Irene Watson - Rewriting Life Scripts

Overcoming Resistance

Dealing with personal resistance is a key part of rewriting the script. A feeling of resistance is an internal source of guidance for us. We all have an internal guidance system, and most of the time it gives us good advice, but in the case of resistance, it can often go either way.

 

Positive forms of resistance are when we get that feeling of dread in our stomach or when we hear a voice in our head telling us “No, don’t do that.” Resistance can then protect us from situations we are better left not experiencing. For example, we might feel resistance about loaning money to someone we don’t really know well and whom we suspect will not pay us back.

 

But sometimes, we find that we resist things we would do better just to let go of rather than allowing them to cause us anxiety and pain. In the above example, we might resist giving the money, but we also might resist saying “No.” We come up with excuses, and we dance around the subject. We are afraid of being seen as “not a nice person” if we say, “No,” so we resist saying it. Just saying it will be a relief. Better to cut to the chase.

 

Other times, we feel resistance about something where it would just be better if we quit resisting and gave in. For example, a friend of mine suffers from acid reflux. His doctor told him he would have to take a prescription medication for the rest of his life. He was not happy with that response. At the time, he had insurance so he started to take the medication but continued to look for alternatives. When he left his job, he no longer had insurance to cover the prescription costs, and he was astounded at the astronomical cost of the pills, but he realized when he didn’t take them, he suffered. He resisted paying for them without insurance. In this case, he did some research and found he could buy a generic brand that worked just as well and cost only about 5% of what he paid for the prescription brand. He made the switch to the generic brand, but he still resisted having to take pills. He explored natural remedies for acid reflux, and while he found that some of them helped a little, none helped as much as the pills. Over time, he found that taking just one rather than two pills a day, and changes in his diet and using some natural remedies balanced out so that he felt much better. Then he tried to go off the pills completely, but after a couple of weeks, he was suffering again. Finally, he realized he was resisting taking the pills, and considering how little they cost and how much better they made him feel, it was no longer worth the struggle to resist. Now he takes them and doesn’t give them another thought. His resistance is gone and no longer saps energy he can use in other areas.

 

Relationships are a big place where we have resistance. We resist giving up our time. We resist spending time with family members we don’t enjoy. Sometimes, we find if we do spend an afternoon with family, it wasn’t as bad as we expected. Once we let go of the resistance, we can enjoy ourselves and feel better.

 

Think of resistance as like a dam along a river. The dam is there to stop the water from flowing. Too much water is a bad thing—it can cause flooding—so some resistance, to what isn’t healthy, is good. But if the dam holds back too much water, if we resist too much, the river dries up. If we quit resisting, it’s much easier to float down the river. Finding the balance so we can float downriver on an inner tube, rather than pushing a canoe through shallow waters, or taking a wild rapids raft ride, is the key to dealing with resistance. With balance, resistance is a great guide down the river.

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

Rewrite Your Script by Rewriting Your Family Story

We all have family stories. Some of us have heard rumors that we’re descended from royalty or at least Mayflower Pilgrims. Some of those stories might be true. Some might not be. More specifically, we might have heard stories about more recent ancestors—grandparents or great-grandparents—we have probably conceived notions about those people from the stories we have heard about them, or stories they told us about themselves, and ultimately, some of those stories may have helped us to define ourselves and to shape whom we have become.

Recently, one of my friends told me about a family discovery he made that changed how he viewed a lot of things. This friend grew up in a family that had a lot of sexual hang-ups. Premarital sex was frowned on. People needed to be morally responsible. His family, in a sense, sort of thought of itself as better than others because it was more moral. There was clearly a right and a wrong way to behave in relationships and especially in regards to sex.

Then one day, while doing some genealogy research, he happened to find out, not only that his great-grandparents had gotten married because his great-grandfather had gotten his great-grandmother pregnant, but that the man involved had not wanted to marry her and she had consequently had him arrested and a judge and sheriff coerced the man into marrying her—this was back in the late 1800s of course. The couple stayed married for the rest of their lives.

My friend had to laugh about the situation. His mother had always been very prudish, as a direct result of her mother being so over-protective. And his grandmother had equally been over-protected as a young girl, so much so that the night her future husband proposed to her, she had a friend with her because she was not allowed to go out on a date alone with a man.

And now it was revealed that that grandmother’s mother had gotten herself pregnant out of wedlock. Had the family always then been prudish, or had prudery developed from prudence? Doubtless, the great-grandmother had not wanted to see her daughter caught in the same situation she had been caught in. She may have been over-protective, but she been strict with her daughter out of love. Only, over-protectiveness resulted in what eventually became an unhealthy attitude about sex in the family.

That’s how many codependent and dysfunctional behaviors happen in our families. Someone tries to compensate for something that went wrong—he or she tries to protect or control out of fear based on personal experience, and ultimately, the result is that codependent behaviors get passed down in the family.

As for my friend, he is still laughing about what he learned regarding his great-grandparents. “They were human!” he told me. They are more real to him now than ever before considering they had both died long before he ever knew them. This little tidbit of information about an event that happened over a century ago has made him realize how much our family stories, or what we think are our family stories, shape our identities. It also shows that the family story we tell ourselves may not be completely accurate depending on what information our older family members tell us and what they leave out for their own reasons.

What family stories could you unearth that would help you to put you and your family into perspective? Sometimes, the smallest piece of information about a person can help us to see him or her in a totally different light, and by extension, we come better to understand our own relationships with family members.

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

The World Is A Stage

Last week, I talked about “moving on” when a relationship ends. At the same time, on a spiritual level, I don’t believe any relationship truly ends. I am going out on a limb here, but from what I understand from all the books and teachers out there about life-after-death, reincarnation, and near-death experiences, all our relationships are actually sacred. A relationship may end in this lifetime, but only because that is what is meant to happen. I am not talking about predestination here, but simply about planning.

 

We all know the phrase, “I saw my life flash before my eyes.” We hear it in regards to someone who has experienced a dangerous situation where his or her life was threatened. Several people who have claimed to have near-death experiences explain that what this really means is that when we die, we get to review our lives to see what we did or did not learn. In other words, our lives were planned out before we came, and after life ends, we get to analyze our lives to see how well we did in terms of what we intended to do.

 

Stay with me here. You may not believe in life after death, or reincarnation or any of these things, but just consider for a minute what it would mean if this belief were true.

 

Is it possible that our lives and the roles we play are no different than being in a giant play with each of us as an actor following a script, or perhaps more accurately ad-libbing our speeches based on some basic parameters we’ve set before we entered these lives?

 

Spiritual teachers suggest that we make contracts with one another before this life. We agree to be mother, brother, friend, spouse, enemy to someone. We believe that by doing so, we will learn more in these experiences. Consider the less desirable relation roles, such as an enemy, or at least, a difficult sibling, or a friend who rejects us. Some spiritual teachers have surmised that the people who hurt us in this life are the ones who love us the most because they are willing to sacrifice themselves in that way to make us learn and become stronger.

 

Rewriting the Script is not only about changing our mindsets; it’s about understanding those mindsets and why certain roles, people, experiences come into our lives.

 

Perhaps we have a falling out with a loved one, a drag down fight with that person and we never speak to her again.

 

When this life has ended and we meet that person on the other side, what’s the chance that we might pat each other on the back and have a conversation that reads something like:

 

            “How did I do? Was I mean enough to you?”

            “You were wonderful. You’re breaking up with me really made me reprioritize my life. All the good that followed I can attribute to the mean words you said when you dumped me.”

            “That’s great. I’m glad I helped so much.”

            “You did. You played the part great. I can’t thank you enough.”

            “It was my pleasure. I love you and I wanted to help you in the best way possible, no matter how difficult it might have been for you during your life.”

 

Could such conversations happen in the next life after death? No one truly knows, but it’s nice to consider the possibility. After all, how often do we find that the worst moments in our lives led us to the best results?

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

The Mini-Escape

We all need a break now and then, whether it’s from our job, our family, or our recovery work. We deserve to nurture, pamper, and reward ourselves, not just once a year on a vacation but everyday.

 

People go on vacation to get away, but we don’t always have that luxury. And while going on vacation can be a lot of fun, it can also be a lot of work arranging flights and hotels, and just lugging the luggage everywhere. Sometimes a quiet day or just a few minutes of quiet will do wonders to restore our spirits and energy.

 

So take a mini-vacation. Perhaps you can’t sunbathe on a Caribbean Island, but you can spend fifteen minutes lying on your bed, imagining yourself on the beach. Try to smell the salty waves, listen for their roar. Feel the sun warming your skin. Breathe it all in, relax, and enjoy yourself.

 

If you’re not imaginative enough to picture yourself on that beach or anywhere else you want to be, find other ways to escape.

 

Put down your work and pick up a book—find something fun and exotic—a lot of mystery novels will fulfill that need for you. Spend fifteen minutes reading about being lost in a bazaar in Morocco, or on a Caribbean mystery, or wherever your favorite detective might travel to solve a crime.

 

If you’re not a reader, escape from the house or office into your own backyard—if not literally your backyard, then your neighborhood. Is there a restaurant you’ve never tried, a store you’ve never visited that might brighten up your day a bit. Visiting restaurants with foreign food—Chinese, Thai, Mexican, French—can give you that feeling of escape and the exotic, a little adventure to brighten your day.

 

Sometimes just a little thing can cheer us up—a piece of candy, a favorite TV show, a walk around the block looking for things we never noticed before. Let your mind escape by finding something new.

 

Here are a few more suggestions for your mini-escape:

 

Watch a sitcom in the middle of the day.

Go for a walk.

Go for a bike ride, but take a path you normally don’t take.

Visit a new restaurant.

Take a day trip.

Take off a day to lie on the beach.

Move your laptop to a different room—if you usually sit at your desk or table, sit on your bed today.

Find some exotic music to listen to while you work.

Spend fifteen minutes online learning about a place you want to visit.

Take short one chapter reading breaks every 2-3 hours.

Send a postcard to a friend—even if it’s a postcard of your town, it will feel like a vacation, and your friend will love to hear from you, so you’ll brighten two people’s days.

 

Just fifteen or twenty minutes away from our daily tasks can be a big boost to our energy and restore us. We will be more productive, more relaxed, and more in touch with enjoying life by just allowing ourselves to escape now and then.

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

Your Money or Your Life

The other day I came across this wonderful quote:

 

“Pursue experiences because no one wants to hear stories about all the money you made.” – Simon Sinek

 

It’s a good quote to remember when we set a goal. Too often we get caught up in what we have to do each day—the daily grind, the chores, the work, the activities, our schedule. We have to work to put food on the table and pay the bills. We have to run the kids to soccer so we appear to be a good mom. We have to give the dog a bath so the house will not stink. We have to be in long boring meetings and on conference calls and often do work we don’t enjoy to make a living. Sometimes we work harder than we need to so we can “get ahead” or put money away “for a rainy day.”

 

Are our lives frenzied because we don’t know how to say “No” to meaningless activities, or are we too busy pursuing the almighty dollar? Are we doing things we feel we have to do, or are we taking time to enjoy what we do?

 

I daresay we would all like to be rich—some of us might say that money doesn’t mean anything to us. In truth, for most of us it is not money we want. I doubt many of us want to be like Scrooge McDuck and have a vault of money in which to go swimming. But we want money so we can live; we want enough money that eventually we can have freedom to do what we want. But how much money is enough? How often do we think once we have $X we will be able to enjoy ourselves. Once we have the mortgage paid off becomes once we put the kids through college and then once we have $X in our retirement fund we can be free to do what we want.

 

We can’t spend our lives waiting. Yes, I know that $3,000 you spend to go to France for a week, if you let it sit in your retirement fund, might be $9,000 in twenty years when you retire, and maybe you will need that $9,000 in twenty years, but in twenty years, do you want to be telling people you have $9,000 or about your trip to France, how you saw the Mona Lisa, how you stood at the top of the Eiffel tower, how you visited a winery, indulged in incredible French pastries, toured a chateau, and sunbathed on the Riviera. “I have $9,000 in my retirement account” isn’t much of a story by comparison—it’s certainly not much of an experience.

