I've previously written about the importance and power of letting go the past, relationships that are 'toxic' and behaviours that aren't aligned with, or heading us towards health, wellbeing and happiness.

No surprise then to find others extolling the same approach.

This from a Sydney Morning Herald Spectrum article in which American author Augusten Burroughs is interviewed.

From the article:

It's futile to try to understand the damage we have suffered, he says, because we only have our perspectives about what happened, and not the perpetrator's or bystander's. Not only this, such a search is irrelevant to what we need to do now to cope, which is to focus on the present and keep busy with activities such as exercise or housework so as to break the "addiction" of dwelling on the past.

...

"I know it sounds like the most ridiculous thing in the world but you need to force your brain out of that neural pathway, out of that trap, out of that chemical etching," he says.1

Well said, I say.

That's pretty much the focus of my work (see procreative.com.au), focusing on what we want, not what happened in the past. The creative process actually requires a profound letting go that rejigs the neural and genetic pathways and structures.

I'm reminded of a passage in Seth (Jane Roberts):

A sudden contemporary belief in illness will actually reach back into the past, affecting the organism at that level, and inserting into the past experience of the cells the initiation of those biological events that will then seem to give birth to a present disease.

In the current pivoting of its experience, therefore, your conscious mind directs not only the present, but future and past experience of deep neurological events.2

Update

In recognising it's not optimal to give thought and energy to what we don't want, it's not ideal to attempt to remove a particular etch in the brain (see above). Best to simply focus on what we want, and let go the old old beliefs and habitual behaviours that haven't resulted in desired outcomes. This is more easily appreciated when we reflect on where our attention is directed -- toward the past, or toward a more desirable future? "But it really happened" might be true, but focusing on THAT PAST telegraphs our inability to "let go" and focus forward, toward how we wish to feel and be. It's a qualitative aspect many, it seems, fail to understand. A negative response to the question: "Is this how I want to feel?" automatically switches our focus, imagination, desires and action toward a higher quality-of-life.