“When you believe that your problem is caused by someone or something else, you become your own victim.”
– Byron Katie
Every Day we make choices. Those choices have consequences. They may be good or they may be bad. Where we seem to fall short is when our choices go bad.
That’s when we seem to start the blame game. It wasn’t my fault, it was so-and-so’s. Or, the tool was faulty or the engine hesitated, or whatever. Much of the time we are unwilling to admit that we were somehow responsible for our own failure in some way.
While it may be true that another was involved in the mistake we made, we were the ones that used someone else’s judgment as our own, so we need to accept at least some responsibility for the outcome. Heck, we tend to take all the credit when something does work.
Then there are times when something happens that is completely outside our control. What do we do then? Another person or thing may be at fault, which may be the truth, but we don’t have to get stuck in that story and put our life on hold or give up on life. We can accept that something has happened and make a conscious choice to move on. Soldiers get injured and choose to move on and have a normal life. People lose money to bad investments and move on with their lives. The difference between those who do and those who don’t move on is, those who move on make a conscious choice to not let the incident define them. Therefore their life doesn’t get put on permanent hold so they can continue to live their story.
Sometimes people lose this perspective and life goes on without them.
Is it an easy thing to do, to move on? In many cases, depending on the severity of the loss, No! There is always a period of grieving when there is loss, whether we realize it or not. We need to give ourselves permission to grieve, allowing ourselves time to release the guilt, or anger we have with the incident. But then, we need to find some way, whether we call it inner reflection, or prayer or spending time with a professional or group for healing.
In that healing, we learn to release the hold these ideas of disability that have clouded our reasoning and held us up from enjoying life. And really, it is our own mind that has held us captive and imprisoned us in the idea that we are less than, or don’t deserve something.
Why do we do that? Ego! It’s the thing that keeps us from hurting ourselves and doing things that are not in “its” best interest. It also keeps us from being the very best version of ourselves that we can be. Ego doesn’t like to accept responsibility for anything that doesn’t bode success for us. Oh, and there are no good or bad choices, just choices.
But that’s another story for another time.
from Love, in Peace,
~revjim
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