Speak No Evil

“To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves.”
—Will Durant

We are all guilty of speaking negatively about other people in our lives, especially if that person has hurt us in some way. And sometimes people talk badly about others because they are so lacking in self-esteem it is their way of trying to make themselves look better. The sad part is that when we talk about someone in a negative way it doesn’t give us a lift at all, either from within or from those we are talking to.

There are people in our lives who probably deserve to be talked badly about. They may not be living life the best way possible for them. But it’s not our place to tell them how to live and gossiping about them surely won’t give them any guidance. We may be put in the path of another on any given day as part of their lesson but it’s not our duty to decide what they need to learn.

If we are in relationship with someone who doesn’t treat us right and we decide to move on, that’s our right. Just because we see things that they need to do differently, in our opinion, it’s still not our place to make sure they are getting the lesson, especially when they know why we left.

The responsibility lies in that person being honest with himself, and us taking care of our own lessons. If they didn’t get the lesson while dealing with us, they will be presented the opportunity again. How many times have we had to be given a learning experience only to have to go through it again with another situation because we didn’t get it the first, second, or tenth time?

It’s okay to talk about someone to another if we are honestly trying to work through our hurt feelings and issues surrounding that relationship. We need to talk about it and get input from others. What’s not okay is to continually put that person down to others to simply make ourselves look or feel better. Just because we may know the faults of others, it’s not serving us or anyone else to spread that information to the world.

Speaking poorly about another person does not give us a boost in the eyes of others.

Facing Our Giants

“You will not be free
Hanging on to things
That hold you back & hurt
That question all your worth
That make you feel afraid…”
—Christine Havrilla (song lyrics)

We all have things that hold us back and hurt. Many of us have carried these things with us since we were small children. And some of us even after therapy and lots of emotional and spiritual growth cannot completely let the “things” go no matter how hard we try.

What we can do though is move forward despite whatever it is that is an obstacle for us. Even if we don’t do it great and even if we cry and our hands shake all the way through it, we still only make progress by attempting, never by sitting still and saying we can’t.

For me there are many of these things and mostly they are performance anxiety related. When I returned to college as an adult I was determined that I would take speech class and get it out of the way, and if I did that I could make it through school. Because I have such fear of public speaking it was very difficult. For my final speech I presented information about panic attacks because many of my symptoms when “performing” in front of others are similar.

And not only did I make it through that class, I got an A and I ended up graduating from college. I had to give a few more speeches in other classes and it never got any easier, but I made it through.

No matter how many times I’ve had to perform in some aspect in front of others, no matter how afraid I was, or how bad my hands shook, or even the number of tears I cried, none of that ever killed me or even brought me great shame. I may never get to a place where I don’t have this level of fear, but if I don’t attempt to walk through it I know I will continue to carry it with me.

We are all human. We all have obstacles that hold us back and hurt. What we choose to do with those will determine a lot about where we can go in our lives. Walking through our fears, facing the giants, gives us character and strength.

Progress comes with attempting, never by sitting still and saying I can’t.

Powerless Over Others

“We admitted we were powerless over others — that our lives had become unmanageable.”
—Step One of the 12 Steps of Co-Dependents Anonymous

We cannot control other people. We can’t control their thoughts, behaviors or actions. No matter how much we may wish to we will never be able to do such a thing. So the sooner we learn this and accept our powerless over others, the faster we can move forward with our own growth and ability to be in relationship with others. When we try to control others our lives will be unmanageable and we won’t find peace until we let go.

We may have tried in our lives to help a partner, friend, or family member who has an addiction problem, only to find out that no matter what we did they didn’t get any better because it’s their issue and no amount of interference will stop a person until they are ready.

Sometimes in relationships in order to get along with another person we may try to control outcomes of interactions only to find our best intentions fall flat. We may try to say what we think they want us to say and that’s not right. So we say nothing and that fails too. We let them make all of the decisions and that doesn’t work either.

We simply cannot control another person, just as we cannot control any outcome. As soon as we can admit being powerless over others, we can begin to let go and move on. We can look at what we do have power over. We can walk out the door, quit the job, move on if need be. That’s where our power lies, in what we can do, not what they do or don’t do.

We can have more manageable lives when we learn to take care of our side of the street and leave other people to deal with their issues. It’s not usually easy, especially when we care about someone deeply, but we can’t have relationships with others the way we want on their terms only. We only have power over what we do and say and that’s a big enough job without trying to control another person’s behaviors.

Accepting powerless over others gives us power.

Having Swagger

“In college football, the swagger is essential for any team to win a national title. Nearly every great team in college football seems to have that air of invincibility.”
—Columnist J.P. Degance

Having high self-esteem and being in a place in life where we feel on top of the world gives us swagger. And while this word may bring to mind images of a peacock in full plumage strutting around, chest stuck out, head held high it doesn’t mean having a swagger is a bad thing at all.

