Wednesday, June 24, 2020

Controlling Your Own Narrative....

Imagine yourself receiving a phone call later today from the media personality you most personally admire from your life so far.  He or she might be a famous actor, musician, political figure, or author.  He or she might even be an industry expert or infamous criminal.  Whomever it is you are thinking of, he or she is calling you today...

When this person calls, you are invited to appear on a specially televised broadcast where you will be interviewed by this person of your choice---with the broadcast streaming live all around the planet.  No kidding!  When the interview is completed, you will become "instant" famous yourself.  There is no doubt of that.

As part of this opportunity, you do have the power to ensure that you are NOT asked certain questions about your past history, present life, and/or future fears.  In this way, these questions would represent the experiences past and present that disturb you greatly..or that you most fear "might" happen in the future.

What specific questions do you want to make sure you are NOT asked during your interview?

Why?

Now decide what specific questions you want to make sure you ARE asked during your interview.  What would those specific questions be that you would insist on being asked?  In this way, these represent the experiences past and present that celebrate you greatly...or that you genuinely look forward to happening in the future.

Why?

Controlling the narrative of our current interactions, past experiences, and future concerns/plans is a huge problem for way too many of us.  We don't even realize we are doing it 9/10ths of the time.  We just "know" that we feel real "good" when someone tells us or validates us about how "great" we are;  we also feel real "bad" when something is said or done that strikes a proverbial nerve within us.  Not unlike the example presented at the start of this post, if we are going to be interviewed for a global broadcast, there is NO WAY in HADES that "we" are going to talk about the time I......  But we will DEFINITELY talk about what happened the other day when I.......  It's how we roll folks.  We want to be thought of, perceived as, and remembered for A, J, L, and W.  However, nobody better EVER bring up C, D, E, F, S, and T again!

In his book, "The Untethered Soul", author Michael Singer talks about the issue of having a "thorn" stuck in our forearm as an analogy for how we typically "cope" with painful past events, present drama, crisis, and chaos, and/or anxieties and fears about the future.  Without getting into the details here, I suggest picking up the book from your local library and giving it a read.  In a nutshell, we have a choice:  do we remove the thorn---or do we do everything and anything to ensure that the thorn we're "stuck" with inside us is NEVER disturbed?

Controlling our narrative to avoid being disturbed by our own past history, present problems, or future fears is something we all do to essentially prolong the agony of our own dysfunctional patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving. 

Now stop and re-read that last sentence about ten times before you continue on here.  (Not that I'm attempting to control the narrative (I AM!), but we need to ABSORB the truth of that message big time!)  :-P

Maybe today is the time to stop and think about what we have been doing to avoid having our own inner "thorns" being touched by anyone or anything! 

"Sue" is someone who has been divorced for five years.  She hates men.  She will admit it openly.  She really does and without a doubt hates men.  Why?  As Sue would explain it, any man she truly cared about in her life and history ended up leaving her against her will.  Her only brother ended up leaving the family as a young man and never looked back.  Sue missed him terribly back then and still does to this very day.  Her father left the family shortly after her brother's departure.  Sue is still not sure why he left, but she dare not bring it up to either her father or mother to this very day.  "I can't ask them why he left and they ultimately divorced!", Sue claims.  "That's their personal business!"  Hey, I can't make this stuff up.  Next, Sue's first boyfriend seemed a dream come true, until she found out he was cheating on her.  When Sue finally found who she believed was her "Mr. Right", her husband also ended up cheating on Sue and leaving her for the other woman.  As a parting gift, Sue's husband made sure to tell her what a blankety-blank-blank "nut job" Sue was and THIS was the reason why he was leaving her.

Needless to say, Sue's history with men who mattered to her was more bad than good.

To protect herself and to avoid this heartbreak from "ever" happening again, Sue surrounded herself with other women who were similarly wounded (by men).  It didn't make sense initially;  why would any woman seek out this type of "support"?  In Sue's case, she needed justification for her resentment and bitterness towards men MORE than she needed to be set free from it!  In its way, Sue's new "friend group" functioned to remind Sue why hating men was better (and easier!) than forgiving men and moving forward with a renewed sense hope for her own relationship future (with men!)!

The Untethered Soul is the book, written by Michael Singer.

Freedom is always possible!

Until next post...

Saturday, June 13, 2020

Cracked Up....

