I was answering a comment from fivecentnickel here, and it got me thinking. I noted that until I saw what needed to be done in terms of making better choices, rather than making sacrifices, I was overwhelmed and paralyzed.

Thing is, I had climbed out of debt twice before, when I was coming from what I call punishment thinking. By that, I mean that the steps out of debt were my punishment for being stupid enough to have gotten in there in the first place. So instead of the changes becoming permanent, sooner or later I felt my punishment was over and reverted to my old ways, only i managed to dig a slightly deeper hole each time around.

This time, when I got the wakeup call two years ago, I figured it was my last opportunity, and I was gonna do it right this time. So I did something different. While I was dealing with the collection agencies, I started reading (what the heck – I had no money to go out with…). I read books and blogs on getting out of debt. I read books and blogs on personal development. I started putting together an idea of how to reframe things to the positive. My dear fiance, Dee and I had long discussions about the financial decisions we had made (both jointly and separately), and about where we wanted to go (again both as a couple and separately).

Somewhere along the way, I ran into the one piece of advice that had kind of stuck with me from when i did est back in the day. One of Werner Erhard used to say was, “It lives in your language.” Both as a word lover and as someone familiar with the concepts of Rational-Emotive Therapy, this was a concept that rang true for me. It put the control and power over my life squarely into my own little hands.

Dee and I made conscious attempts to reframe our thinking (an ongoing process, which we are still very much in the middle of), and found that it made a big difference. We stopped blaming ourselves for the mess we were in. This gave us time and space to look at where we wanted to go, and how we could get there. We made lists of our goals and values (again, both jointly and separately). We made lists of what we blamed ourselves and each other for. Then we had one huge blow-out discussion about the past, after which we have done our best to let it go. We made a conscious decision that the past was just that, and that holding on to it would just keep us mired in it.

We are not perfect, by any means. Each of us has a complicated life (and I bet you do, too), with our own baggage. However, we are facing forward finally, and it’s all good, even the rough patches.

You hear all over that those who don’t learn from their mistakes repeat them. This is true as far as it goes. What is less known is that, having learned from them, you must let them go, instead of clinging to them like Linus van Pelt to his blankie.