I DISPISE SELF PITY.
I spent a career learning and teaching how to take outside circumstances and keep them emotionally and physically separate from your ability to respond. I learned and preached on the subject of decisions determine destinations - that allowing outside circumstances to be the reason for some failure in your life, some "demise" you are working through is W-E-A-K.
The judgy feel inherent in saying WEAK and not something more empowering is because I know that was the emotion I carried with that lesson when I taught it - whether to a client, in a group, or through writing. And that was because it was me, talking to myself obviously. I firmly believe that we are harsh in our commentary of life (read: the lives of others) to the extent that we are being harsh on ourselves. The better, more accurate word to reflect what I learned, what I've experienced and what I ACTUALLY believe would go like this.
I believe that allowing outside circumstances to be the reason for some failure in your life, some "demise" you are working through is...simply a lack of education and something that we can learn to do totally differently. Once you learn that your decisions can change your destinations DESPITE circumstances, you are in the drivers seat and can have hope.
Examples of this are
1) the person who is telling themselves the story that they cannot eat well because they have to cook for their family or husband and that is not what those people want.
To that I offer: Millions of people eat well and cook different for their families every single day. If you want to change how you eat, you are not a prisoner, a factory worker in a communist country, you are FREE to eat well. That lesson, or some version of it, liberated hundreds upon hundreds of people who saw their obstacles melt away and finally were able to live in high energy, healthy bodies.
2) The person who is telling themselves the story that they cannot build a business "because of the economy."
To that I offer: Look around at the millions of businesses operating today because they chose to adapt and overcome. They chose to respond to the market rather than create a business around their own wants, but rather serve the customers out there and make it work. That liberated hundreds of entrepreneurs into realizing there will always be obstacles (gender, color, economy, financial constraints, etc) But other people have a different set of obstacles so you own and conquer yours and let others own and conquer theirs
What I never considered, what I never understood and what I never fathomed (because life has a way of numbing us in our ignorance, which often becomes a feeling of false authority) is that you cannot "decide" your way out of the pain, the shock, and the grief of the circumstances. You can change alot with your own decision but you cannot change, by decision, your processing of an event.
And because I had lived through some trauma in my 20's, and walked the walk of deciding on a great destination through many difficult things, all without succumbing to self pity, I was fully convinced I was right. So suck it up and change things for your self wasn't just something I learned and taught, it was something I walked.
I can teach and inspire on this for hours. I still love it. I still love the magic in seeing someone's mind unlock and their belief come flooding out. And in that, I had no room for self pity. In fact, breaking the self pity habit was a big part of my belief system and the foundation on which I believe you go and get what it is your heart desires.
So for that person whose heart and stopped desiring, its not a matter of decisions changing the destination, its a matter of needing your heart to wake back up, so you can desire something in the first place.
This is the next level. This is my "level up" of late. What does a person do when the obstacle is that they don't desire. They don't see a better future, they don't wish and yearn. My lesson no longer worked for this. One cannot decide their way out of losing hope and desire into a different destination.
So I realized, I still hate self pity, its a destructor and a thief. Yet, I have spent 3 years feeling pretty sorry for myself. One year before my Dad died and the 2 years afterward. And here is one thing I know for sure - it wasn't a DECISION. It was a feeling. And I actively worked very very hard to dig and climb, to search and rescue myself and over time, the feeling has changed.
So I am writing the addendum - for myself but especially for anyone who relates to hearing the theme and concepts of Decisions Determine Destinations, or how to respond and not react, so forth and so on ... and feel completely UNHEARD and MISUNDERSTOOD. And full of self loathing.
I want to say this - That approach to life only works if your heart yearns and desires some destination and you are seeing obstacles and 'reasons' you can't get there. It 100% doesn't work if you are lacking that yearning. So tuning into those messages will create self loathing that multiplies! Then answer you seek is not there. At least it wasn't for me.
I now recognize that as I taught the "DDD lesson" I saw people all the time who I thought
"why are you trying to make yourself want something because you see other people who want it"?
"if you would figure out what YOU really want, then all of this would start to click for you"...
Of course I didn't say it and I had nothing to offer them, it was just an observation.
They could never reach their goal because they really didn't DESIRE (that is a big, emotion filled, action producing word). Yet they would come to me and other sources trying to find the motivation to get some thing they didn't even want!
In fact, what I learned is that the destination then becomes to dig and climb and find all the ways to heal. Period. To regain your balance.
And that involves alot less of listening to people like me teach and preach from a standpoint of their own healed and balanced selves striving for whats on their heart... and way more listing to our own insides, finding our own way and letting the rest of the world do what its going to do. It is not passing you by.
So that is the decision to make. Your destination is healing and balance and then you will begin to feel those pulls of desire for goals and things and you can follow them, because they are YOURS...not someone else's you are trying to adopt.
Side note: I have avoided writing like this for a while for 2 reasons. One, I had less to say and two, I struggle with the narcissistic feel of writing about my experiences. I mean because really who cares, everyone has their own life and story full of just as much to say.
But then my friend Michele gave me a book and told me the author was a memoirist. I didn't know memoirist was a thing. Im really enjoying the book and event he parts I don't relate to, I am learning from.
Now I don't feel "so bad" about "writing about myself"... according to the definition it is - about your life, the lessons learned, and key moments that shaped who you are.
So if you found you enjoyed or learned from this, I encourage you to share it, for that will encourage me to continue to share. :)