We live in confusing times.  We always have.  We look for heroes and she-roes in all the right---and in all the wrong places.  We make molehills out of legitimate mountains, while we make mountains out of legitimate molehills.  We don't know what we want, but we know when we didn't get it---or get it fast enough.  We presume others who "know" us should be able to read our minds.  We say or do something that legitimately hurts someone else, and then we deny the consequences of our own actions.  We are a hot mess.  We just are.  Why are we a hot mess?  Because we allow these confusing times to dominate our thinking, our feeling, and our behaving.  If ever there was a time to stop and THINK  before we act, this is it.  Before we end up cracked up.

What does it mean to THINK?  It means to ask ourselves "T" is it True?  "H" is it Helpful?  "I" is it Inspiring?  "N" is it Necessary? and finally "K" is it Kind?  If what you are about to say or do are NOT these things.....then you should perhaps STOP! again and THINK! again before you take action.

I am not suggesting that you keep your mouth shut and avoid telling the truth when necessary (the "N" of THINK, by the way!).  Yet what we forget is how the truth can be presented in such a way so that it TRULY is "H" helpful, "I" inspiring, and "K" kind.  Did you not know this already?  The truth, in fact, does NOT have to be presented with anger, rage, contempt, and/or harsh judgment attached.  The people who perpetrate evil already know what they are doing that is wrong;  they are used to it!  I don't have to raise my own blood pressure so as to present what they are doing wrong (once again!) to them.  This is probably the one very bad habit we can all so easily fall into;  we get ourselves all worked up over someone else's sinful/evil/straight up harmful behavior AS IF they don't know what they are doing!  They know!  Believe me, they already know!

What people don't necessarily understand is why they are so jacked up in their own thinking, feeling, and behavior patterns.   Everyone has a story inside them.  That story isn't always a good one.  Unprovoked abuse and/or neglect is a part of everyone's story;  the only differences are for how long it went on and with "which" people from our history.  And when we don't want to learn the lessons from our past, we are doomed to repeat what we experienced and/or witnessed growing up without any clues attached.  We remain confused and confusing both to ourselves, and to other people.

In my case, it started from the beginning.  I was wanted by my father, but unwanted by my mother.  She was herself a childhood abuse survivor and was capital "C" clueless about how to care for a nurture an infant child.  I'm sorry that was her situation, but it sure didn't do me any favors.  One of the stories she repeatedly told me growing up was how, when I was an infant, I was lying on the carpet in the living room while she and my father were having a big argument.  "I threw the phone book at him...and it missed hitting you by this much!" she would say as she gestured with her fingers being only about 1/2" apart.  Okay then.  Why she kept repeating this story to me as I was growing up;  I had no idea!

Flash forward to 50 years later;  I'm about to have a nose job.  My surgeon (God bless him!) took X-rays of my face in preparation for the surgery.  After he reviews them with me, he asks me, "What happened to you as a baby?"  He went on to explain that I had a very old fracture, going right across the area between my eyes and just above the bridge of my nose, that was "probably from your infancy".  Bingo!  It all made sense.  The phone book didn't miss me as my mother had claimed.  And here I wondered for all my life growing up why I had so much trouble breathing in the general sense.  Of course my mother attempted to re-write my narrative 10,000 times while she was alive;  ultimately, she was a very sick and herself wounded human being who had no ability to heal, change, and grow spiritually as I had always hoped and prayed for.

Darrell Hammond, the SNL alumni known for his impression of Bill Clinton, is currently featured in Netflix documentary entitled "Cracked Up".  It's phenomenal.  He could be my brother from another mother based on what he went through during his childhood down in FL.  The stories within him didn't come out  until he finally found the right psychiatrist at the right inpatient facility who truly listened to him and genuinely cared about his recovery.  As his psychiatrist intimated, it wasn't mental illness that caused Hammond's issues with substance abuse, mood swings, difficult relationships, and self-harm since childhood....it was what happened back there.  As Hammond presents in Cracked Up, there is always hope on the other side of the void;  there is always hope for the brave who venture to find it.

Hammond also authored a book "God, If You're Not Up There, I'm F*cked".  It was written years ago, but obviously inspired the creation of Cracked Up.  If ever you wanted to understand how a person can go from a childhood filled with abuse, self-blame,and self-destructive behaviors...to one filled with clarity, recovery, and healing---this is the documentary to watch sooner than later.  There is no shame from being born in Hell;  there is, however, when you choose not to leave it and repeat the worst of what you learned there....

Until next post....