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“Learning to unlearn, growing to outgrow” Roxanne Vibes.  I’ve never made it a secret that I spent most of my life as a control freak.  I adamantly wanted certain things to be a certain way because it made sense to me so I did what I had to do to make that happen.  I’m not proud of it, but I felt like things were supposed to be a certain way and I felt comfortable when that happened.  We all have our reasons for behaving as we do and sometimes it takes a long time to own up to it.  For me it started with a general feeling of discomfort when the day to day stopped feeling good. I subconsciously started looking for other things to control and that quickly stopped feeling good too. I noticed that a lot of the things that should have been routine for me and things that should have gone off without a hitch started falling apart.  When it became a pattern of things just not going according to plan, the frustration escalated to the point where I knew I had to re-evaluate.

It was a learning point for me because I understood that people operate from their point of understanding so what makes sense to me may not make sense to them.  I had to learn that it wasn’t my job to control people.  If I’m honest it never really worked anyway.  That understanding made me look at the pattern of my life so far.  It made me look at what else needed to shift for me.  The behaviors we take with us, including our control issues, are learned.  That means we can make the choice to change them.  We have to unlearn patterns we’ve repeated for years.  And that is a process.

The desire to change has to be greater than the comfort of repeating what we know.  The life on the other side of our known patterns is so much bigger than what we have in our safety zone.  Our comfort zones feel good until they suffocate us.  When we learn to lean into the discomfort of learning something new, we open up our space just a little more.  Practicing to grow beyond our comfort zones will lead us where we need to be with each choice we make that aligns with the decision to move forward.  It is reinforced with every yes or no we say.

It takes time to recognize our part in the results of where we are at in our lives.  We are afraid of the power we have in our own lives because it means we are accountable for something.  This often manifests in a couple of ways: 1. We often spend more time telling other people what they should or shouldn’t be doing than looking at what we are doing.  2. We become hyper-critical about ourselves without taking action on it.

We all fall into both categories at one time or another because for the former, it’s easier to look at what other people are doing wrong because we see it from the outside.  We don’t take the time to look at the entire situation surrounding their actions and we are now trained to assume the worst in people.  For the latter, it’s easy criticize ourselves when things don’t match what our perception of them says they should be.  For example, we have no issue complaining about the way we look but we don’t discuss that we eat like crap or that we stopped working out or that we don’t sleep more than three hours a night.  Which leads to the next point which is that it’s easy to play victim, it’s hard to take ownership.  But shifting that perspective makes all the difference in the world.  That ownership is a reclamation of our power.

It is far more satisfying to operate from a place of knowing the patterns you need to break than it is to continue to move feeling like you have no other choice.  There is freedom in that because when you’re a victim you have no options.  When you look at your actions in the situation, you know you can change that.  There is power with accountability.

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My husband is struggling tonight because he has come to the conclusion that he is the problem because people that were supposed to be our friends excluded him for the last two consecutive weekends (the same people, in fact who did not include me several weeks ago). I see his heart breaking because he truly cared for these people and they blatantly used him for what he could give them.  This has happened frequently in both of our lives but to have it happen from this particular couple is more tender to some degree.  It hurt me when this happened a few weeks ago as well, but I have had some time to work through how I really felt about it and I also have a lot of practice with reflecting and looking at the situation to understand my role in it and what happened.  My husband doesn’t have that much experience there.  He has a kind heart and he takes these things personally.  This is something he hasn’t learned truly has nothing to do with him.

It is human nature, and far more prevalent in this day and age, to be self serving and not consider another person in one’s decisions.  My husband has spent most of his life simply looking for approval and inclusion.  He has been looking for love.  I don’t want to go into too many of his details because that is his information to share when he is ready, but he has always done things looking for connection.  I told him that this is something we need to work through together because, while we have our differences, we have always come back to each other.  WE are on the same team.

That is the point.  Sometimes you have to weed through the crappy relationships until you are able to find your real team.  We spend more time thinking about how to impress people trying to develop a crowd thinking that the more people we have around us will keep us from feeling lonely or shitty about ourselves when in reality what we need is the real connection from having people who understand us and want to see us win.  Sometimes it’s really quality over quantity and that can be a painful lesson to learn. But it is a lesson we need to know.

Support comes from people who see us at our most vulnerable and don’t shy away from it.  It is from the people who lift us up and enjoy our success because they are happy we succeeded, not because of what they reap from it.  Support comes from the people who see us at our highest and lowest points and welcome it all with open arms.  They understand that we aren’t stuck as one person and that we will change—and they will change with us.  These are the people we should strive to have around us.

This isn’t something I can force my husband to understand.  He needs to come to the understanding himself and realize his own worth.  No matter how many times I say it, he has to learn to believe it.  This is something universal.  Once we are strong enough to understand our gifts and our worth, we no longer have the patience to sit at tables where we aren’t valued or truly cared about.  This takes time with ourselves and being willing to embrace who we are.  Sometimes we want to believe that people are something they are not and we lose.  But that is a reflection on their character, not ours.  Stay true to who you are and the right team will come.