There’s a difference in feeling good about ourselves and feeling invincible than there is in being cocky. When we have experienced having the swagger we know it is something we want, it’s a place we want to be in our lives. But it isn’t always present. Life happens. Trauma and tragedy happen. Disappointments happen. But we can get our swagger back.

If we keep doing the things we know to do — the next right thing — we can get our lives back on track if things have gone awry lately. And we can either return to our swagger or discover it for the first time.

When we have swagger, we feel like we can succeed at anything we do, and when we believe in ourselves we can achieve most anything we set our mind to.

Swagger, confidence, the feeling of invincibility can take us a long way on our journey. It can help us heal from hurtful situations or loss; it can give us the courage to face a difficult challenge; we may better be able to set and keep boundaries; and it might help us to go after a goal that we wish to achieve but have not found the courage yet to approach.

As long as we aren’t boastful and conceited, having swagger isn’t a bad thing at all, it’s something to be cherished and held onto if possible. If having swagger can help a whole football team win a national championship, just think what we could do with it in our lives.

Don’t ever feel ashamed of having swagger just be sure to use it for good.

Coming Alive

“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
—Harold Whitman

Whenever we are really fired up about something we are doing in our lives we have all the energy in the world to do it. We are fully alive. And it shows because we spend the time on it to succeed. We have the drive and energy necessary to be successful in the endeavor.

On the flip side when confronted with tasks we’d just as soon not have to do we often must talk ourselves into those things. We procrastinate. We moan and groan about it. We feel tired and unenthusiastic. We probably don’t do whatever it is very well even if we manage to do it.

Having a strong desire, a fire in our belly for something, is what moves us into action. When we have that, nothing can get in our way. Our mind is focused; other things are put to the side. So when we find ourselves with an intense interest in doing something or we remember a time when we did have the enthusiasm that made us feel alive, it’s time to do that thing.

Sometimes what makes us come alive is not a task that would support us financially, but if it is such a thing we should do our best to make that our life’s work. The thing that makes us come alive is a gift and no matter if it’s income producing or not, we should share that gift with others.

No gift is unimportant. Every opportunity to use our talents is important. And once we discover what it is that makes us come alive we will find a way to do that anyway because it feels good.

Find what makes you come alive and then share it with others.

Forgiveness

“Forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better past.”
—Lily Tomlin

If we desire to rid our lives of resentment, regret, and bitterness, we probably need to work on forgiveness.

Forgiving others and ourselves is a way to move past those things that are blocking our growth and happiness. When we have a resentment because of something that was done to us, or when we regret something we have done, we are continuing to live in the past. And since we cannot change the past we must try another option.

Forgiveness is letting go. It’s not necessarily forgetting something lest we have to go through the same situation again, but it also means we move on with the knowledge that what is done is done and we cannot change it. Holding onto whatever it is won’t make it go away. Letting go of it will.

Sometimes we won’t forgive someone because we are not ready to move on. We hold onto the pain at times because it’s familiar or it’s all we have left of a person or situation. Additionally, hanging onto resentment from the past keeps us in the victim status of life. As long as we don’t forgive and move on from a painful situation we remain the victim. We can be stronger than that. We can move out of the misery that victim status holds by forgiving.

And while forgiveness means giving up hope for a better past, it also offers us a better future than we would have if we hung onto a hurtful issue. We must look within and find out why we are unwilling to forgive ourselves or someone else. It may be that we think forgiveness lets someone off the hook for having done us wrong, but it doesn’t. And hanging onto our pain doesn’t teach them a lesson either. Not forgiving ourselves keeps us living in guilt.

Forgiveness removes the roadblock to the future.

Staying Open

“When we close ourselves off from our friends, our fellow travelers, we block God’s path to us and through us. …When we close ourselves off from each other, we have destroyed the vital contribution we each need to make and to receive in order to nurture life.”
—Karen Casey

Not shutting down after being hurt is difficult. Staying open despite our pain takes a great deal of effort. And we may need to shut down temporarily from time to time. But to stay shut off, to build up another wall each time we are disappointed and hurt is not the answer. Putting up walls and shutting down just adds to our pain.

If we are living a full life we are going through painful experiences. That’s just how life is. We know that we grow through the tough times, we’ve already learned that. Then why do we get angry with ourselves and God when we find that we are in the midst of a painful growing situation? Most likely because we expect perfection from ourselves and wish we could have known not to go into the situation where we got hurt. We blame God because we don’t understand God.

Some of our pain from a situation can be from prior relationships, issues from when we were still children, and low self-esteem. For instance, if we have a fear of abandonment and we are abandoned by someone, it’s easy to see the pain of the current situation magnified.

Even when we feel a lot of anger in a situation with someone, we can know that the person that hurt us was placed in our lives for a reason. That may not be clear to us at the time of our intense pain, but hopefully one day when the pain has lessened we will see. And likewise, we were put in the other person’s life for their growth.

Whenever we are hurting it feels as if the pain will never stop that we will never feel good again. But we will return to a better place. And we’ll have learned something in the process. We will also be stronger. But the experience, the pain we felt, the growth, will only be worth it if we continue to live and stay open.