 

I’m not saying not to save for your retirement, and yes, I know you will need far more than $9,000, but I’m also saying that you need to invest in yourself. Invest in your experiences, in experiences that educate you, bring you pleasure, knowledge, joy, and moments that money cannot buy. It’s only money—it comes and goes—but an experience once enjoyed can never be taken from you.

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

Move On

When a relationship ends, it can be very difficult. We go through various stages of grieving—similar stages to those we experience when a loved one dies, only in some ways, a divorce, a falling out with a friend, a departure from a group, is much harder. We lose someone who parted from us of his or her own free will. If the person had died, we would not have to blame anyone, but when a relationship ends, we simultaneously grieve and hope for the relationship’s restoration. We go through depression, loneliness, anger, and finally acceptance.

 

And then we often repeat those various stages again and again. Sometimes we don’t know how to let go. We think we are finally past the situation, and then hearing a song, seeing a photo of the former loved one, hearing his or her name, can trigger old feelings, old memories that can make depression and tears return.

 

Sometimes we try too hard to let go—maybe we try to make amends with the person even though no amends will help to restore the relationship. Sometimes we simply replay the final conversation in our heads, trying to think how we could have said things differently. Perhaps we see the person in public, and although we want to speak to him or her, we walk away. Perhaps we acknowledge the other person with a smile or a wave; certain situations might even mean a handshake, polite conversation in a public place that makes our hearts quake inside. But we do not speak the words we are longing to speak. We realize it is pointless.

 

We need to move on. It can take weeks, months, years, but we need to move on. We need to realize that person is part of our former life now. We can remember the good times, and we can be grateful for the experience, but if the relationship has ended, we need to accept it and move on. Some people are only in our lives for a short while—often, these are the people who have the greatest impact on us—our relationships with them can lead us to making difficult choices we might not otherwise have done had the relationship gone well.

 

We can still love these people even if they are not in our lives any longer. We can be grateful for the roles they played, the lessons they taught us, whether or not they meant to aid us, and then we can close that chapter and move to the next. No one said it is easy, but our lives are so rich and so full, comprised of so many years and so many experiences. No one experience, no one former relationship should define us or make us stagnant. We have a lot of living yet to do.

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

Sabotage

Relationships can be difficult for us. Many of us, based on our codependency, have found ourselves in unhealthy relationships where we were controlling or allowed ourselves to be controlled. Perhaps we lost the relationship because we were always nagging our partner, always trying to get him or her to do what we wanted, or trying to change someone who had no intention of being changed. Finally, the other person broke up with us because he or she could not handle our crazy controlling and manipulative antics, or we broke up with the other person, finally realizing our efforts were futile.

 

We realized our relationships were driving us crazy and we got help, through counseling or maybe a Twelve-Step program. We came to understand how codependency works, how it had affected our behavior, and also how it may have affected the people with whom we had relationships. We promised ourselves that next time we would do better. Maybe we spent time alone, not entering a relationship because we were busy taking care of ourselves, but finally, the day came when we felt we were healthy and prepared to share our lives with someone again.

 

We entered into a new relationship. The other person appeared to be everything we wanted in a life-mate. But we remained careful—we watched for warning signs of our codependency resurfacing—we watched for problematic behavior in the other person as well. We were amazed by the change in ourselves—we felt calm in the relationship. We talked to the other person about our past and learned about that person’s past also. We felt we had so much in common with the other person—perhaps we had too much in common and did not realize it. We realized certain situations that arose we were able to let go or handle calmly, not feeling the fear, anxiety, or anger we had expressed during such situations in past relationships. We were doing everything right, or at least, far better than we had done before. Could it be possible that finally we had found the right relationship?

 

And then one day we sensed that something was wrong. We couldn’t quite say what. The other person became withdrawn—there was no shouting or blaming. We tried to talk to the other person to understand, but it did no good. “I just don’t feel the same way anymore,” we were told. And the relationship ended. What did we do wrong? We didn’t understand what had happened.

 

Perhaps we did nothing wrong. Perhaps the other person was not able to handle that we were doing things right. We are not to blame. When people are so used to crazy codependent relationships, a healthy relationship is frightening. It is easier to return to a codependent relationship than to work on a healthy one. We do not have to blame ourselves if someone else cannot love us. We are not at fault if the other person sabotages the relationship because he or she is scared. We can express our feelings for that person, we can explain to him or her that there is nothing to fear, but then we have to let go of the situation—we have learned we cannot control relationships. If the other person wants to leave, we have to let him or her go with love.

 

We are not at fault. The other person isn’t really at fault either. He or she simply was not at the same place we are, ready to have a healthy relationship. We can take stock of what happened—we can learn from the situation and see the warning signs earlier next time or be better at choosing someone ready for a healthy relationship.

 

We can also pat ourselves on the back for not being afraid of trying again, for having done so much better this time. We are one step closer now to the relationship we want—the healthy relationship waiting for us. It is a long journey, but a happy ending is still possible. Don’t give up.

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

If You Don’t Like the World, Change It

In my last post, I talked about viewing the world as being better or worse than in the past. I encourage people to get beyond the victim mentality of letting politicians determine our world, or terrorists, or a boss in a job we hate. We determine our reality, not anyone else. There may be some factors beyond our control, but most are not. Rewrite the script of negativity in your life to be one of hope and love.

 

“But Irene,” you’re saying, “I can’t go fight Osama bin Laden, and I can’t go and feed children in Africa, and I don’t have time or I’m afraid to go and lobby to support gay marriage, or end animal cruelty, or any of a million causes that I think can make the world better. I’m just one person. What can I do?”

 

Let’s start with Osama bin Laden. During the holidays I went to see the new 3-D film of “A Christmas Carol.” I enjoyed it immensely—the animation was spectacular—but had I seen an old black and white film of the story, I would have enjoyed it anyway. Why? Because deep in my heart not only do I believe, but I solemnly know, that like Ebenezer Scrooge, people are capable of change, and that a little love can change the world. When I expressed to people how much I enjoyed the film, one negative person replied that he had nothing good to say about “A Christmas Carol.” In fact, he said it was “dangerous” and when I pressed him why he thought so, he said that it creates the illusion that evil people can change on their own without us having to fight them.

 

Fight? It’s almost a word vanished from my vocabulary. I don’t fight bad people. I’m not going to go fight Osama. Nor am I likely to go find him in his cave and preach love and kindness to him. But what I can do is give love to the people around me. Look at all the Muslims in our culture who suffered after 9/11 because of his actions—or did they suffer because of how we chose to react? Many people chose instead to protect and look out for their Muslim friends and neighbors. Rather than let Osama think white Christian Americans are evil, we can fight that viewpoint by loving our Muslim neighbors.

 

Do you need to go to India and become the next Mother Teresa? No. If you want to, I’ll support you 110%, but you can do Mother Teresa’s work right here at home. Just visit your local soup kitchen or homeless shelter or simply say a kind word to someone. People might be starving in India, but they are starving in the U.S. too. Don’t forget that Mother Teresa famously said that the Western World is most starved for love. When people offered her money, she told them instead to go out and find someone who felt he was alone and show that person he was not.

 

My point—if you don’t like the world you see, change it. If you want to be an activist, go for it. But maybe all it takes is smiling at people. When people walk past you with their eyes to the ground, make a point of saying, “Hello. How are you?”

 

I had a friend who told me about his experience when he first moved away from home and to a bigger city where he didn’t know anyone. He said it was three weeks before a cashier in a store actually said, “How are you today?” to him. He remembers how his heart leapt up within him that someone actually cared enough to ask. It had been a lonely hard three weeks in a new place. That right there proves to me that Mother Teresa was right.

 

We don’t have to do giant things. We can start with simple things—a kind word, a compliment, a helping hand. Don’t be a victim of others’ negativity. Instead help others cease from being victims of negativity and fear simply by reaching out with a little love. It will make a difference.

 

“Be the change you want to see in the world.” – Mahatma Gandhi

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

Better or Worse?

How is 2010 going for you? So far, I don’t really have any complaints. Everyday I expect to see things to be happy about and it’s very rare that I don’t. I look forward to each New Year because it is an opportunity to spend more time with the people I love, to read more books, watch more movies, listen to more great music, have more moments of pleasure, make new friends, and simply to enjoy life.

 

At New Year’s I wished “Happy New Year” to the members of an online group to which I belong. One of the members responded that while she wished everyone a Happy New Year as well, she thought 2010 had all of the signs that we were headed into a dark time in human history.

 

Sounds to me like someone is spending too much time watching the news. I’m not denying there’s a war in Iraq, that recently there was an earthquake in Haiti, or that people are dying of AIDS in Africa, but are things really that dark? I hear people bemoaning all the time that things are worse now than when they were younger. Is that really true?

 

I admit that I do miss the twentieth century. Life was slower, but maybe also a bit duller. Still, I’m not sure all advancements are for the better. Perhaps before technology spread so rapidly, we appreciated things more. One of my friends was recalling the other day how it used to feel like a big event when “The Wizard of Oz” came on TV once a year. Children would wait all year for that night, and they would be glued to the television through that program. Then came the VCR and now we can all watch “The Wizard of Oz” six times a day everyday if we really want. We have less excitement perhaps because we have less delayed-gratification, and I do think we’ve become more impatient as a result. But overall, is that really worse when we can enjoy any movie we want at any time?

 

What about bigger issues? Yes, there is a war in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s terrible, but is it comparable to the horrors of World War II? The earthquake in Haiti is horrible, but so was the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. Do we think our politicians are corrupt? I guess we’ve forgotten the graft and corruption and “boss” control of city politics that marked the early twentieth century.

 

I don’t think things are worse. In fact, in many ways they are better. Our processed food may not be as wholesome, but yet we are still living longer. In the old days, if a loved one went down the Oregon Trail, you’d likely never see him again. Now you can hop on a plane and be in Oregon in a few hours. Remember when we had to write a letter, mail it, and then wait at least a week for a response? Now email gives us communication with anyone in the world in just a few minutes. And how anyone composed a novel on a typewriter—all the frustration of correcting typos—what a nightmare to think of compared to our wonderful laptops today. How about how people used to have to move away to find a job—today more and more people work from home. You can send an email from the Himalayas, or have a business call on a boat in Hawaii. If you’re an author you know publishing and promoting your book is ten times easier due to new technology and the Internet. My company, Reader Views, never could have existed twenty years ago—technology made it happen. So are things really worse?

 

If anything, things are about even, but I sincerely think the world is better than it was. We will always have naysayers. Rather than listen to them, turn the channel. We have something like 400 cable channels to watch. We don’t need to hold onto doom and gloom. How many times have we heard the sky is falling, and how many times has it really fallen?

 

“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.” — Mark Twain

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

 

Fear and Adventure

As children, we tend to get excited about everything. Everything is new, unfamiliar, and an adventure to be experienced.

 

But as we grow older, the magic disappears and excitement and wonder are often replaced with fear. Our mothers warn us that bad things could happen if we don’t zip up our coats in the cold; they tell us to watch for deer when we drive. Then we are bombarded with ads telling us we need insurance because something bad could happen, and we need pills because something might be wrong with us. Soon we have gone from adventure-mode to survival-mode.

 

But on any given day, it is still more likely we can find an adventure than that we will experience danger. And most of our adventures will not be dangerous—we aren’t likely to be attacked by pirates just because we decide to try out a new restaurant.

 

Be an adventurer. Discover new places, new ideas, new people. We don’t have to let fear hold us back. We can find something new to experience and get excited about everyday. We can find things we told ourselves we didn’t have time for and experience them now, even if we only have a few minutes a day to do it in.