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I’ve been blessed to have the time to work through some incredibly personal things over the last few months, to start doing work I love, to plan and begin implementing an incredibly exciting year, and to define clearly what I’m working for.  I’ve also been blessed to work through some difficult relationships.  Though they haven’t turned out how I thought they would, they have turned out how they were meant to be.  It has been a test of my resolve to maintain my boundaries and it has impacted my relationships with these people.  A few things are still in the works with them, and it’s leading me to understand that regardless of the outcome, the relationships are changed and they will not go back to what they once were.

With that in mind, I started really thinking about beginnings and endings.  Specifically the beginnings that come FROM endings.  See, when we are with people in our lives in a certain role for an extended period of time (or even our entire lives in some cases) we begin to behave in the expected way, and when the dynamic shifts it can be a scary thing.  It’s sad.  For me I feel like there was the before and then this moment happens, whatever it may be, and then there is the after.  There’s no going back.  Trusting in the universe, we have to know it’s always for the better,  but people sometimes leave after those pivotal moments and it is lonely and painful and it is a loss.  We have to gather our bearings and reacclimate to this new way.  Those endings contain a poetic, tragic, beauty.

You can’t move forward until you let go.  Sometimes you let go without resolution to the situation.  Sometimes in the middle of a sentence.  Sometimes it happens when it was all going right.  And this kind of letting go also means letting go of the ideas of what could have been.  THAT is the part that gets to most of us.  If you’re on the sentimental side like me, that is what crushes me.  I see the potential and when I feel it drift away I feel lost and confused about how that potential fades.  I’ve learned that sometimes we just have to accept and learn to live with the pain of that loss.  That doesn’t mean I’m good at it, believe me.  Dealing with changes in two of my most significant relationships over the last month has left me raw and open in a way I’m not comfortable with. But I know that I have no control over how this goes because it is firmly in the other people’s courts.  And yes, that still spikes my anxiety, but this is where the letting go comes in: the potential is not tangible.

When we learn to let go of what we hoped for, we step firmly into what IS.  We can work with what IS.  Regardless of how messy, sharp, painful, idealized, unformed, raw, or clear the reality of the situation is, we can work with it because THAT is what’s real.  You can’t build on what isn’t there so take what exists and be there with it.  For me this is something that hurts too because I often find myself thinking, “If they only did x, everything would be just fine.”  It always seems simple in my mind but the truth is that human relationships are incredibly complex.  Most of us don’t even have healthy relationships with ourselves let alone other people.  And people don’t always play by our rules.  It may not be so simple to them.  They can choose to not participate in how you see it going.  They may not want to be a player in your game.  They may decide to run their own show.

The truth is there is only one constant in life: it ALL changes.  The only thing we can do is learn to accept what is with grace and confidence and keep in mind the person we want to be.  When you release the weight you’ve held on to in hopes of a certain outcome, you allow the life you are meant to have come rushing forward.  Life blooms again.  And in the sadness of what has to end lies the beauty of what is beginning again.  And it never would have if you remained attached to the decaying branch of what you thought it should be.  The real flower is infinitely more beautiful than what we can draw.

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We live in a constant state of distraction.  I could get into the chemical reactions that are actually taking place but the simple truth of the matter is we are addicted.  As a society we have set a standard of activity without looking at productivity and have glorified movement without cause.  We believe that we need to be busy for the sake of being busy.  We’ve never stopped to consider something different and we do it because we are used to it.  We do it because we think we have to.

In discussing this with a friend today, we talked about the pattern of how we are fed what we are “supposed” to do from a young age.  We never question the pattern of eat, sleep, work, bills, buy shit we don’t need, repeat until we die.  Unless or until we start to feel like something is off.  Even then, we try hard to stifle that feeling with more consuming or creating unhealthy habits.  For me, that feeling resulted in lots of control issues, some anger, lots of fear, tons of anxiety, some over eating, and constantly questioning my worth/who I am.  There wasn’t one moment that triggered me, but a successive series of things that made me realize that I didn’t want to continue living like that.

So, the only thing that helped me in that moment was…..nothing.  Well, that’s not quite true.  It was more the act of STOPPING.  It was refusing to repeat the same patterns for a time and being still.  It’s still something I struggle with because my mind is pretty active (for the positive and the negative) but learning to recognize the busy mind for what it is (mismanaged thoughts) and to pause really helps.

In stopping and getting quiet, it’s a chance to hear what is inside.  For me I heard loud and clear that I needed to redirect my energy and reconsider my value.  I relied on validation from other people and I put in so much effort toward doing what made them happy rather than building a foundation for myself.  I had to establish trust with myself.  Trust that I could make the right decisions.  Trust that things would work out how they were meant to.  Trust that I would find the support of those who really wanted to be with me and wouldn’t just use me for their own purposes.

From my experience working through this, I know it is something that has to be continually replayed in our minds.  It isn’t a one shot thing.  It’s a constant effort until you learn to trust that you’re ok in this new state of not relying on anyone to make you feel a certain way.  Stopping and getting quiet shows you what is really important in your life.  Beyond the things, beyond the bills, beyond whatever it is you’re using to distract you from the fear that you can’t achieve what you want doing what you love.

