions: anger, guilt, sorrow and sadness constantly circling my mind. They were intense; and they were relentless. Over time, however, they became less intense and less frequent and so I wondered, "are they gone?" No. They weren't. They were still there creeping up on me at any moment, and more quiet in how they controlled me and influenced my daily decision-making. I was never free from them, and moreover, I had become used to their presence. They were a part of my life. At a time when I didn't know what to expect from, or how to plan for my future, those damaging emotions became part of what I knew and could expect.

Oddly enough, to many who knew me I didn't seem to be holding on to my past experiences at all. To them I seemed just fine. To me, that was not the case. I was never happy and wasn't excited about my life. I didn't feel joy (except in rare situations when something unexpected happened--but it never lasted for long.) What I did have were nagging fears, and endless thoughts of "what if." I was going through my daily life with no sense of satisfaction or pleasure.

But part of me felt that would come. I felt that over time, the changes I was afraid to make now would at some point come…just like that, there'd be changes, and I'd change. I learned that wasn't the case, while change can happen, it doesn't just happen. Not the kind I wanted, anyway; those take a long time and a lot of work. And at that time, my work involved climbing out of the deep, dark well I found myself in after my husband Michael's death.

The thing is, back then I believed I was doing pretty good job given all that had happened. I looked around and realized I was able to go on with my life. I was taking care of my children, myself, the house, yard, the paperwork, and all the things require attention and focus to keep a life on track. That's why many people thought I was completely healed. And truthfully, I was one of those people who bought into that thought, too. I was getting on with life, I was functioning pretty well, I did drive myself with the notion of, "I am going to go on with my life." But all the time, I had the simultaneous thought of, "Is this it? So what if I'm able to go on with life. What does it matter if I'm not happy or excited about life?" Big questions to which I had no answers.

I remember the feeling quite clearly, though. It was as if I was sitting around waiting. Waiting for someone or something to come along, swoop down and make me happy.

I didn't believe I had the power to make myself happy and so I developed a fantasy of happiness magically coming from outside of me.

It went on like that until the day I met a man, a teacher who helped change that fantasy and in its place helped me become a person who could find her own way to happiness. He guided me as I mastered a technique that allowed me to find the nesting ground of the negative beliefs that I held about myself. There were many of them and over the years I kept stuffing them deep down inside of me, creating my own personal set of monogrammed "baggage."

Finding this baggage meant finding the stuffed down emotions and feelings I never dealt with as a child because I didn't know that I should or how. Once I became aware of them, I began to see how those feelings had come to play an important part in so many of the decisions I made throughout my life. I was startled to find myself healing not only from the emotions around my husband's death, but from the feelings I kept bottled up about myself since childhood. Michael's death simply exposed the feelings that were already there.

For example: I recognized so many self limiting beliefs about what a woman's role in society was supposed to be. I was taught, women can go to college to be nurses or teachers and that they need to be married to be accepted into society. That women should let the man always be the breadwinner and decision maker. I was taught I needed to be submissive and thin to be attractive to the handsome men. I grew up with a huge amount of guilt, shame and blame after my father died when I was young, because back in the 60's helping children to grieve or talk about their sorrows was just not done. I was taught to stuff my emotions until they just go away.

Well, they never go away, they are always there tucked away in a nice big bag. Always affecting the decisions I am making in the present, though I'm not even consciously aware of why I'm choosing what I'm choosing. It wasn't until I went back to those moments in my past where the belief about myself and my world was created. Once recognized I was now able to "let it go." Now I could make conscious decisions "in the now."

What was coming between my happiness and me was not Michael's suicide, it was me. My own fears of not being good enough. My process became one of understanding and overcoming my fears so I could realize my dreams.

I began seeing that it was my own perceptions of myself that created the negative feelings I carried around with me every day for all these years. Once I realized that, I saw that those perceptions were simply not true. Understanding this was a huge step for me because it put me on the path to being able to let go of those old beliefs forever. At the same time it provided me with another big step forward…helping me to let go of the past and to start to forgive myself, and all the people I blamed for my unhappiness. Ultimately, I came to recognize that the only one who could ruin my life or take away my happiness was me and my choice of weapon was my thoughts. I learned to lay down those weapons by letting go of many of my old beliefs. And when I did, the many bags I'd been carrying around for decades began disappearing. And me? I felt freer and lighter and more excited to be alive than ever before. For the first time I saw nothing but possibilities for my life.

I get it now. I see the value in letting go of my past, for you really can't live in the now until you do let go of the past. I understand how the past affects my present and future. I can see how those childhood perceptions of myself affected so many decisions I've made throughout my life. From my relationships to opportunities I let go by, or never even tried because I didn't believe I could or that I was good enough.

Letting go of the past takes work. I don't believe you can do it just through affirmations. You need a way to find and expose what the thought is, where it came from, then, you can change it. Once that is done, you now have the power to change your life and to live in the now.

The thing is it doesn't need to take a tragedy to want to change your life or to be happy. You can do this work anytime. Who knows maybe if you do this work now it will change your life enough so that anything becomes possible.

Free from the past, I can live for today and have a tomorrow. You can too. If you find yourself repeating the same experiences or relationships over and over again, if you're too afraid to move forward, or don't believe you can move forward, maybe you are clinging on to a belief from the past and you need to let it go. There are people, and books out there that can help you. Don't be afraid to go find your answers. If you reach out, make that first move out of your own deep well, you can start letting go of your past and create a world of possibilities.

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