.png)
.png)
Part II – Get the lesson, drop the bitterness
This post is a little long, brace yourself. I saw it necessary to lay the foundation for what we are trying to do. In order for me to get you to dig into yourself, I need you to have an idea of what we are looking for. It requires being brutally honest with yourself, and that requires a bit of guidance. Alright, let's dig in.
We get straight into it, if by any chance you did not read part I (click here, to take you to part 1) of this series, I would suggest you stop reading right here and find part I so that we can all be on the same page. If, you have read part I, welcome back. Sorry, about the cliff hanger in the previous post, but I just have so much to say that I felt like if I put everything in one post, some points would get diluted.
In the first post we touched on the things that make us who we are. Now, the reason this is so important, is because they tend to seep into other areas of our lives and fester.
Let me give you an example, if there is one rotten apple in the fridge, and it is not removed, it will fester and infect the other apples. This is exactly what happens in our life, when we have had things happen to us that hurt us and we do not deal with them, they fester and infect other areas of our lives. Say you grew up in a home that lacked love, and you never learnt what love looks like at home, because it wasn’t present. You then had to watch other families who laugh together and hug each other on TV, you then grew resentful towards your family, because you felt unloved and worst of all you feel like you do not have a place you can truly call home that has love, affection and support. So, you grew a hard exterior, where you are un-trusting of people. You do not let anyone close enough to hurt you and you keep friends at arm’s length. Close enough to call friends, but never close enough to hurt you. In layman’s terms, they are your friends, but if ever they disappointed you, you’d be good. You continue this into your work life, you never fully give a 100% of yourself at work, because you do not trust that they won’t sack you anyways, you ensure that none of your colleagues know your personal business because this is a work environment and it will probably end up on the office gossip grid. You could have a death in the family, and had it not been for company policy, no one would ever know because… that's my business. Okay, then it festers into your intimate partner relationships. You find that anyone you wind up in a relationship with seems to always be one step out of the door. You overshare and give yourself completely, because you want someone to know the intimate parts of you. You crave someone who will have you for who you are, and know everything about you and still love you anyway.
Here’s the thing, we are rarely aware of how the problem festers into other areas of our lives. Your story may be different, and you are free to have in your mind the problem you struggle with and allow yourself to see the pattern. The idea is to re-jog your memory and allow it to make the connecting dots. The above problem started at childhood, and it seemed harmless, because when you grow up in a home with a specific culture, sometimes it seems normal. Yet, a part of you wishes things were different. You wish you had a better childhood, and so you shield yourself.
The problem area in the above scenario is looking for the negative in every given situation. You allowed yourself to become a pessimist. You approach every scenario with a judging eye and think of all that could go wrong before it even goes wrong. You do not allow good to happen to you, because you shield yourself.
The lesson to learn is that when you shield yourself from the bad, you simultaneously shield yourself from the good too.
Let’s break it down into comprehensive tad bits.
1. When you do not find or identify your problem areas, you allow them to fester
Self-awareness allows you to be one step ahead. When you ignore the things that have shaped you, you rob yourself of a teaching moment. Everything that has happened to you has the potential to teach you a life lesson. You can do one of two things, tuck it away and forget it, which then leaves a bitter taste and resentment. Or, you can address it by accepting it happened and taking from it what you need and walking away with the lesson at hand. In that case a win for you.
2. When you starve yourself of healthy human relationships, you end up burdening people
We tend to want to look for love from our partners, and there’s no harm in it. The harm stems from a place of not having the love we crave from others for ourselves. This is because someone can only love you as much as you love yourself. This is because we teach people how to love us and how to treat us. When we lack that self-love and have not dealt with our real issues, we end up dependent on the acceptance and love of our partners. What about friendships? We then end up expecting the worst from people, usually because of hurt endured at the hands of love, and now everyone is warded off, yet the next time a potential suitor walks by, we are all for it. Why then do we shield ourselves from friendships and we are so receptive to love of a partner? Because we are looking for the love we did not receive from home.
Dysfunction usually stems from our history.
3. You can only attract good, when you are open to it
Sometimes opportunities lie before us, but because we are so blinded by our own insecurities we walk right by them. Attracting good, is politically incorrect, its being receptive to the good. Such that, when the opportunity presents itself, will you be able to identify it? When you open yourself up to receiving good and attracting good, in turn good things start to happen, because you are reprogramming your mind to not always expect the worst, but expect that good things will happen to you. So they do.
First of all, can I just mention that I am proud of you for getting this far down the post? It clearly shows a want to learn and with that comes results. When you are open to rewiring you unthinking and digging deep into yourself to determine why you operate the way you do, you have taken the first step. It is because you are not content with simply letting life happen to you, but you want to gain control over the circumstances of your life.
How about today you allow yourself to sit and think about the things that hurt you. The things that truly sucked! You know what, you aren’t playing victim, you are allowing yourself to acknowledge that these things happened. They shaped your life. They hurt, yes.
However, you want the lesson and no longer the bitterness.
For everything you remember, find the lesson. Yes, even the cheating partner. What could you have done? Should you have been more vigilant, or trusting of your gut and walked away before things got ugly? Should you have trusted yourself enough to not get involved with someone who depicted questionable character traits? Or, here is what we never consider, did he come into your life to teach you… sometimes these people actually had some amazing character traits we can draw from and use in the future. That in itself is a lesson, take it and leave the bitterness.
I feel like I was all up in your business today. So let’s drop it here for the day.
Till next time, go get your lessons and drop the bitterness.
From one Powerhouse to another
Love Mavis
