What can you do when you believe, that your present life isn’t working properly for you-or that it isn’t working at all?

This may be a tough question, but it’s an important one.

Symptoms that suggest you’re not satisfied with your present life include agonizing over your past, feeling sorry for yourself, complaining that “you didn’t do this or that,” and repeating your old failures.

After taking all the above indicators into consideration, there’s one more that’s a sure sign you aren’t satisfied with your present life: your excuse for not making any positive changes.

Let me tell you something. Whenever people ask me to tell them about my previous traumatic experiences, such as how my family escaped war in my homeland, I refuse to tell them anything.

Am I being rude by not responding to their request? Not at all. I’m protecting myself from allowing a past traumatic experience to ruin my present life.

When people start to talk about previous negative or traumatic experiences, they actually bring those past traumas into the present. In those moments, they live in the past.

Is dragging negative past experiences into the present helpful? No, it isn’t.

Bringing a bad, sad, or traumatic experience into the present also brings very strong emotional charges that are connected to that experience.

Of course, if you’ve had a strong emotional experience, the neural circuits of your brain will remember it forever. Each experience is accompanied by strong emotions, either positive or negative, and each negative experience leads to the release of “bad chemicals” (stress hormones).

When you talk about your past traumatic experience, you’re reliving it in the present time, thereby releasing the same stressful hormones twenty or more years after the event has occurred. Your brain doesn’t know the difference between the real-life event and your memory of that event, which is creating the same emotions.

The problem begins when people think and feel about the past and do nothing about the present.

You can’t change your past. You can change only your present. However, notice that I didn’t say you can change everything in your present life.

However, if you believe that something’s wrong with your present life, try to change it if you can.

Don’t dwell on the past while making excuses about life not being “fair.” (Whoever said that life is fair, anyway?) It’s just one more excuse for doing nothing to change your present life.

Start to change your life by changing your neurochemistry; you can do that simply by changing the way you think about things in your life.

Remember: Your thoughts and feelings create your present.

When you break the cycle of negativity that surrounds you, your present life will work for you.