 

Have you always wanted to travel? Let’s say you’ve always wanted to go to France. You used to talk about it years ago, but you let people convince you it was dangerous to travel overseas, that the French didn’t like Americans, that you couldn’t afford it anyway. And maybe you can’t afford it, but you can still have your French adventure. Is there a French restaurant nearby? Then go have lunch there. If not, get a French cookbook and experiment. Maybe you could buy a set of language tapes and learn French in your car on the way to work. Or in the morning, spend fifteen minutes with your coffee reading a book about France—have a little French vanilla cream with that coffee while you’re at it. Go rent a French film. Have your French adventure, even if it’s only behind your steering wheel or in your armchair.

 

Life is too short, and there are too many wonderful things to experience to let a 9-5 job, raising children, or lack of money or opportunity serve as excuses not to have daily adventures. In fact, get your children or coworkers involved in your French adventure.

 

Whatever your adventure might be, it can be small and simple or big and loud. Go for a walk around your block and look for something you never noticed driving by in your car. If you already go for walks, try a different route. Then try for larger things—go to the Indian film festival at the library, take a water-painting class, learn how to scuba dive. Perhaps you will work your way up to seeing those pyramids in Egypt, going on that African safari, or cruising the Mediterranean.

 

What is there to be afraid of? Life is to be enjoyed. Life is an adventure. It is only nasty, brutish, and short if we let it be. It’s your choice. Dare to live!

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

Waiting and Being

When things do not feel like they are going right, or when something unexpected happens, our first question is usually “Why?” Why did this happen? Why did this happen to me? How can I fix this? Why did that person treat me the way he did? Why did my girlfriend dump me? How could God let this happen? What is the meaning of this?

 

It’s normal for us to ask these questions, but it’s also often fruitless to do so. We can’t always know why. Even if we do learn why, we usually learn much later than we wanted to know. And surprisingly, we then find when we do learn that the information really doesn’t make that much difference to us anymore.

 

We want to see the bigger picture. We want to know how it’s all going to turn out. We want reassurance that there is a reason for what has happened—that ultimately everything will be better and work out for the best.

 

Asking why isn’t going to solve the problem. Acceptance will help some. We can try to accept what has happened. We can realize our powerlessness over what has happened. We can remember the serenity prayer—“to accept the things I cannot change and the courage to change the things I can.” We can stop ourselves from trying to fix things right away—perhaps we can change something, but usually, it is not the situation but ourselves we must change. We can quit asking why. We can trust everything will turn out as is best rather than worry about whether it will.

 

We can just “be.” Just being is enough for today. We can’t solve the world’s problems today. We probably can’t even solve our own problems today. But we can just be. We can be aware of our surroundings. We can appreciate the good things—a beam of sunlight, a favorite color, a favorite food. We can breathe and relax and trust. We can remember that “this too will pass.”

 

Waiting is an action. Sometimes it is the only action we can take. Often, it is the best action we can take. Today we can take the action of waiting, of just being. Perhaps tomorrow or next week, we will know what other action to take, or maybe by then we will find we don’t have to take any action.

 

We can’t know until we wait and see.

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

 

Isolation: The Result of Overwhelm

In my last post, I talked about being busy and feeling overwhelmed. The tendency to feel overwhelmed is often directly linked to our tendency to isolate ourselves. Human beings are sociable people. We need someone to talk to, someone to confide in, someone we trust will understand us. And we need to have fun, to laugh with friends, to enjoy quality time with our families.

 

When we isolate ourselves, we tend to suffocate. We become easily overwhelmed, we become too focused on one thing and we forget the rest of the world around us. We may be too busy working to notice it’s a beautiful sunny day outside. We might be too busy worrying about something—something that probably won’t turn out to be as bad as we expect—that we forget to feel gratitude for all the good things that surround us.

 

People can restore us to our senses. Sometimes a simple hug will cure the ball of anxiety eating away at our stomach. Simply venting our frustrations to someone else will make us feel better and lift our spirits. Taking a break to go to lunch with a friend, even just for an hour, will make us forget about our problems and often we come back to the situation later, realizing it is not as terrible as we suspect, or as insurmountable. We might even learn to let go of the problem and have it disappear.

 

People—companionship—relationships—those are our greatest blessings in life. Yes, people may lead us to be codependent, but they also help restore us to our well-being. Too often, loneliness and isolation are self-inflicted. We all need human contact. When we isolate, we allow walls to build up—we begin to fear seeking help from other people. That is when we need people most of all so we can step outside of the prison we have created for ourselves. No one needs to be lonely. Friends are out there if we look for them—a better life, a better viewpoint, relief is out there. Just go outside and look. And trust that you will find the person you need to help you find yourself.

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

 

It's Impossible for Us to Do Everything

We all feel like we don’t have enough time. It doesn’t seem to matter what role we have in life. Mothers are busy caring for their children, pleasing their husbands, working their jobs, caring for elderly parents. Kids are busy with school, sports, balancing friends with schoolwork. Even retired people find that they do not have enough time to do everything they want to do.

 

We are just too busy, or are we? Do we really not have enough time to do everything we want to do? Or do we create busyness for ourselves? Are we afraid of not having anything to do so we fill our days with things? Do we claim we’re really busy when we’re actually wasting time sending emails we don’t need to send or watching more television than we need to watch?

 

Being busy depends on what we define as “busy.” Do we treat play like work or work like play? Do we take on obligations we shouldn’t because we feel obligated? Are we busy because we don’t know how to say “No”? Do we find ourselves busy because we find it gives us an adrenaline rush—are we creating the situations that keep us busy—do we feel we have to do things because if we don’t everything will fall apart because no one else but us is capable of doing everything?

 

The fact of the matter is there is always something to do, but it is our choice whether we decide to do it or not. Sometimes we do make mountains out of molehills. Sometimes we forget the bigger picture. What if we don’t answer the ringing phone? What if we just don’t check our email today? What if just this once we decide we won’t make anything for the church bake sale?

 

It’s impossible for us to do everything. No matter how much we do, we can always find more that we think needs to be done. We don’t have to justify our existence by how many things we do or don’t accomplish each day. No one said we have to be busy every moment. We are valuable people simply because we are. Whether we do or don’t do anything today, we are deserving. And we deserve to relax, to enjoy, to stop and smell the roses. Is there really anything so important that it can’t wait a few minutes, or another hour, or another day? You’ll never get it all done, so be sure you do what you most enjoy doing first.

 

If you’re really stressed and overwhelmed, just walk away from it for an hour. You’ll be surprised when you come back that not only did you have the time to walk away, but everything is all okay even though you did.

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

Swim Freely Without Being Hooked

How often do we let people guilt us into doing something we don’t want to do? When we know they expect us to do something, do we always go ahead and do it because we do not want to argue or disappoint them?

 

In my last blog, I talked about ways to free up our time. We can do the same by avoiding hooks—avoiding times when people are trying to manipulate us into doing something we don’t want to do.

 

For example, if the boss asks you to come in and work on Saturday “just this once because we’re really behind,” and you agree out of kindness to help out, is he going to expect you to work on Saturday next time?

 

How often have we been in situations where we agree to do an errand for someone such as pick up a gallon of milk when we go to the store, only to have that person soon calling us weekly as if we were her personal delivery boy or girl?

 

Nothing is wrong with helping people, but we need to be firm about how we will help them. If we see a hook coming, we need to be prepared to avoid it before it happens. Sometimes we know someone will ask us something and we can prepare for it. Other times, we are caught off guard. If we get asked to do an errand that catches us off guard, maybe we can do it, but then we know to be prepared next time with how we will choose to respond to the request. If we are going to the store anyway, it’s fine to pick up milk for someone, but we should not make a special trip. If it’s for an elderly person who can’t go to the store him or herself and we want to be helpful, we can let the person know we go grocery shopping on Tuesdays, or we can ask him or her to think ahead a few days about what she will need so we can go when it is convenient to us.

 

Other times, people try to hook us by not asking directly. They will hint at a problem, expecting us to volunteer to help. When that happens, it’s best not to get the hint. We do not want to be manipulated by people. If someone wants something from us, let him or her ask us directly. Then we can respond directly with a “Yes” or “No.” If the answer is no, we can be firm about our reason for saying “No” if we choose to give a reason.

 

We are good people and we want to help others, but we do not need to help them when it is not helpful to us. We do not have to give up our time to come to someone else’s rescue. Our time is a gift—it is ours to give when it is convenient and we choose to give it—no one has the right to steal our time.

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

Take Back Your Time: Dealing with Interruptions

We only have so many hours in the day. Since in my last blog, I suggested you find time in each day to have fun, the next logical thing to talk about is finding time. How do you have time to have fun when your life is already so filled, and even if you did have more time, the annoying, thoughtless, or needy people in your life would just suck up that time, expecting you to give it to them?

 

I can give you tips on time management, creating schedules, prioritizing tasks, why you should or shouldn’t multi-task to be more efficient, but I’ve found that the single greatest cause of lack of time is not knowing how to deal with interruptions. If we are codependent, we have difficulty saying, “No” to people, and people are behind interruptions. We need to learn how to say “No” to interruptions, and if people persist in interrupting us, we need to learn how to let them take as little of our time as possible. Below are a few tips for overcoming interruptions.

 

Stop answering the phone. Doesn’t the phone always ring at the worst times—only during the one half-hour of the day we took for ourselves to watch our favorite sitcom, or when we’re busy making dinner, or when we’re rushing around like crazy to get ready to go somewhere and are already running late, or when we are busy concentrating on an important project? So why, when we know it will add to our stress, do we answer the phone? By now, most of us have caller ID and voicemail. If not, go out and get it. It will be a tremendous timesaver to you. When the phone rings, let voicemail get it if you’re focused and it’s not a good time to talk. Look on the caller ID to see who is calling. If it’s your chatty friend, call her back later. If it’s someone you do want to talk to, then go ahead and pick it up.

 

Lead Your Conversations. If you do pick up the phone, but you only want to talk a minute, what do you do? You take control of the conversation. To start off, instead of saying “How are you?” say something like, “I’m really busy right now, but how can I help you?” or “I’m about to go out the door so I only have a minute.” Such phrases will force people to be straightforward about why they are calling. It doesn’t mean you are rude—it shows you are willing to take time for the person even though you are busy.

 

Train people to use email. I can’t tell you how many people call me to ask trivial questions that not only interrupt me but they can answer themselves. Train these people to use email. If they are going to be talkative on the phone, say something like, “I’m really busy right now and can’t think about that. If you send me an email to remind me, I’ll answer you later.” Email will force the other person to be concise and it will allow you to deal with the situation when it’s convenient.

 

Give solutions. When someone asks you where you want to go to dinner, don’t say, “I don’t know. Where do you want to go?” Suggest a place and have a backup in mind if he doesn’t like the first suggestion. Cut out the indecisiveness, especially since we usually do know where we want to go to dinner but we’re just trying to be polite and letting the other person decide.

 

We don’t need to feel manipulative for using these techniques. We simply are restoring the right to our own time. We can save the “How are you” conversations for when we see people in person and have time for them. When we stay focused on our task at hand, we can also get more done so we have more quality time to spend with people later.

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

Is Having Fun Really Fun?

Having fun is a basic need in life. Almost as much as we need water, food, shelter, and love, we need something to look forward to that we will enjoy.

 

But what is “fun”? What do we find fun to do? Fun varies from person to person. Sometimes what we enjoy doing and what someone else enjoys doing are not the same thing, even if we are otherwise two very compatible people. At those times, we often seek to compromise—the husband goes to the opera to please his wife even though it puts him to sleep—the wife tries to play golf even though she hates being out in the hot sun. Other times, it’s best to go our own separate ways, both doing what we want, and then coming together later, perhaps to eat at that Italian restaurant we both like.