The truth is we have lost the value of the pause because we allow ourselves to get distracted.  The pause makes a lot clear including steps we need to take to get us closer to our goals.  So much more is attainable than we allow ourselves to believe because we have been trained to think we have to have it all at once or there is no value to it.  Learning to take it slow and take things one bite at a time still gets us the same result in the end.  Don’t become so obsessed with the final result that you lose sight of the small victories that it took to get there.  And don’t get so distracted by the little things we are told to focus on that you give up before you get what you want.  Keep going.  One step at a time if needed, but keep going.

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Following up to yesterday’s post, I wanted to practice what I preach and share a tool I use with you.  It’s a truly simple tool but I find it quite effective.  It’s uncomfortable at first, especially if you’re used to negative self-talk, but it’s worth it and becomes easier the more often you try it.  The practice is simple:  write out a list of what you love about yourself.  If you’re not comfortable talking about loving yourself, start with what you like about yourself.  So this is one of my first lists and I kept it simple.  Feel free to adapt something like this for yourself and let me know how it works for you! Share the list too, if you’re comfortable!

I’m smart

I’m fun

I’m driven

I’m joyful

I’m capable

I’m worthy

I’m accepting of others

I’m loving

I’m fair

I’m kind

I’m direct

I’m honest

I see the best in people

I’m resilient

I’m strong

I’m a leader

I speak my mind but look for the facts

I own my faults and responsibility

I’m growing

I always do my best

So this is something that you can practice every day.  These are the little reminders about what makes you great and it is a good start at getting comfortable with self-acceptance.  Use these as affirmations in the morning.  A little bit of positivity goes a long way and starting your day with a reminder of your awesomeness is a great step in the right direction.  Give it a try and feel free to share your results!

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Fully embracing who we are is a challenge at the best of times.  When we are on shaky ground it’s even more of a challenge.  We are such multi-faceted beings and we have such a deep sense of “self,” moreso than any other animal, that we complicate our existence.  To do our best in the world, we have to understand our purpose.  Beginning to embrace who we are is about knowing who you are in the moment, beyond the physical sense—it’s getting to the core.  What do you enjoy?  What gives you meaning?  Where do you stand on issues of the world?  It’s owning your weirdness and doing the things that make you happy.  Embracing who we are also means reconciling our past and accepting it.  If you’re like me, you feel tense at the idea of your past and you cringe at the memory of all of your mistakes.  A resounding, “I was such an idiot” or “I can’t believe I did that” usually follows and that leads us down the slippery slope of negative self-talk about things that happened long ago.

As a first step, I’m learning that I can’t change the past but I can befriend it and make it a part of me and I can lovingly let it go.  This is more than the old adage of accepting it and learning lessons.  This is the application of understanding it has no further impact on you now.  That when we rehash the past, we are bringing forward the same feelings we felt in the moment it happened.  Our mind doesn’t know the difference between what is happening and what has happened because we are bringing it to the forefront of our minds again.  So when the reaction is emotional or painful, learn to make peace with it.  Learn to express that you were operating with what you knew at the time—and that isn’t who you are now.  Forgive yourself as much as you need to.

When you’re raised with guilt as a driving force, you become critical of everything and take it all to heart.  You find fault in nearly everything you do.  That takes a lot of retraining and focused effort to keep yourself off that path.  It takes a lot of convincing to understand that being imperfect isn’t a crime and that most people don’t live mired in guilt.  But it’s doable.  Living with guilt is like living with a 20 ton weight chained to your neck.  When you start chipping at that weight, the release can feel equally as uncomfortable because you’re learning a new reality.  So forgive everything, including the guilt.

We will learn quickly that it is much easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to get precious time back again.  Use your time well, and use it as you see fit.

In general, self-acceptance is about understanding that you were raised by people of a different era and what held true for them doesn’t have to hold true for you—we’re all a little screwed up.  Furthermore, they didn’t know what they were doing 90% of the time either so don’t feel like you have to have it all figured out—we’re all just winging it because no one knows the answer of how to live.  The point is we do better when we know better.  So forgive yourself for not knowing better when it happened because you CAN’T change that anyway.  You can change what happens going forward so focus on that.  Self-acceptance is also about letting go of blame whether it’s your parents or siblings or whoever else may have impacted you.

Don’t worry about what happened and that becomes easier as we develop an appreciation and acceptance for what is.  It’s easier to work with the tangible, what is in front of us than it is the hypothetical and the what-ifs.  Deal with what is actually happening in the moment.  Understand that you don’t have to be what other people think you should be or some version of yourself that isn’t you for the sake of anybody.  Approaching life from that vantage point allows for a more authentic experience and that is all we can ask for.

So, the short version is understand where you’re at by connecting with what is innate to you.  Let go of the pieces of the past that no longer serve.  Let go of the past as they are things we can’t change.  Make peace with it and forgive, and forgive again.  Let go of anyone else’s expectation of who you are supposed to be.  No one can tell you that.  Take the time to connect with yourself and go from there.  We get one life—live it to your expectation, no one else’s.