Shutting down is the only thing that keeps the pain present and keeps us from growth.

You Deserve Your Love

“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection.”
—Buddha

Looking outside of ourselves to find a hero, or to find someone to love us to somehow justify that we are loveable is not what we ought to do. Instead we start with our self. When we love who we are we will draw love to us as we give it. And it will be much healthier than what we are accustomed to as we have tried to find it outside of ourselves.

Loving ourselves is paramount to loving others. It really is that simple. If we can love ourselves we can love others, and if we don’t love ourselves no amount of effort to love another will ever be successful.

A lot of the time we look outside of ourselves for encouragement and recognition. We wait for others to tell us how great we did something, or how handsome or pretty we look. Sometimes people just don’t give out compliments. And it doesn’t mean we aren’t deserving of praise, but it may be that the other person is waiting on it too.

What we can do instead is pat ourselves on the back. We nurture us and give ourselves gifts that we deserve for a job well done. Maybe the gift we need is a day of rest. Sometimes we want to buy something or go out to dinner. Perhaps all we need is to hear a compliment. Any of those things we can do for ourselves.

If we set a goal to lose a particular amount of weight, run a 5K in a certain number of minutes, seek a new job, get the laundry done, whatever it is that we set forth to do, once completed we deserve praise. Give it to yourself. Waiting on others to fulfill our needs will never work. That would be codependent behavior and that’s something we wish to avoid.

Sure, compliments from others are always nice, and very much welcome, but having them or not should not determine our level of happiness or love for ourselves. The problem is, even if someone praises us, if we don’t believe what they are saying about us it won’t stick anyway.

Love starts within.

Getting Through Grief

“Hope is grief’s best music.”
—Unknown

The grieving process is one that we would very much like to avoid, but it’s an inevitable part of life. It can strike when we go through personal trauma or change, or when we lose a loved one, pet, relationship, job, home, or anything that means something to us. To experience grief means that we have opened our heart to love and joy and lost something, which is better than to never experience truly living.

The Elisabeth Kübler-Ross model shows that grieving has five stages, which are not experienced sequentially, but rather randomly and some are not experienced by every person who experiences grief. The five stages, according to her model, are: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

Many times when a person is sad people will tell them not to cry, but it’s cleansing to cry, and a part of the process. If we hold in our feelings they will come back in the future and manifest in other ways. We may have a lot of anger and not understand where that’s coming from. We may experience a deep depression that we cannot seem to shake. No matter how the feelings come up, they will at some point. The best thing to do is feel what we feel now and move through them so that the grief doesn’t interfere with our future relationships.

Grieving is part of life. We should never be ashamed for feeling a feeling. Our emotions are part of us. They mean we are human.

Also keep in mind that the length of time we grieve is not predetermined. It’s a process that is not pleasant or fun, but there are some things that can help us through it including talking to friends and loved ones; exercising; counseling; joining a support group; eating right; listening to or playing music; and doing something fun when feeling up to it.

Most importantly we should be patient and loving towards ourselves no matter how long it takes to get through the process. We will get past a great deal of the pain with time and effort. The kinder we are to ourselves during our grief, the easier time we will have in moving on. The sadness we feel when we grieve feels like something we will never be rid of, but before we know it we will successfully be at a place where we can feel joy again.

Grieving is easier when we are loving and patient with ourselves.

Living Now

“God made the world round so we would never be able to see too far down the road.”
—Isak Dinesen

Staying in the moment is not an easy thing to do. We are often either lamenting yesterday or worried about tomorrow. And more often than not we are trying to live our lives in the far off future.

When we stay stuck in the past we can’t move on to the next lesson and most likely we are missing out on what we’ve been given for today. What happened before is best left behind. We do this with prayer, letting go, forgiving, asking for forgiveness if needed, and possibly making amends to those we have harmed.

To live in the future also causes us to miss the moment and the lesson at hand. Worry about tomorrow, next week, next year, or whatever outcome we are stressing over, will not make something happen the way we want. Worry never solved anything. In fact, worry may sabotage our best interests. If we are in a constant state of worry, most likely there are a lot of negative thoughts associated with that. And those thoughts can become reality.

To not worry about the past or future does not mean we don’t take responsibility for what we’ve done or what we are going to do. It doesn’t mean living our lives without any planning or goals, it just means that we focus on the facts of a situation rather than the crazy things our minds try to tell us.

One tool that is helpful when we cannot let go of a particular troublesome thing is to ask ourselves, “Will what I’m worrying about, or the outcome of it, matter in five years?” Often what we are so upset about is something that won’t matter in five days, let alone down the road. But it could be something big enough to matter in five years, although worry itself won’t make a difference in anything. If some future issue is causing us to worry, and the outcome does matter in the future, we can take the steps to work on the decision, and take the best actions we know of to prepare for and solve it … all the while we can pray about it and turn it over to our Higher Power.

Life would be without growth if we had a fortune teller on hand.