NO BLAME

We take responsibility for our lives despite past neglect or trauma we may have endured. We do what we can to live and love without blame.

HEALTHY BOUNDARIES

We are aware of growing in the understanding of where we begin and end. This is the art of knowing the span and the limits of our responsibilities to ourselves, our families, and our communities. 

ACKNOWLEDGE OTHERS

We try to see people, acknowledge others, recognize we did not get to where we are – wherever that may be – on our own and neither did anyone else. We know there are no “self-made” individuals no matter the extent they may make the claim.

INTER-DEPENDANT

We know we need people and that we in turn are needed. We know the difference between being with others and “feeding off” others and are careful to avoid using or feeding off others. We know how to play our part in a community without taking advantage of anyone within the community. 

SELF-AWARE

We know and are getting to know our quirks, oddities, difficulties, and are aware of not visiting them on others, especially in ways that make life more difficult for those our lives most closely impact.

Please do not link self-awareness with selfishness. They have nothing whatsoever to do with each other. Self-awareness is about as far from selfishness as one can get. 

It is a lack of self-awareness that is indeed at the core of selfishness.

SELF-AWARENESS……

• Being aware of how my life — moods, attitudes, motivations, decisions and much more — impacts the lives of those around me. Each of us brings a presence into every environment and into every encounter.

• Being aware that my unresolved relationships, losses, griefs and disappointments are constantly impacting who I am and have the potential to shape my responses to everyone and everything I face. Our history is in our backpacks. For some – it’s snug and comfortable and provides wisdom and healthy boundaries. For the others it’s a jet-pack ready to drive and repeat the mistakes of the past. For most people, it’s somewhere between these two extremes – a bit of both. 

• Being aware that my emotions can flood and distort my thinking and evoke the fighter or flee-er or freemer within me. Remaining present — neither fighting nor running — is usually the most helpful response. There are unusual situations where fleeing is necessary and healthy — but most conflicts cannot be solved by avoidance. 

There are self-aware people who can be very selfish but that’s quite a different story – usually with a tragic ending. 

I have heard men and women blame the government, the economy and even newborn babies for their outbursts of anger and I have the propensity within me to think of others as responsible for any anger I might feel. I too have blamed the traffic, my children, even the neighbor’s dogs for a moment of anger I’ve tasted when things would not go my way. 

The person – me, you – exhibiting anger, can attempt to shift the blame for it, but the angry person must look within before anger issues can be resolved. 

While an angry man believes his anger is someone else’s responsibility he will not find relief from its tenacious hold.

Mature, thinking, sane people – surely, what we want to be – take responsibility for their emotions, anger often being the toughest to corral. They resist blaming a spouse or traffic for their feelings. They see anger – and all “destructive” accompanying emotions –  as notification from deep within that something awry is waiting to be addressed.

Anger-provoking events – a spouse who is not punctual, being kept waiting at the bank, traffic) simply allow the presence of anger to be announced. 

Healthy people “listen” to such emotions and try to learn from them, rather than inflicting them on others – and hurting both others and themselves.

Anxiety will render you partially deaf to what others are saying to you and you will tend to hear what you want to hear. It will make you partially blind to what is going on around you and will see what you want to see.Anxiety will make you hyper-sensitive to what others are doing and not doing and you will become less and less aware of your own behavior.

You will reduce your levels of anxiety if you….

“De-triangle” yourself. This means getting out of the middle of relationships that do not directly involve you. For instance, stop trying to get your son to like his stepfather, or your mother to like your wife, or your boss to spend more time with his children. You are powerless over relationships that involve others and not you. 

Re-connect appropriately with people to whom you are related, especially when it is by blood. It is virtually impossible to be enduringly emotionally well if you have severed blood relationships. We are designed for connection and healthy family connections can nurture like none other. 

Step out of the role of being a peacekeeper  – being the one who avoids and helps others to avoid necessary and helpful conflict. Be a peacemaker, the one who steps into the role of one who welcomes and facilitates necessary and helpful conflict.

I have taken some flack for writing that our thoughts (our thinking) are more important than our feelings.

