Linda Graham, MFT looks at the benefit of recalling missed opportunities for kindness.  Active imagination revisioning can rewire the brain when an opportunity to be kind was missed.
Most of us want to be kind, to ourselves and others, most of the time. Most of us try to be kind, much of the time.
And then there are the many, many times when we “wake up” hours or days or years later.  “I could’ve…!” “I should’ve…!” But the person we now want to be kind to is miles or years away.  Possibility gone forever.
The good news of neuroplasticity: that moment isn’t gone forever in the brain.  Because what the brain can imagine or visualize is real to the brain, we can re-create the scenario in our mind’s eye, and re-wire the brain’s circuity holding the memory of that event (or didn’t-happen event).
When we recall something that happened (or didn’t happen) into conscious awareness, we are activating or “lighting up” the neural circuity that constellates that memory.  It is open to revision. (The brain revises our memories on its own over time all the time anyway.)  The technical name in neuroscience for this revision process is memory deconsolidation-reconsolidation.
When we “light up” a memory in our conscious awareness, we create the opportunity to

Originally published at http://loveandlifetoolbox.com