Someone once said that if we do not learn from history, we are destined to repeat it. Who wants to reiterate the same mistakes over and over again. Who wants to stay stuck duplicating day in and day out the same patterns that produce the same unsuccessful results? Continued mistakes might be a funny plot for a movie, such as Groundhog Day, but replicated errors in real life are not.

Guts

It takes guts, grit, and courage to step away from the predictable, yet harmful cycles in our lives. Though we may know what to expect and find comfort in the foreseeable results of our redundant words and actions, the fact that nothing changes is a sure sign that something needs changing. 

Change, if we want it, is within our reach. Though we cannot foresee exactly how a chosen alteration may affect us or others, we are well acquainted with the results of our repetitiveness. As the saying goes, if we keep doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results, we are only making ourselves crazy. 

Sometimes it is painful and embarrassing to admit some of the things from our past. Yet I am also grateful when I can admit when besetting behaviors are indeed, in the past. 

One example from my history was my clunky way of interpersonal communication. Right out of the gate with my marriage, I was ready and hopeful that my husband and I would have intimate, heartfelt and authentic communication. Of course, I did not consider the work involved in succeeding at such a lofty goal, I just expected it to miraculously happen. Oh how wrong I was. 

Somehow, I’d expected my husband to know how I felt without having to explain how I felt. Somehow I’d anticipated his full understanding of me without me having to reveal anything to him. Where I acquired such ideas I cannot say. I can only say that I possessed them and held onto them for dear life. 

To say that I was disappointed with our communication would be minimizing my reaction.  I was devastated, taken aback and confounded by what I considered to be his cluelessness. What would it take for him to change?  And that was the magic question, almost. The question just needed to be restated with the proper pronoun; what would it take for me to change. 

Change was within my reach, but it had to begin with me. To say it felt risky for me to share with him how I felt, to be honest with my words, and to be vulnerable in his presence is an understatement. It was downright intimidating, and scary. But by taking the necessary baby steps toward change, change happened. 

I can say that after a few years of trial and error, my clunky interpersonal communication has been transformed into intimate, heartfelt and authentic communication.

Why bother learning from history? Learning from our history instead of repeating it makes us wiser, better and a lot less crazy.