If you clean out your suitcase at the end of every trip, you’re way ahead of me. I take out the main stuff, but then there are bits of paper and “gimmes” that never seem to escape. If it doesn’t come out after its first trip, it may be there forever. There’s often dithering involved – maybe I’ll need it later, or I’ll take it upstairs because both the case and the item belong in my office, or “I just don’t know what to do with it right now, but I will.”
Big or small, all part of the baggage we collect whether we ever intended to keep it or not. It’s just there – like our emotional baggage, the stuff that we never resolved.
Like my dithering over a pen I was given at a seminar, we collect experiences we don’t really know what to do with at the time. Maybe they’ll be useful – or worse, perhaps they’ll explode at the worst possible moment.
They are there taking up space in our hearts and minds and driving us to unhelpful behaviors that create their own kind of baggage. We drag it with us into new situations and relationships as if it’s “just who we are.”
But it’s not who we are, is it? It’s what we became after some bad experiences. It’s what influenced the way we found to cope.
And it’s a wound we can heal. Yes, easier said than done, but it CAN be done.
For me, my baggage both large and small drove me to soothe myself with food. Food was available and legal, and the only evidence was my expanding waistline. In my family, that was kind of a given, so It wasn’t a big deal – until it was for ME.
How about you? Is that the journey you want to be on?
Sure, we can keep that baggage – we’ve had a lot of practice, and if you want it, it’s yours to hold onto.
Even if it doesn’t help you.
Even if it makes you feel bad or drives you to whatever coping mechanism you choose and the results of that.
Remind me: What’s the purpose for you holding onto that again?
If there’s another journey you want to be on, it begins with unpacking the old stuff to make room. We’ll identify a few of those bits of baggage, but for now:
Identify the baggage that you KNOW is weighing you down.