 

We should not feel required to “have fun” according to someone else’s definition. One of my friends, who admits to being a bit of a workaholic, told me the other day how he can recall when he would come home to visit his parents over the holidays while working on his Ph.D. that he would sit in the living room with a book and a notebook, taking notes for his dissertation. His mother asked him, “Don’t you ever stop working?” He was surprised by the question. He was enjoying writing his dissertation and felt fortunate that he had work to do that he found to be fun.

 

Fun comes in different packages, some of which may be as extreme as sky diving or going on safari, others as simple as watching cartoons, eating ice cream, or enjoying a bike ride. Martha Stewart reputedly enjoys vacuuming—to each his or her own.

 

In the United States, Friday and Saturday nights seem to be reserved for fun. The problem is that if you don’t have anything fun to do those nights, you may almost feel guilty. If you stay at home and read a book, maybe something is wrong with you—shouldn’t you be out having fun—at a party, at a movie, going out for dinner? But maybe reading a book is more fun for you than going to a party. Then do what you find fun. And don’t limit all your fun to just one evening. A lyric from the musical “Mame” reminds us, “Life can also be lived on the weekday.”

 

Fun comes in many shapes and forms. It doesn’t matter what you find fun so long as you take the time to have fun. For many of us, fun is the last thing we think about—we have dishes to wash, laundry to do, loads of work stacked on our desk, family obligations to fulfill. But all work and no play only wears us down.

 

I’ve often talked about gratitude lists—thinking of all the things for which we are grateful. Today, I encourage you to make a fun list. Each evening, count up how many things you did that day that were fun in some way, whether watching a sitcom, reading an email joke, or going for a walk. Then, when you wake each morning, before you allow the bustle of the day to take over, plan at least one fun thing you can do that day—big or small—to fulfill your need to have fun. Trust me; you’ll have fun doing whatever fun thing you choose!

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

Relax and Trust

Recently, I had a very hectic week. I had a lot to do. I did, or at least attempted to do in one week, what I usually would do in two weeks. The result? I was tired and I also ended up with insomnia because I was so anxious to get everything else done I needed to do. Then, I got sick. I wore myself down. And while I was sick, I at first tried to keep working to stay caught up. After I found I could not physically do so, I submitted to going to bed and sleeping.

 

The next day, I felt like my old self. I also found that what I did not get done the day I was sick I easily got done the day after as well as everything I had planned to get done that day, and I still took a little time to rest.

 

When we feel overwhelmed, it is easy to overreact, to worry about not getting everything done. Why do we overdo it? Is it because we need to get the work done, or because we’re trying to impress someone with how efficient we are? Is it because we are addicted to stress and high energy levels and can’t simply turn them off to relax? Are we merely trying to impress ourselves, or worse, justify ourselves by everything we accomplish?

 

The day I gave in to sleeping was a wonderful day. Once I quit worrying about what needed to be done, I was able to lie in bed and enjoy the comforting warmth of my quilt, of lying in bed, of the sunlight pouring across the room, of the deliciousness of doing nothing. I was tired more than really sick. I was not fully conscious much of the day, but at some point, I felt my body shift and heal itself. I simply needed my battery to be recharged.

 

I also needed to remember to trust. To trust that what needed to be done would be done. To trust that anyone who had to wait on me would understand. In fact, once I was refueled, I worked as quickly as before and my work was better than it would have been otherwise; I didn’t even need to give any explanations for a delay.

 

There is always time to accomplish everything that needs to be done. We worry about lack of time, but I have found that in the end, we always have the right amount of time. We may think certain things must be done within certain timeframes, but ultimately, everything gets done when the time is right, and it is better for it as a result. Trust. Do your work, but know that time will finish things in its own time, and whenever that time is, that time will be the right one.

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

If It Doesn’t Feel Good, Don’t Do It

I have come to find that rather than do things I don’t want to do, it is better if I just don’t do them. I know—easier said than done.

 

Sometimes it’s simple to know we want to do something or we don’t want to do something. The difficulty comes when we don’t want to do something that we feel somehow we should—maybe out of family, social, or other obligations. These times we need to analyze the situation a bit.

 

First, before deciding whether you will do what you don’t want to do, ask yourself what, if any, potential benefits exist from your doing it? Will you feel better after you do it? For example, if it’s visiting your great-aunt in the nursing home, even if you find it boring, will you feel good because you know it will make your great-aunt happy? Then go ahead and do it. Is it going to a party with a friend to a place where you know you won’t have a good time and you don’t like the other people? If there’s nothing to be gained from that visit, then don’t do it.

 

Think about what happens when you do something you don’t want to do. If you went to that party, you would have to make small talk with people you don’t know or don’t like in a crowded house full of people sloshing their beer on you and blowing cigarette smoke in your face, and all the while you’ll be wishing you never came, and you’ll be miserable all the time you’re there. Then I don’t see any point in going.

 

That said, if you’ve never been to this place, you don’t know that you won’t have a good time, and you can go with an intention such as to meet one interesting person who might become a future friend. That reason for going probably does feel good, so then you have reason to go, and if it turns out you don’t find a friend, then you won’t be any worse off than you were before.

 

“Feel good” is a broad idea, so lately, another way I’ve come to think of it is, “Don’t do anything that doesn’t empower you.” Feeling good empowers me. Finding a new friend empowers me. What about helping someone with a project for which you don’t get paid? If it’s someone you don’t know who can’t in anyway benefit you, then perhaps it disempowers you by taking you away from doing what you really need or want to do, so don’t do it. But if it benefits you by making you feel good, such as doing something simply out of charity or kindness, it might be worth doing.

 

The bottom line is that when we do things we don’t want to do, we often make ourselves miserable as well as those around us. Had we gone to that party we didn’t want to attend, we wouldn’t have been in a good mood and maybe have even put our friend in a bad mood, so doing what we didn’t want to do did not empower us, but rather disempowered us and our friend.

 

If you don’t want to do something, ask yourself why and ask yourself whether there’s a way you can feel better about doing it. If you still don’t feel good about it, and especially if you feel it disempowers you, don’t do it. Always do what feels good and good opportunities and activities will come your way.

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

Assigning Blame to Overcome Shame

Things in life go wrong. Sometimes they go really wrong. Worst of all is when they go wrong and we take all the blame for ourselves. Yes, there are times when things are all our fault, but we also know that sometimes things happen that we contributed to, but when we try to make amends, we find ourselves unable to fix the situation. Those are times when our codependent crazies really kick in—when we try too hard to control the situation’s outcome because of shame we feel over what happened.

 

Whatever happened, whether it was primarily our fault or not, overcoming shame can be extremely difficult. Shame can control us, making us feel worthless, frightened, afraid of what others may think, and ashamed to show our face. Even when the world has moved on, we hold shame inside of ourselves, not knowing how to release it so we can go on with our lives.

 

I went through a period in life where I battled a great deal with shame. I tried to understand it, to understand where it came from in my life, why I had accepted it, and why I found it so difficult to shake off. It wasn’t until I found the following exercise about assigning blame that I really started to feel better and release my shame. Rather than take all the blame and shame for ourselves, the exercise asks us to assign percentages of blame to everyone or everything that could be responsible for a situation.

 

For example, let’s say you and your best friend had an argument and now your best friend will no longer speak to you. We’ll say you argued because you refused to attend her daughter’s wedding because her daughter had abandoned her first husband to commit adultery with the man she was now marrying. You not only disapprove but feel what the daughter did was morally wrong, and you told your friend so, which only made her defend her daughter.

 

Since then, you have learned about codependency and that you can’t control others. You’ve tried to make amends with your friend, but she refuses to meet you halfway. You realize you may have to accept the friendship is over, but what you can’t accept is the shame you feel for being so judgmental and stubborn and for hurting your friend and by extension her daughter.

 

Is the situation 100% your fault? Try assigning the blame to every person and aspect involved according to each one’s due to see how much responsibility you should take for this situation.

 

First, why did you react the way you did? You know the new bride and groom and you genuinely like both of them. You even think they are basically good people except for in this situation. You even think the ex-husband is a loser. Secretly, you don’t blame the bride for leaving her first husband. Doesn’t she deserve the right to be happy with someone she loves? And the couple didn’t have any children, so what reason did she have to stay with him really? But your religion and family taught you that divorce is not acceptable. Maybe society and religion deserve some of the blame here—you should be stronger than to follow and act upon what you don’t really believe in, and you know that now, but at least half of your guilt can be laid to the faulty belief system you acquired from other people.

 

What about your friend? Why did she have to fly off the handle? Could it be she was upset about the wedding too? You could have been a better friend by consoling her, but instead you were judgmental, which made her own worries turn into anger. She could have reacted better. After all, relationships rely on two people. As a true friend, she could have taken what you said with a grain of salt, and even if she got angry, you are not at fault for trying to make amends and her not forgiving you. She obviously has her own issues to work out. Some of the blame for the friendship’s end needs to be assigned to her.

 

The marriage itself. Is any blame due here? Did the new husband, the wife, and the ex-husband cause any of the problem? Certainly, cheating on your spouse isn’t right. Nor is a husband not supporting his family, which led to the wife seeking a better husband. While we can’t control other people, had the people involved in the relationship not had their problems, your friend would not have been so upset, and consequently not have gotten so angry with you.

 

Now decide to assign a percentage of the shame to each person or system involved. For example:

 

You for starting the argument by being judgmental – 20%

Your religious upbringing, which taught you to be judgmental – 15%

Your best friend – 15%

Her daughter – 25%

Her daughter’s ex – 25%

Her daughter’s new husband – 10%

 

You may not completely agree with the percentages I’ve assigned, but the point is, I came up with 20% as the blame due to you. If you’re only 20% at fault, is it worth bearing shame for the rest of your life over the situation?

 

Try this exercise with different conflicts and crises in your life. It quickly helps you put matters in perspective, to decide what degree of blame to assign to yourself, and ultimately, how responsible you should feel over a bad situation. I’ve found that the new perspective this process offers provides healing and a sense of forgiveness toward others involved rather than pointing fingers. We should all be responsible for our actions, but we should never take shame upon ourselves, especially when it is not fully warranted.

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

Having a Good Day

In one of her many books about codependency, Melody Beattie states, “It’s okay to have a bad day. I used to have bad years.”

 

I often think of that quote because I know exactly what she means. There were years when it seemed like nothing went right, and I don’t doubt that believing I was in a bad year just made more things go wrong because I took no steps to make them better.

 

When I began to practice positive thinking, one of the first things I learned to do, as suggested by Norman Vincent Peale in “The Power of Positive Thinking,” was to make a list of everything for which I have to be grateful. I talked about gratitude lists here a few weeks back. Maybe I borrowed the idea from Peale, or maybe I’m just by nature a list-maker, always trying to analyze and compare things, but soon I used the idea to help me determine what makes up a good day versus a bad day. I prefer to focus on days rather than years because they are smaller and more manageable to analyze, and you don’t get stuck in a long-term mode of thinking negatively over a long time period.

 

So what defines a good day versus a bad day? Your attitude primarily, but since this practice is about having a positive attitude, we will have to start with the events of the day. I’m not even going to tell you to change how you react to events during the day. Just simply look at the day’s events.

 

When I started this exercise, I would make two lists, one of all the bad things that happened that day and one of all the good things that happened. The things can be big or small. Bad things might include: I was late for work, I ran out of toothpaste, the battery in my watch stopped, or my boyfriend didn’t call me. Good might include: I really enjoyed the cup of coffee I had, I drove through downtown and didn’t hit any stoplights, I got paid, and I was invited to a birthday party. Whether the event is big or small, include it. If it is really big like “I got fired,” or “My boyfriend proposed to me,” let it count as two or three things, like giving it points.

