Memories, The Bricks That Build Our Lives

Memories are like the waves of the sea, they come and go, capricious and even malevolent, they bring us at will an instant from the past: a voice, a smell, a sound, a moment marked by sadness or joy … We are made of people. of memories that determine and build us, are our roots and trace what we are: beings that experience, grow, mature and learn.

THE DOUBLE FACE OF MEMORIES

Memories are images of the past that are stored in the memory, reproductions that occurred at a certain moment to which we usually give an interpretation and that are often linked to a certain emotional load. In fact, these two concepts “memory / emotion ” are so closely linked that sometimes, the mere fact of feeling happy, scared or unhappy, almost always leads to the emergence of a certain memory of the past, they are affective reactions that show us the great weight that the memories have in our personality.

But, as Cervantes said: “Oh memory, mortal enemy of my rest”, sometimes memories also make us suffer, there may come a time when we cling too much to a certain memory until we get away from our reality and our responsibilities, falling for example into a depression or a nervous breakdown. And the problem is not looking at the past and remembering, the worrying thing comes when you live in the past continuously. This can lead to a fear of the present, of the challenges that life provides us. Anchoring ourselves in the past offers us a permanent feeling of security, it is true, but it is not a real or mature situation. We must take it into account.

POSITIVE MEMORIES TO LIVE BETTER

Good memories are used very often in psychology to create links with meaningful personal experiences from our past. Everything with a positive charge that we have experienced in a moment of our existence has the potential to charge us with good spirits in the present. The mystery behind all this is that good memories can be used to enhance our present resources.

This shows us many times that we are not so far from where we want to be, but that we already carry part of the solution in our trunk of experiences. We can explain it, for example, with research with the so-called mirror neurons, which in addition to favoring our empathy and understanding, allow us to connect with a memory of our brain recreating the same state experienced in the original moment, whether they are pleasant emotions or unpleasant. In this way, and if, for example, we want to learn to be more assertive, they will help us to remember moments in which we have acted with confidence and ease, thus reconnecting with the positive feelings that this behavior produced in us that we wish to enhance.

In addition to this, we can also learn to relive our pleasant memories, and thus benefit from the positive effects of reviewing a situation that we experience as satisfactory, exciting or motivating. Furthermore, if we continually recall good memories to help us strengthen our current coping resources, we can create a self-nurturing system of protection and well-being.

The more effort we make in the good that has happened to us in life, the more we recharge our batteries with positive energy. This positive energy not only makes us feel good, but also increases the possibility that we can react with less depression to negative events. It is what in psychology we call resilience.

So we can conclude by saying that while it is true that we should not live on memories, memories help us to live.