How long have you looked at the crappier parts of your life and believed that it wasn’t your fault? That your life would be better if Shitty Thing A hadn’t led to Shitty Thing B, which in turn created Shitstorm C?
Yep, makes sense.
Who was it? Mum? Dad? Your narcissist brother? That bitch Stacey, who stole Chad from you before he could notice you and your boundless appeal and finally ask you out, but now that’s never going to happen and you’ll die sad and alone and crazy cat lady-ish? THANKS Stacey….
Okay. But, why would they do that?
Are your family trying to ruin your life so that they can make you out as the black sheep/screw up to feel better about themselves when standing next to you? Maybe…
Did Stacey even KNOW you liked Chad? You never said anything… And you do like cats.
So, what’s the real problem here? Do you even know?
People being what we are, we don’t like to take the blame for things. Even when we’ve contributed to them. ESPECIALLY when we’ve contributed to them. Who wants to take the blame for their own stupidity/ineptitude/ignorance/body odour? Easier to ignore it and say it was outside of your control.
“They didn’t explain it properly!” Well, ask them to explain it differently.
“They asked me to do something I didn’t know how to do!” Find out how to do it.
“I didn’t know that was even a thing” Why not? Refer upwards for follow up responses.
“The shower was broken…” Dude, deodorant isn’t THAT expensive…
I spoke about our stories a few weeks ago, and hopefully helped offer a chance to reframe the history in your life from something that happened to you, and instead turn it into something that happened FOR you. And someone out there, quite reasonably, may have raised their hand and said “If you’re so smart, how do I even do that? Makes no sense, this is a waste of a couple of kilobytes of data. You don’t know me!” or something like that. Maybe with more swearing and vitriol.
Well, here we go.
Regardless of who’s fault your past tangibly is, whose life IS it? Who is the one who has to live it? And sleep at night after surviving it each day? Who, at the end of everything, is responsible for your life from this moment on? I’m hoping the answer you shouted with gusto is “ME!”, but I will accept a quiet, sigh-like “me…”
That responsibility has applied to every moment you’ve been capable of adult-like thought (yes, Lannie, I mean exactly what I said), weather you want to believe it or not. Obviously, there are restrictions on that until you are legally an adult. And circumstances that are genuinely outside of your control.
Well, what can you control? Can you control you and what you do? If you cant, who honestly can?
Even still, fault or not, what are you going to do from here on out?
This ties in with another post about what is your why and what you want. Do you want to be living a life where you have literally no control over nothing in your life? It’s on everyone else? That no matter what happens, you can’t do anything about it, let alone with it, so you get to be miserable or happy based on the actions of people and things outside of your control. How much emotional impact do you WANT people and events to have on you?
Now, as I said, some things are genuinely out of your control. Being struck by lightning, having your burned flesh attract marauding bears who have coronavirus, only to be thrown up on by the trainee paramedic who arrives at the scene post mauling is one I couldn’t honestly say is your fault. Pretty long odds too, with that particular shitstorm C.
But, how do you take responsibility? By having it dawn on you, that regardless of who’s fault that stuff was (Yours, Mum, Steve in HR, Spaghetti monster in the sky, voodoo curse, that damned bloody universe blah blah blah), until you own it really really deep down and realise that this is simply the circumstances you’re working with, and that it is STILL ON YOU to do whatever you can with it to win your life, nothing will change.
And I mean nothing. Your deep-down core belief and subconscious programming (yet another blog subject for another time…) that this whole mess is on the fact of being born at all, will continue to make this true. You will continue to let other things outside of yourself dictate what happens with your life and it WILL start to become self-sabotaging when that outside stuff gets so ingrained it becomes inside stuff. Yes, Darren, even you.
What shitty thing happened to you? Because regardless of how shitty it genuinely was, you do actually get to choose if and how it defines you. This is your story, this is how you use it.
All of us have a potential story of a heroes journey, rising from the ashes strewn about by Shitstorm C. Ask LeBron James how his childhood was, and what he did with it. Admittedly, he’s a got a smidge more physical capability than most, but he still made a choice. Want some more?
Kathy Freeman, became a national hero by pushing through the obstacles many of her race face and carried a countries hopes on her back on the way to gold.
Tony Robbins, made himself from nothing by just simply giving and learning and sharing and helping.
Tom Brady, who STILL has a chip on his shoulder to be better than he was, even though he’s widely regarded as the greatest to ever play his sport.
Tina Turner, became one of the greatest to ever sell a record in spite of the domestic abuse and racism she suffered through.
Susan Boyle, took a chance on herself one day regardless of what people thought of her before hearing a note.
Aleksander Solzhenitsyn and Nelson Mandela (possibly the finest examples that exist to us as humans), both instrumental in bringing down the respective regimes of their homes and writing wrongs after suffering so greatly at the hands of them.
These people are from all walks of life, colours, backgrounds, shoe sizes. But they all have something in common. They took responsibility for themselves to change their circumstances regardless of their capability and obstacles. And they positively changed the lives of the people around them, on a big and small scale.
You can too.
I once read a story, about a boy who was caught in the bombings in Afghanistan some 15 years ago. The kid lost both his parents, all five of his brothers and sisters, both legs and an arm. He was barely holding on to life, but medical staff were fighting to save him. This story stuck with me because at that stage of my life I remember distinctly thinking “Let the poor kid go. He’s had everything taken from him, literally everything but his life. Let him go.” Last I heard, that now young man has ambitions to be a surgeon.
I think back to that story and it makes me question who I was back then. I genuinely felt compassion for the poor kid, you can’t hear that story and not. I question myself because my thoughts on that boy and many thousands of lesser situations eventually became “Who would I be, who am I, to take that boys decision to accept and meet his responsibility for his life, to determine what he does with himself from that point on?”
I don’t blame or find fault with myself for thinking the boy was better off being let go, it came from a good place. But it was my responsibility to challenge that thought, that mindset, based on what potential that boy could have. What potential I could have, by letting go of finding fault with those fighting to keep him alive in the face of my compassion.
Can we yet appreciate that the overwhelming majority of us do that very thing, to ourselves, every single day? Find fault with ourselves, our past, our circumstances, our people? What good does it really do though, if that’s ALL you do?
Self reflection and evaluation in an attempt to improve things is one thing. This?... Is something else. Self worth and our strange dynamic with it is definitely another blog subject, possibly several.
Frankly, how much winning does bringing your fault finding trophies to the party really get you? High fives from your fellow fault finders? Sounds pretty fun to me, definitely not cynical or pointless at all. Go you…
Some of the things that happen to you are your fault. What are you going to do about that?
Some of the things that happen to you aren’t your fault. What are you going to do with that?
Be kind, be smart, be your best you. No bar fights.
“I criticize by creation - not by finding fault.” Marcus Tullius Cicero
Comentarios