 

When you’ve finished, look at your lists. I’ve found that on my worst days, the lists were pretty close to even. I might have 13 bad and 12 good things, but rarely did I have more than 1 or 2 bad things outweighing the good, so is that really a bad day? I’d say it’s just a mediocre day.

 

After doing this exercise for a while, I found that I almost never had a bad day! In fact, my good usually outnumbered the bad by several if not double the items. I was a bit surprised at first, but after having the same results day after day, I grew bored with listing the bad things; it seemed pointless since I knew the good almost always would come out ahead (and all those good days of course, add up into a good year). So eventually, I decided I would only list the good things that happened each day since obviously the bad things ended up being rather trivial in terms of the larger picture of what kind of day I had. You know what? Soon my good list kept growing. I guess by not even thinking about the bad things, I somehow attracted more good.

 

Recently, a friend of mine asked me out of the blue, “What is the best thing that happened to you today?” Now that is a fun game to play—it’s like a bonus round to my earlier game—not only do I make my good things list, but then I have to focus on the thing that was the absolutely superbest, grandest, bestest part of the day. It’s not an easy choice, but boy does it feel good!

 

You know what? I can’t remember the last time I had a bad day. It’s been a long time. You know what else? I’m not even remotely worried about having a bad day. If I do, it’s okay. I used to have bad years. The bad day will pass and there will be many, many good days to follow.

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

Finding Your Passion

When we were children, we had dreams. When asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” we might have said, “A princess, a ballerina, a fireman, a race-car driver.” Some of our dreams may not have been completely realistic, but I doubt any of them were completely impossible—even finding a prince to marry is not completely out of reach. Then we grew up and were socialized into following the crowd, going to school, making what were smart and secure decisions, and often, our dreams were stifled, put away, all but forgotten. We grew up to manage a call center, be an accountant, or operate the city snowplow. Perhaps we have a job we like, but too often, we fall into our jobs and our current occupations are far from being what we wanted to be when we grew up.

 

Whether we can do what we dream of doing to make a living or just as a hobby, we all have dreams, and we can rekindle those dreams into a fire of passion. A lot of people don’t know what they are passionate about because they’ve denied themselves pleasure, denied themselves the pleasure of getting to know themselves better.

 

It’s important that we be passionate about life and about what makes life worth living. For a moment, just dare to think you might have your dreams come true. Most of us dream about having more money. That we don’t have more money is too often the reality that squelches our dreams. But most of us don’t want money because we long to swim in a sea of dollar bills. We believe money will give us freedom and a chance to do what we really want with life.

 

So, how we do find our passion? For starters, let’s imagine your dream came true that you had enough money—whatever that amount is—a million or a billion dollars—so you no longer had to work. For the next week or month when you wake up in the morning, take a minute to believe and to feel the freedom that you don’t have to do anything except what you want to do today. Then ask yourself the question, “Since I don’t have to work and can do anything I want, what do I want to do today, and everyday, for the rest of my life?”

 

I recommend you ask yourself this question every morning for many, many days, and I recommend you get a notebook so as soon as you get out of bed, you can spend a couple of minutes writing down the answer to this question.

 

Not only do I expect you will find yourself repeating a few of the same answers, but your answers will probably build upon each other over successive mornings and also become more focused. “I will travel the world” the first day, may become, “I will visit Africa” on day two, and “I will go to Egypt” on day three, and “I will explore King Tut’s tomb” on day four, and “I will unlock the mysteries of ancient Egypt” on day five. Could it be that you always secretly wanted to be an archeologist?

 

Yes, I know that becoming an archeologist may not be the most practical thing to do, and it may be difficult to do, but at least you identified your passion. If you keep working on this process, I’m sure you will attract more things into your experience to be passionate about, and you’ll always find ways to fulfill your passion as a career or a hobby so you will get more joy out of life.

 

I challenge you to use this process to find your passion. I hope some of you will let me know the results you find.

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

Being Invisible: Overcoming Praise and Criticism

As codependents, we have done for others—we have tirelessly yet often frustratingly gone out of our way to help others, and perhaps too often, we’ve discovered those people we help don’t show up to help us when we need it. That frustrates us—we told ourselves we were helping others because it was the right thing to do, but deep down, we expected something in return. That’s codependency.

 

We do want something in return—if not return help, more likely praise for what we do. We want gratitude. We want to be told we are good people, or smart, or pretty, or talented. Praise makes us feel good. Praise before others may somewhat embarrass us, but secretly we appreciate it. Sometimes we dismiss it—“Oh, I didn’t do that much”—because we do not know how to take compliments. But we still like it. We should learn to take a compliment—to appreciate ourselves and know our value.

 

But the problem comes when we seek praise, when we do things to help others but with an ulterior motive, whether it is to look good, or to get someone else to love us, or any other reason. We do not need praise to make us feel good about ourselves. We give our power over to others when we rely on their praise for our well-being and when we do things with the intent to receive praise.

 

Criticism is a more obvious way of how we give away our power. We let other people’s critical voices decide whether we are worthy, whether our actions are good, whether we are deserving of praise. We may dismiss praise, but we have a hard time dismissing criticism—even more so than with praise, we let criticism have power over us.

 

In between praise and criticism is a happy medium, a place called Invisibility. To be invisible means we can do things for others without expecting anything in return. And we can live without fearing or reacting to other people’s criticism. Most importantly, to be invisible is to be invisible to ourselves and to our egos. We do not need to get worked up by a need for praise or a fear of criticism. We can go about our day doing what is necessary, what feels good, without having to go to extremes of needing praise or fearing criticism. We can simply be. We can let our actions speak for themselves without having “fine print” attached to them where we require a reaction from others in relation to them.

 

When we shed the paradigm of praise and criticism, we become invisible so others cannot control us and so we cannot control our own moods in a negative manner. We can live in the present, not dreading future reactions. We can appreciate ourselves and what feels good to us without judgment, fear, or neediness. Invisibility is a form of freedom—it sets us free to soar—it allows us to feel good without help from anyone else.

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

The Gifts I Have to Give

Last week I wrote about focusing on the gifts we have. This week, let us focus on the gifts we have that are ours to give.

 

It is easy for us to focus on the gifts we don’t have, so let’s get those out of the way first. Okay, maybe God did not make us as beautiful, handsome, strong, smart, rich, sexy, tall, thin, etc. as someone else. We don’t know why that’s the case but it is. We can’t do anything about it so there’s no point in concentrating on it. Instead, let’s focus on what we were given.

 

Okay. You know you’re smart, you’re good at organizing things, you’re a good Mom, or a good soccer coach. But let’s go even deeper. It’s easy to focus on gifts we know we have. But what are gifts we have that we don’t realize? What are gifts we have not even considered that we might have?

 

Think about what you enjoy about life, what makes you happy, what you might be good at that is not generally acknowledged by others. What gifts do you have that others don’t realize? What gifts might you have that even you don’t realize?

 

This week, I challenge you to find one gift you have that you have not thought of as a gift before. It might be that you are punctual. It might be that you are good at gardening. It might be that you are good at teaching, even if it is in small ways. Sometimes it might be something we don’t even like to do. For example, a friend of mine worked in a call center making sales calls. He hated making sales calls. He did not think he was good at it, but he had to make a living. He did okay. But what he really wanted was to be an author. When he published his book he realized he was a salesperson. If he had been able to sell widgets—something he didn’t care about—how much more would he be able to sell his books.

 

What are examples of adversities you overcame that provided you with special gifts? What is something you enjoyed doing in childhood that you forgot about? Maybe you were the fastest at putting together jigsaw puzzles, or you could walk across the balance beam farther than anyone else?

 

Once you find that special gift you have, how can you use it to make your life happier? How can you use it to make someone else’s life happier?

 

Don’t give up on this one. Keep thinking about it as long as it takes—it’s a new year, so think about it all year if need be until you find it. Large or small, we all have gifts and those gifts make a difference, to us and to others. Find your gifts. Then celebrate your gifts.

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

Stopping Mind Chatter

Prayer and meditation are not as easy as they may seem. In our modern, fast-paced, gadget-centered world, it is hard to find a quiet moment. Even if we sit quietly trying to pray, to meditate, to clear our minds, our minds rebel. We just have too many things to think about to be quiet. What am I going to make for dinner tonight? Sitting here is a waste of time when I have work to do. What if I don’t have money to pay the mortgage this month? What if I lose my job? I wonder whether I should wear the red dress to the party?

 

Big or small, our minds will find distractions to fill them. Distracting thoughts are not unlike our learned codependent and dysfunctional behaviors—our mind is the master-controller of those behaviors. It does not know how to release the drama. It thinks it knows better than us—better than God or our Higher Power.

 

Is your mind trying to compete with your Higher Power? Even when you intuitively know something—you know what you should or should not do—does your mind get in the way? Do you take the better paying job even though you know you’d be happier at your current job because it “makes sense” to do so? Do you date someone because your mother likes him even though you know he’s not the right one? Do you find yourself stressed over everything you have to do all the time, trying to keep it all straight in your head?

 

At the bottom of bad decisions, stress, and mind chatter is the fear you will lose control. Ironically, we’ll only lose control when we allow our minds completely to take over—allow them to use their tools of stress, fear, and dysfunctional behaviors. When we allow the mind to take over, it can go into overdrive, to overheat, to become overtired. Sometimes, our minds simply need a break, a shut down, a cooling off period.

 

When we give in to a few minutes of quiet, to releasing our thoughts, to focusing on our breathing, we regain our center. Suddenly, we find our perspectives changing, our day transforms from one of lack and not enough time to one of abundance, to an overflowing of time when we have space to get everything done and to enjoy ourselves as well. We realize we will get done what we need to, and what we don’t get done didn’t really need to be done anyway.

 

Don’t let your mind, your fear, your stress take over and extinguish your sense of feeling good. Let your mind and your body rest. Relax. Close your eyes. Breathe deeply. Center yourself. Allow yourself the right to feel good. Give yourself just five minutes to do nothing and you’ll find your mind functions better. When we stop the mind chatter, we can get done what needs to be done more quickly, and maybe we will hear inside the voice that really matters.

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

Controlling God

As codependents, we try to control—we usually think of control in terms of controlling people and events, but what about God?

 

Religion for a long time has tried to control God, to control how we understand God and how God operates. While most religions start out having the best intentions and concerns about our soul, in the end, they often end up trying to control people and God in the process. Religion has told us if we do certain things, God will love us, and if we don’t do certain things, God will reject us—we will burn in Hell. Religion has also been used to make us believe God is for Us and against Them.

 

Can we so easily put God in a box? Can we control God?

 

On a more personal level, do we try to control how God operates in our lives? Do we pray only for what we want to happen, to try to convince God to do what we want? In these cases, are we listening to God, or are we too busy doing all the talking, telling Him what we want?

 

Are we afraid to listen? Do we avoid praying because we are afraid of what God might tell us? Do we fear how God might change our lives? Do we have irrational fears that we will be left impoverished, destitute, asked to do something seemingly impossible if we let God in?

 

So maybe we don’t pray. Maybe we don’t even talk or think about God. Does it matter? Do we really think we keep God or our Higher Power out if He or It wants in?

 

We rationalize God. We assume He operates by the same codes of human reason and justice that we do. But when did God die and make us God, giving us power to tell Him what to do? I don’t fully understand God, but I’m pretty sure God is not codependent—He knows better than to give His power over to us.

 

Are we really faithful, or are we just superstitious? Do we bargain with God? Do we seriously believe if we say x number of rosaries, or we pray perfectly, or if we get baptized with our full bodies rather than just our heads, that somehow we will gain some magic ability to make God do what we want?

 

We can’t control God. We can’t stop God or our Higher Power from being in our lives. It’s foolish to think we can. If we fight it, we will only make it worse. If God or Source wants in, It or He or She will find a way.

 

Think today about how you have tried to control God. How have you withheld yourself from trusting your Higher Power? When was the last time you actually took the time to ask God what He might want?