I have never said our feelings are unimportant or ought to be dismissed or downplayed.

You might have noticed constant reminders in self-help-type writings that we have no control over what others think of us.

This is so.

I want to go a smidgeon further.

How, what, and when we think of others is of pivotal importance and it is (largely) within our control.

How (positive, negative, with anger, joy, or judgement) we think of others (individuals, groups, near and far) shapes who we are (character).

What (positive, negative, truth, rumour) we think of others shapes our behavior.

When (rarely, on occasion, routinely, obsessively) we think of others shapes attitudes, productivity and content.

The “how,” “what” and “when” occurring within us is vastly more important than what others think, or we believe others think, about us.

Take kindness and thinking kind thoughts and planning kind actions.

It is good for us.

It’s a day-changer.

Really, it’s a life-changer.

Unkindness from any source reveals (usually) nothing about the target and everything about the source.

“Love your enemies?” said Jesus.

Why?

I of course don’t know all the reasons He said this.

I have a hunch that it’s at least partly because love is good for all of us.

Learning to love our enemies is the ultimate test of character and shapes us into the kinds of people we really want to be.

I recall noticing, even as a young child, that the unkind boys and girls in primary school were the ones who appeared to have endured little or no suffering.

They lived in palatial homes, had servants (whom they often mistreated) and parents who were at their beck and call. 

Empathy, although I had no name for it, was missing. 

I reasoned it was not something they felt they needed and therefore was not part of what they could offer.

A series of vivid enduring events underscored my observations.

As a chronic stutterer I could tell exactly who would and who would not make fun of my speaking. I could smell the lack of empathy from a distance. They would go so far as to challenge teachers to call on me to read to the class in hopes of enjoying my humiliation.  

One of my peers was severely disfigured from an accident he endured as a very young child.

Those who pointed, laughed, circled him and tried to get him to smile or cry with their taunting were those who also derived pleasure from humiliating me. 

Boys (my highschool was and is an all boys school) who appeared to have it all found it easy to victimize those who did not.

Empathy was not part of their emotional vocabulary.

It may be more subtle now (or not) but a cursory glance at the headlines reveals little has changed.   

What will you do with your loneliness?

Will you permit it to take you down, halt your activities, zoom your mind back to a time when you were surrounded by people, a time when your children were young and you had no time for loneliness? 

If you permit it will take up increased room in your thinking until there is not much room for anything else but the accentuated heaviness of your aloneness. 

Like you (I concede there are always exceptions) people crave connection, recognition. People want to be seen, heard, play roles in the lives of others. 

We are living pieces of a vibrant, multidimensional puzzle seeking our unique places – we have several – where we fit, where we give and receive and make our unique marks and contributions. 

Something vital happens within us when we are part of a family, a team, a group, a gathering of friends, a community of worship, and combine our skills and resources for a unified effort.      

So? 

What will you do with your loneliness?

Will you allow it the upper hand to push you further into despair? 

Let loneliness have its way and before long your mind will fill with victim thinking and you may begin to believe the world is against you.

I am neither superior nor inferior to anyone anywhere. 

We are equals. 

While it is true that we all have different roles, different responsibilities, vastly different experiences, we remain equals. 

We are not the same, but we are equal. 

My life is not more or less important than yours. No matter how educated or uneducated or wealthy or so-called poor, or “powerful” or “powerless” you or I may be or may not be – we are equals. 

While the world around you and me may not, and does not, affirm this truth, I will embrace it and live it to the best of my ability and hope you will too. 

Why?

Because it is good for us – you and me.

And, it is the truth.

I aspire to live this way so that I may be at peace and fully enjoy those around me without having to combat the inevitable taint and contamination that will result when people believe in their own superiority or inferiority, or in the superiority or inferiority of others.

Your (my) race, religion, ethnic background, culture, language, qualifications, bank-balance, list of assets, “reach,” influence, or being married, single, divorced, straight, gay, none of it, none of it qualifies you (or me) be claim superiority (to judge), or inferiority (to be judged).