 

All we have to do is Trust. We don’t have to bargain. We don’t have to say rosaries or jump through hoops for God. We don’t have to fear God will ask us to do the impossible. We simply have to stop and listen to our Higher Power, our Intuition, our Source. We may not get the answers we want, but they will be the right ones. We may find we did not even have to ask the questions because everything was already well and perfect. We have no need to try to control God. He is already in control. We need only Trust.

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

Not Enough Time

Our hectic modern world makes time a priority, a commodity. When I ask people what they most wish for, one of the biggest responses I get is “More time.” Even if people say “More money” when I probe a bit further, I find out they want more money so they don’t have to work so hard, so they have more time to spend with family and friends or doing what they want to do.

 

We all have the same amount of time—twenty-four hours in a day. Depending on our age, some of us may feel we have more or less time than others, but thankfully, none of us knows the hour of his or her death, so we do not have to stress over it.

 

Still, we stress over time. We often feel we have more things to do than we can possibly manage within a day. We feel stressed, overwhelmed, afraid of failure because we can’t accomplish everything.

 

Or we may be waiting. Waiting for time to pass. Waiting for graduation day, for the mortgage to be paid off, for the kids to move out of the house. We are just trying to get by, putting our lives on hold until we reach the “When that happens, then I will be happy” time.

 

Time is really our friend. If we had all the time in the world, we’d probably never get anything done. If we didn’t have to wait for time to pass so something could happen, we would not appreciate it when it did happen. Most of all, time heals, it washes away the past, it provides perspective on things.

 

When I find myself getting stressed about everything I have to do and not having enough time to do it, I find the best thing to do is just to stop what I’m doing. To take a nap, go for a walk, watch a little TV, talk to a friend. After a couple of hours, I realize things are not as bad as I thought they were. I start to realize I have enough time. I come back to the tasks at hand refreshed, with a less narrow-minded view, and I can usually accomplish what needs to be done in less time than I thought. What happens then? I find myself with extra time!

 

Time is a fact of life. We all have to live with it, but we don’t have to let it control or destroy us. We can do practical things like manage our time, make a schedule, set aside time for ourselves. We can also remember to relax, to breathe, to take time to focus on what really matters to us. Not to waste time doing things we don’t want to do.

 

The time will come, time will pass, time will run out. We can do little about it. In the end it does not matter. If the timing is right, something will happen or not. What is meant to be will be. Relax. Enjoy life. Do what you can reasonably do and let Time take care of the rest. Give it a little time. Once some time passes, you’ll find that whatever you worried that you didn’t have time for didn’t really matter, or whatever time you were waiting to have pass ended up containing in it a wonderful journey.

 

Today, make Time your friend. Time works with you. Isn’t it time you realized that?

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

Gifts We Have Received

Today is the Feast of the Epiphany. It’s the day the wise men brought baby Jesus gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

 

I don’t imagine those are gifts too many of us see too often. But the gift giving itself is the important thing. Gifts we are given are acknowledgments of our value, of the appreciation others have for us.

 

We have many gifts in our lives. Today, let us take a moment to think about all of them. I’ve written a short list of gifts in my own life as a sample.

 

1. I live in the United States – whatever its faults, it’s still the best country in the world to live in. I have far more than the vast majority of the world. I do not want for any basic needs.
2. I live in Austin, Texas. – it’s warm here—no snow storms like I knew growing up in Canada. There are plenty of things to do here.
3. I have a wonderful husband who has stuck by me for many years, supporting my dreams, and overlooking my faults.
4. I have wonderful adult children who have become my friends.
5. I have grandchildren I delight in.
6. I own my own business. I am self-employed and can make my own decisions and no one else is my boss.
7. I have a job I love. I get to support other authors and share their gifts and messages with the world, helping to change lives through books.
8. I have a wonderful staff. They are reliable, talented, responsible, and give me no unnecessary drama in my life.
9. I have wonderful friends. Many of my friends I’ve had for decades. Whether it’s getting together in person, or talking to them online, I have many friends I can go to for support, advice, and comfort on different issues, personal, business, and spiritual. Each individual friend is a gift in him or herself.
10. I am financially secure. I do not need to worry where my next meal is coming from, how I will pay the bills, will I be able to stay warm this winter. I may not be so rich I can have anything I want, but I lack for nothing. 

I could easily make a list several times as long as this, but you get the idea. What gifts are in your life? Whenever you feel down or worried, remember to count your blessings. It quickly helps you to change your perspective, appreciate all you have, and help you feel that whatever trouble comes your way, it is small and manageable when you consider all the good stacked up against it.

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

Creating Intentional Chaos

None of us like to have chaos in our lives. Or do we?

 

Codependents and addicts feed on drama. We are so used to it we don’t know how to handle life when it isn’t hectic, crazy, and emotional. And sometimes, that’s a good thing. Okay, not usually, but sometimes.

 

We may not always know how to say, “No” to something. We may have difficulty making a decision and enforcing something we know is the best choice or behavior for our well-being.

 

But on some level, our intuition or subconscious knows what is best for us and will bring that about whatever our codependent tendencies choose to do in opposition.

 

Think for a minute about relationships you’ve been in that have ended. When you look back, you probably are glad they ended. You probably sensed things about them that you did not like—but love is blind, so you ignored them or you compromised by accepting them. In the end, the relationship blew up in your face anyway.

 

I once met a woman who was grieving the loss of a relationship. She explained that she madly loved her boyfriend. She would have done anything for him. Even though he did drugs, mistreated her, and did not want children, she stayed with him—you know the story; she was convinced he was a good person (and in all fairness, he like most people, did have some good qualities) and she would eventually change him. She was utterly crazy about him and convinced she could not live without him.

 

“Then one day,” she told me, “without even planning it, I heard myself telling him the one thing I knew would make him so angry he would leave me. I loved him. I didn’t want him to leave. But I said it not knowing why exactly.” When I met her, she was mourning his loss, even begging him to come back, but he never did. A year later, she told me, “I think I knew all along that being with him was a mistake. I just couldn’t get over the desire to be with him—it was an unhealthy addiction. I probably could have stuck up for myself sooner and simply left him, but I wasn’t strong enough, so I had to create a painful separation. If I hadn’t made him so angry that he wouldn’t have taken me back, I wouldn’t have been strong enough even if I had tried to break up with him to say ‘No’ when he asked me to take him back.”

 

Despite the pain, chaos may be the best thing we can do for ourselves. I’m not advising anyone to go out and create chaos in his or her life. I’m just suggesting that sometimes even when we act irrationally, our inner guidance system is watching out for us. If we follow our intuitions and act when we know something is troubling us, we can save ourselves a lot of trouble. The chaos erupts when we repress our intuition so long that our Inner Being comes out fighting to fix matters.

 

Prayer, Meditation, and Silence

The holidays are almost over. This week between Christmas and New Year’s is usually one of the happiest—the stress of preparing for Christmas is past. We are still enjoying the warmth of the holidays, parties, family visits, new gifts. But soon it will be January—a relatively quiet, uneventful month.

 

We may not have had much quiet in our lives recently. Now is the time to catch up on the quiet.

 

Prayer is important, but sometimes we mistake prayer with asking God to give us what we need. We pray about what is wrong and ask for it to be fixed. We get so caught up in the worry of our prayers that we forget to quiet our minds. We forget to seek quiet, silence, and just to listen.

 

In my last post I talked about Joseph as the silent partner of the Holy Family. He doesn’t strike me as a worrier. He saw what needed to be done and he did it. We can do the same by not worrying and just trusting that when we need to act we will know what to do.

 

We make it easier to know when we listen.

 

Today, spend a few minutes listening. Sit quietly. Be comfortable. Close your eyes and breathe deeply. Let your thoughts go. Don’t try to think. If thoughts enter your mind, tell your mind to hush. Let the thoughts go.

 

Imagine yourself waiting, in a quiet room, on a park bench, in a peaceful meadow. Waiting for God, for your Source, for your Higher Power, your Inner Knowing to speak.

 

Perhaps God will come to us. Perhaps we will only feel sunshine on our face, or the breeze blowing. God, our Higher Power, is in that peacefulness as well. We don’t have to expect a great revelation, we don’t have to expect that God will tell us what to do. We do not even need to meditate—to meditate is to focus. We do not need to focus on anything except at most our breathing or the emptying of our mind.

 

The answers we seek may simply be silence. We may find the answer is to be silent. Not to worry—all is well. Silence can be a relief—perhaps there is nothing we need to do. If there is, it will come to us when the time is right.

 

Be still. Listen. Be at peace.

The Silent Partner

A few days after Christmas, the Catholic Church celebrates the feast of the Holy Family.

 

Don’t worry. I’m not going to preach religion here. But I do want to take a minute to focus on that family. Especially, I want to talk about Joseph.

 

Jesus gets all the glory. Mary gets her fair share too.

 

But what about Joseph? We hardly know anything about him. And yet, from the few details, what a remarkable man he must have been. He gets betrothed to Mary, only later to find out she’s pregnant, and not with his child. You can’t blame him for wanting to get rid of her then, but once he realizes it’s God’s baby, he stays silent and sticks by her.

 

For the rest of his life, Joseph is on the sidelines. He doesn’t get to preach or change the world. He doesn’t get to ascend into Heaven like Jesus or Mary. He just plays the silent partner in the relationship. He takes them to Egypt to protect them. When it’s safe to come home, he provides for them, working in his carpentry shop.

 

Joseph “manned” up to his role. It wasn’t his child. He could have easily dumped Mary. Instead, he patiently does what is required of him by God and for his family. He doesn’t argue. He doesn’t object. He just does what needs to be done. He doesn’t ask for anything in return. If we believe the Catholic Church that Mary was ever-virgin, then Joseph gave up some other things besides recognition as well.

 

There must have been days when he doubted; there must have been days when he was jealous or frustrated. But he stuck by them. He was the man behind the miracle. He could have won an award for best supporting male actor. He isn’t even mentioned during Jesus’ ministry—he was apparently dead by then. He didn’t even get to stick around long enough to see the fruition of the child he raised. But look at the child he raised. We can only speculate what an influence he had on Jesus.

 

Maybe we ourselves play supporting roles for which we don’t get the appreciation we deserve. Maybe others in our lives play supporting roles. We can show appreciation for those playing the supporting roles. We can be supportive ourselves—that doesn’t mean we forget boundaries or let ourselves be taken advantage of—but especially where children are involved, we do what needs to be done. We look out for others.

 

In this blog, I constantly remind about not falling into codependent behaviors, but when children are involved, the rules change a bit. Nothing is more rewarding than caring for and loving a child. Nothing is more important either. Whether we are parents, grandparents, teachers, soccer coaches, or the neighbor next-door, how we treat each child who comes into our lives makes an enormous impact on the world—it can be the difference between a Hitler and a Jesus in the next generation.

Have a Magical Holiday

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and Happy Kwanzaa to everyone.

 

Whatever holiday you choose to celebrate, this is the time of magic. Whether you had good Christmases as a child, or whether you dread the holidays, at some point in your life, I am certain you have felt the excitement, the mystery, the pull of this season.

 

Today might be a crazy, stressful, active, too much family kind of day. It might be a lonely, quiet, even depressing day. Remember it is just one day. It will only last for twenty-four hours. You don’t need to let it upset and depress you.

 

Instead, spend a few minutes just trying to recapture the magic. Think of those things that make you happy, that are exciting—whether it’s Christmas cookies, Santa coming, seeing distant family members, snow falling on a peaceful night, holiday music, the lights on the Christmas tree, candles shining in windows—I know you can find at least one such item. Spend a few moments cherishing it. Give yourself permission to feel good. Breathe it in. How does it smell, sound, feel, taste?

 

There is magic in this season. It is there for everyone of us. It is there whether or not we choose to see it. Today, choose to see it, to feel it, to embrace it.

 

Today, let magic be the guiding force of your day. Be like a child again. Allow the magic to excite and consume you. Get down on the floor and help put the train set together. Cheer when it goes around the track. Get as excited over the dolls and teddy bears or Transformers and video games as the kids. Have the extra piece of pie, the chocolate candy before breakfast. Greet family members with love and hugs. And even if you have to do it in the bathroom behind a closed door, practice your Santa Claus laugh. Go ahead. HO! HO! HO! MERRY CHRISTMAS!

 

There. You feel better, don’t you?

 

Whatever holiday you are celebrating, celebrate its magic. Remember you yourself are magic. By relishing the magic, you become the gift of magic to others and especially to yourself.

 

Happy Holidays, and God Bless Us, Everyone

The Source of Love

Last week I wrote about giving the gift of Love at Christmas. Nevertheless, like millions of others, I still went Christmas shopping for material gifts. I generally avoid the malls and department stores—shopping online is more convenient, less crowds, more options—but I devoted one evening to the department stores.

As I was coming home, my car full of gifts, I thought how odd it was that I should buy presents for just a handful of people—my loved ones—and that almost everyone else was doing the same. That while I did not know most of the people in the stores, we were all engaged in the same activity—gift giving, but also celebrating Christmas—celebrating a holiday.

Whether we are Christian or not, what we are really celebrating is love. This holiday celebrates the birth of Christ. What does that really mean? Yes, a baby in a manger, angels, shepherds, and later wise men bringing him gold, frankincense, and myrrh, but it means more than that. Whether you believe in Jesus, whether you believe he was the Son of God, the story is still beneficial. Reality or symbol, the story reminds us that God loves us, that there is an infinite source of love in the universe. The entire purpose of the story is that God loves us:

For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him shall not suffer but have eternal life. – John 3:16.

I have a hard time believing people go to Hell if they don’t believe Jesus is their Savior. The real point here is that Jesus is love. And I do believe that our failure to believe in the power of love can be harmful to us. When we are open to giving and receiving love then we are most connected to our Source, to our spiritual nature, to the good that can flow through us. Christmas is a reminder of that connection, as a time put aside to make sure we let good flow to, from, and through us.

I once knew a non-Christian who told me she preferred to celebrate Christmas as a reminder that everyone is related. I don’t know how she connected that to Christmas, but whether it’s through DNA or the human family tree, we are all related.

More importantly, we all “relate” to each other. Remember that six degrees of separation idea. It’s really amazing. I know someone who knows someone who knows…anyway, I’ve figured out how I’m only a few degrees of separation from President John Adams, Oprah Winfrey etc, because I know people who know people who knew them (give or take a few people in between). The world is a lot smaller than we realize.

If we all have the ability to be a source of love, and we are all so closely connected, it’s not really difficult to give that love and change the world by doing so. Whether we give it to our immediate loved ones or strangers, love is a spark that gets passed on when we are open to it. It is like a never-ending river—some of us may build a dam against it, but if we don’t let it flow through us, it will just flow around us and on to others. We might as well let it flow through us—go with the flow.

Keep your heart open to love this holiday season and always. Thank you, Jesus, for the reminder. I am grateful for a holiday that reminds us our source is Love—that it flows through each of us. Love is always something to celebrate. It is a gift to give, whether we express it with material gifts or we find another way. Give and celebrate Love.

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

Light in the Darkness

Today is the winter solstice. The first day of winter—the shortest day of the year, but also the day the light starts to come back. As the days have gotten darker and shorter, we have not lost hope because we know eventually we will reach a turning point and light will return, slowly, but it will return until soon the days will be light and long and warm again.

 

This cycle is not unlike our lives. When things go downhill, when life seems difficult, we just have to remember, “This too will pass.” Our lives are like the seasons. The poet Shelley once wrote, “If winter comes, can spring be far behind?” and Keats, in his beautiful poem “To Autumn,” reminded us, “Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?/Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—” Autumn has its music like spring. Winter has its magic and beauty as does summer.

 

We need variety in our lives, we need light and dark, good and bad. Otherwise life would be boring, and only by our many varied experiences do we learn to choose what we want or don’t want, what makes us happy and what does not, and in making choices and learning about what pleases us, in the contrast of all things, we grow and change. If we stayed static—if it were always summer, we would not grow.

 

Sometimes the learning experience is especially difficult. Life seems like it will never be good again. Don’t dwell on the negative. Remember that the good you long for is already with you—quantum physics has taught us time is not linear but the past and present and future exist simultaneously. What that means is that what you want—the good you long for—you already have. It is coming. It already has come. Enjoy it. Embrace change. It may have to get darker before it gets lighter, but it will get lighter again. You will grow and be happier and stronger for it.

 

As we approach the holidays, I think of Tennyson and one of my favorite quotes from his poetry. He initially wrote the first version of “Idylls of the King” as a dream dreamt at Christmas, and in the poem, when King Arthur dies, he offers this advice to his mourning knight Sir Bedwyr:

 

“The old order changeth, yielding place to new,

And God fulfils himself in many ways,

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.

Comfort thyself:

 

Comfort yourself today. Whatever troubles you, know that it will pass. That good will come. In this darkest day of the year is the seed to the growth of new light which leads to spring and new growth for our hearts and souls.

 

If winter is here, can spring be far behind?

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

Thinking Too Much

Too often, we try to intellectualize things. We try to figure them out. We weigh the pros and cons of a decision. We go around asking everyone’s opinion, when all the while, we already know what is best for us. We already know what is right for us. Even so we keep asking for advice, and too often, we follow others’ advice—we follow the safest advice. What the majority of people tell us they would do. We know that is not the advice to follow—it is not the right advice for us at least, but we do what we think will be best, will be safest. Later we have regrets.

 

Yes, we have a mind to reason, but over-thinking things usually does not help. That is why we also have a sense of intuition. Logic and reason are wonderful gifts to humanity, and they have their place. But we cannot rely solely on reason, on what is the rational thing to do in a given situation, because all people are different—they cannot be made to fit into the same hole.

 

Instead, we should rely on intuition. Too often intuition is confused with emotion because both are associated with “feeling.” We should not confuse intuition with emotion—emotions can get us in trouble—negative emotions especially are usually the products of fear. By comparison, intuition is a form of knowing that displays itself in feelings. It is our internal guidance system. Reason and emotion may have their say—like two attorneys arguing it out—but intuition is the judge who weighs all the arguments, then ultimately, decides what is best.

 

Before you make a decision, think about how you would feel depending on the result of that decision. Which decision would make you feel good? Which decision would make you feel bad? Don’t worry about what other people think is right to do. Don’t worry about what is reasonable to do. Don’t even necessarily pay attention to what you think you want to do. Just sit silently, try to clear your mind of all the competing voices, lobbying for you to agree with them. What does your intuition tell you is right for you?

 

Our bodies have intuition, an innate sense of knowing what is best for us. A stomach ache, feelings of dread, feelings of excitement, they are there to guide us toward making the best decision possible. Sometimes we think too much, we try too hard, when the answer is always there before us. If we only stop thinking and trying to intellectualize everything, we will make things easier for us. If we stop for a minute to listen, we will hear our inner voice. Then we will know what is best for us.

 

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

Being Humble: A Door to Freedom

Humility is out of fashion. I’m not sure it ever was in. Why? Perhaps we misunderstand the word and associate it with a fear of being humiliated. To be humiliated is to be embarrassed, to be lowered in the eyes of others. To be humiliated is to give someone else power to lower us from where we want to be. But humility is the exact opposite.

 

To be humble does not mean we choose to lower ourselves. It means we release ourselves from the ability to be humiliated. We cannot be humiliated unless we allow ourselves to be. By having humility, being humble, we are not placing ourselves in a position from which we can fall. That does not mean we let fear of failure keep us from trying. It means we divorce ourselves from caring about results. We release ourselves from our false pride.

 

How many times has pride gotten us into trouble? Hasn’t pride often been the source of our trying to control everything, of our constant striving for more, our worrying about other people’s actions because of how they will reflect on us, our making unreasonable demands upon ourselves just because we think we have to keep up with the Joneses?

 

Being humble means we don’t look for other people to applaud us or even to validate us. Instead, humility is our strength, our armor, our protection from other people’s opinions. To be humble is to have self-esteem. It is knowing that we are of value and we do not need anyone else to tell us so. It means if we are slighted in some way—not acknowledged for work we did, not given our fair share of something—we do not let it bother us because we already know our own self-worth.

 

When we are humble, we no longer have to be right, we don’t have to be on top, we don’t have to prove ourselves to others. It’s the difference between social climbing and having something by birthright. We are already worthy. We don’t have to prove anything. And we become more generous, giving credit to others without fear that the spotlight will not shine on us.

 

Humility is freedom. If someone wrongs us, we do not need revenge. We do not need to get even. We even find we have enough self-esteem to turn the other cheek, to overlook an insult. Rather than hurt someone who is down on his luck—even if that person has hurt us—we help him. Humility releases us from the feelings that gnaw at us—anger, pride, fear—it allows us to embrace our good side, to admit our mistakes without giving them power over us, and to be content in the moment.

 

Humility is freedom. It even frees us from the craving to be free because in it we have found freedom.

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

The Gift of Love

The holiday season is upon us. We scramble about to buy gifts for people, to decorate our homes, to attend holiday parties. In the process, sometimes we forget the reason for all this hustle and bustle.

 

The holidays can be a happy time, but they can also be a lonely time for many people. We may be surrounded by loved ones, but other people may feel most alone at this time of the year. We strive to do good for others during this season. We put money in the Salvation Army kettles in front of the department stores, we buy presents for children who otherwise would not have any. We remember to give because we know how lucky we are—but usually, we give money. We have more precious gifts we are often afraid to part with—our time, our love, our compassion.

 

After one of Mother Teresa’s talks, a successful businessman once asked her, “What can I do to assist in the change you are talking about? I have money; how much do you need?” She replied, “I don’t need your money. What you can do is go out into the street early tomorrow morning, find someone who is convinced they are alone and assure them they are not.”

 

There are two ways for us to care for others—the clean way and the dirty way. The clean way we give money. The dirty way we get involved. Too often, we are afraid to get involved. But getting involved doesn’t mean we have to move to Africa to care for orphans. We don’t even have to volunteer at the local homeless shelter. We can do something as small as showing love to people in our words, our smiles, the tone of our voice—to the depressed cashier at the supermarket, to the tired old woman waiting for the bus. Just by smiling and saying hello we make a difference. We can start there, and once we realize how giving is not scary, we can move to something bigger. Love will expand.

 

How much does the world need love? Mata Amritanandamayi, a Hindu spiritual leader from India, knows. She is known to the world as “the hugging mother.” People stand in long lines just to hug her, and she has been known to hug one person after another for up to twenty hours a day. She hugs them and reportedly passes on positive energy to them. Her hugs are reputedly healing and she is said to have hugged more than twenty million people.

 

To give a hug is such a simple thing, and yet so often we are afraid even to do something that simple. We must be afraid to give love; otherwise, people would not be lining up to receive hugs from one woman who is not afraid.

 

As I said, we can start small, but this holiday season, we can do better. In whatever way we can, we can give the gift of love.

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

If It’s Meant to Be…

It’s often said that if you love someone, you should set him or her free, and if it’s meant to be, the person will come back to you. This saying is true with people, with pets, and also with situations in our lives.

 

We often stress over people, events, things we want to happen, things we need to have happen—that job we need, money to pay the bills, the boyfriend who seems to be growing distant, the teenager who no longer wants to have a relationship with us.

 

We need to let go, to detach. Whatever the reason or explanation, detachment works. I cannot tell you how many times I have tried to control something, or worried about something I had no control over, trying to gain control over it, trying to convince everyone else to see things my way so it could happen. Then I detached and the answer came.

 

We wear ourselves out worrying, controlling, despairing over something until we can become sick with fear, anxiety, and frustration. Then finally, in frustration, we might say, “I don’t care anymore!” Perhaps, we come to this realization more peacefully, deciding we have other things we can manage to which we need to pay attention. In any case, we let it go. And then, tomorrow or the day after, we find the problem resolved, the answer before us.

 

We can save ourselves a lot of anxiety and stress simply by stopping to think about how much control we do or we don’t have over something. A useful tool to relieve stress and see things in priority is to make two lists in the morning. We can divide a piece of paper into two columns. On one side write, “Things I have to do today” and on the other side, write, “Things the Universe/God/My Higher Power will do.”

 

What do we have to do today? Send out job applications, cook a meal, do the laundry. What does the universe have to do? Figure out how to solve our son’s drug problem, find someone to help out at the food shelter, resolve the world’s economic crisis, have someone call us for a job interview. Those are issues we cannot control. Those are up to the universe.

 

There’s one other thing we need to put on our “Things I have to do today” list. We have to trust the universe. Trust that in its right time, if it is meant to be, the thing we need will be provided to us. By turning over to the universe our worries, knowing the universe is more talented at working on these issues than we are, we can feel the burden lifted off our shoulders; we can go about our day feeling relieved and waiting in joyous expectation for the resolution of what, whether we worried over it or not, will come about in its own natural way, a way that will be perfect when the time arrives.

Loving Ourselves

Many of us feel we have a hole inside of us, a place that should have been filled with love when we were children, but for whatever reason, Mom, Dad, Grandpa, Grandma, or whoever was our guardian did not love us in the way we needed. We may have been starved for attention. We may have acted out. We may have cried. We may still long just for healthy human touch, a simple hug that is decades overdue. We may feel we are not loveable, or that no one will love us so we should not even search for love any longer.

 

It is not that we are not loveable. It is natural that a parent should love his or her child, but first a person must love him or herself. If someone responsible for you were unable to love you, it was not because you did not deserve love, but because that person had his or her own issues to work out. I’ve talked before about understanding the generations before us—were our parents or caretakers loved as children; how could they love us if they never experienced love themselves?

 

We will find someone to love us, but it is unlikely to happen the way we want unless we first learn to love ourselves. Inner Child Therapy teaches us to talk to our inner child. Remember that little boy or girl you were, longing for love, frightened, confused. If you as an adult met that child, what would you say to him or her? You can say those words now, or simply hug that child. You can adopt that child now and care for that little boy or girl as he or she should have been cared for years ago. We, the adult, can take care of the child we were. When we feel that little boy or girl wants to cry or is worried, we can gently reply, “It’s okay. I love you. I’m here for you. I won’t let anyone hurt you. I’ll take care of you.” We can give that child a hug. We can provide that child with the love he or she did not have before.

 

After all, despite the lack of love, we have made it this far. We are grown-up. We’ve survived. Perhaps we developed codependent behaviors as survival skills, but now we can take the burden off that child. It’s time for its fears to dissolve, for it to feel loved. And as that child becomes secure, we also will be secure. The benefit will be mutual. We will become happier, healthier, more loving and then appear loveable to the outside world. Someone else will come to love us as well, but it has to start by loving ourselves.

 

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

 

Silently Enabling the Group

Codependency is tricky. Even when we realize we have codependent tendencies, it can take a long time for us to realize all the ways codependency has a hold over us. We know as codependents we have a tendency to be enablers—we may give money to a loved one with a problem handling money; we may keep family secrets about alcoholism and drug addiction. Eventually we have learned about codependency and stopped enabling these people. But codependency and enabling are not limited to individuals and our families. We can equally be enablers within larger organizations.

 

We may belong to a social group, work for a company, donate to a charity, or attend a place of worship where we are silently enabling behavior or beliefs we do not agree with or we believe are ethically wrong, but we say nothing because we are afraid to speak, to rock the boat, or because we prefer the sense of safety or security we experience from that group. It might be a religion that puts women down, but we continue to be part of that religion because our family always has belonged to it—or because we fear its teachings about our lack of salvation are true if we turn away from it. Because it is a religion, we let it have power over us, whereas if it were an abusive husband or a racially offensive social group, we would long ago have shut the door on it and its behavior. Perhaps we are enabling a charitable organization that withholds helping certain people because they are not “moral,” although moral is based only on that organization’s viewpoint. It may be a workplace where workers on the bottom of the ladder are not paid a living wage, or where we know the company is doing something illegal or dishonest but we continue to work there from fear of being unemployed.

 

Codependency has made us afraid. It has taught us to keep the status quo. But as we learn to deal with our codependency and new ways to relate to our families, we can also extend that knowing to the larger world around us. We can be a voice for justice; we can say “No” to participation in an activity we believe is wrong. If we are afraid to speak up, at the very least, we can leave the company or group so we are no longer silently contributing to its misaligned belief system. Even if we cannot change the organization, we accept what we cannot change, and we realize we can change ourselves—we can give ourselves the self-respect not to live in fear of what others think, and we can stand up for what is right as an example to those even more afraid than us.

 

Let’s remember the words of the poem “First They Came” which reflects what happened when the Nazis rose to power:

 

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist;

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me.

 

Once we overcome our own codependency, we can help spread the message of freedom from codependency throughout society.

 

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

 

Power is Not a Gift

Earlier this week I wrote about not giving others our power in terms of not letting other people put us down and make us feel bad about ourselves.

 

Just as we should not give our power away, we cannot expect people to give us their power. In my last post, I said we can own our power by being superheroes ourselves.

 

Do we have personal heroes? Most of us have someone we admire, someone we wish we could be more like, whether it’s a great athlete, a talented artist, a strong leader. We might consider these people as heroes, but we need to be careful of the word.

 

Codependents have a tendency to build other people up into their heroes, whether or not those people truly deserve it or even have heroic attributes. We may think that if we can just be more like that person, especially spend more time with that person, get that person to love us, then we will acquire some of that person’s power.

 

It doesn’t work that way. Power is not a commodity, and it is not a gift for us to give or to receive.

 

Power is something that resides in us. If we want to think of it as a gift, it is solely as a gift we give to ourselves. The only ones who can decide whether we have power are ourselves. There have been plenty of people in positions of power who haven’t really had power—puppet kings and figureheads for example—and then there are people who had no armies or governments to back them but just simply decided they were powerful and made other people stand up and take notice. A good best example is Gandhi who decided he and the people of India should be free. They did not fight their colonial oppressors; they simply believed they deserved to be free and they made the British government acknowledge their power. When they were confident in their power, they made their enemies back down until eventually India achieved its independence.

 

I remember years ago seeing an episode of the Smurfs. One of the Smurfs was afraid of everything until Papa Smurf gave him a magic lotion that if he wore on his nose would give him superpowers. Papa Smurf knew the lotion really had no magic, but the other Smurf didn’t know that. Before long, that Smurf was doing incredible feats. It’s that way with all of us. There is no magic lotion or powder. But there is the magic of self-confidence, of personal power. It’s the best gift we can give to ourselves.

 

Nothing can change the world more than people having self-confidence and loving themselves; this self-appreciation will lead to an end of people being taken advantage of, to more honesty, and ultimately to more kindness, understanding, love, and the possibility of a better world where everyone is of value because everyone knows his or her own self-worth. That changed world will be a powerful one, but the power has to begin by our owning it personally.

 

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

Stay Within Your Power

In my last post, I talked about how we should not give away our power to feel good by letting other people’s negative comments determine how we feel.

 

But what is our power? Our power is the ability to feel good about ourselves. I firmly believe that nothing in life is more powerful or sure to help us accomplish whatever goals we desire, nothing will make us happier, than to have a healthy self-image.

 

Life is difficult. There’s no doubt about it. There are people out there waiting to sabotage us, to put us down, to make us feel bad, inadequate. If we let them do so, we give them power over us.

 

Remember reading comic books or watching cartoons about superheroes? If you knew you were secretly Superman or Wonder Woman, do you think you’d let the little things bother you? Superman isn’t intimidated by bullies—a lot of the time he just tolerates them because he knows he can take them down any time he wants. Wonder Woman wouldn’t put up with any man putting her down—she could easily kick butt if any guy tried.

 

Like superheroes, we have secrets too. One secret is that we are superheroes. We just have to acknowledge that we are. Imaginary super powers aside, who are the real heroes in our world? Most of them are the people who did what everyone else thought was impossible. Lance Armstrong overcame cancer to win the Tour de France. Being in a wheelchair didn’t make Franklin D. Roosevelt feel sorry for himself or stop him from getting the U.S. through the Great Depression and World War II. Thomas Edison refused to give up when other people told him light bulbs were impossible. These people proved themselves superheroes because they believed in their personal power. There’s no reason why we can’t be superheroes too if we believe in ourselves.

 

When you are faced with a difficult situation, don’t sit around moping and living in dread of it. Remember your power. If you visually have to imagine yourself changing into your superhero costume, go ahead and do so. Remember you are a man, not a mouse. You are an Amazon woman, not a victim. Envision yourself in your superhero costume, whether it’s with a cape so you can fly through the air, or bulging muscles, or magic powers. I don’t recommend you jump off the roof trying to fly, but just imagine the feeling of freedom and power that flying would offer. Take a minute to think about what it would feel like to be Superman or Wonder Woman. Close your eyes and summon your power, relish it, feel the strength coursing through your veins, feel the power filling you. It feels wonderful, doesn’t it?

 

Now go out and face the world. People who are truly powerful use their power, not to abuse others, but for good. Use your power for good. Use it to take care of yourself first and then to take care of others. People with power don’t get messed with. Who would want to take on Superman? Power is a lot like confidence, self-assurance, a sort of air you have about you, maybe the way you carry yourself, that lets people know you are fully aware of your value. You are not to be trifled with. Stand up for yourself. Stay in your power. Be your own hero and set the example for others.

Don’t Give Away Your Power to Feel Good

With the first of the holidays behind us, how are we feeling? While holidays can be times of joy and warm moments spent with family, they can also stir up old feelings of pain, frustration, and anger within us.

 

Why is it that we have grown up, gone out into the world, achieved, made something of ourselves, lived the life we want to live, even found happiness, but when we go home, those old nagging voices in the form of a sister, an aunt, a parent make us feel like a child again? Why does how other people make us feel bother us so much? Why do we let other people make us feel anything?

 

When Aunt Sue remarked at dinner that we look like we’re getting fat, do we feel bad about ourselves, or do we just wonder what kind of screwball Aunt Sue is to make such a mean and thoughtless comment? Didn’t your grandparents teach her any manners—I mean really, is she only happy making other people feel miserable? Just because she feels bad about herself, and therefore has to put other people down to make herself feel superior, does not mean we have to play along with her dysfunctional mind games. Maybe when we were children we didn’t know any better, but we do now. It doesn’t matter if she thinks we are fat, ugly, stupid, immature, or immoral. It doesn’t matter.

 

What does matter? How we feel about ourselves.

 

Did you tell Aunt Sue where to go while eating your Thanksgiving Turkey? Maybe you did, but more likely you didn’t. We usually let the matter go to keep peace at the dinner table, and we know that telling Aunt Sue off won’t change her anyway. So now that the moment is over, we have to let it go in our heart and thoughts. There’s no point in feeling down because someone else made you feel bad. You may not see Aunt Sue again until next Thanksgiving. You only had to spend a few hours with her anyway, so don’t let her determine how you feel the rest of the year.

 

You and only you have the power to determine how you feel. If you need to, affirm yourself. Remind yourself of everything you have accomplished and focus on what makes you feel good. Make sure your voice, not Aunt Sue’s, is the one speaking to you, influencing you to feel the way you want to feel. Only you have the power to do that, so use that power. Don’t give your power to determine how you feel to someone else. Practice feeling good about yourself today, and the next day, and everyday to come.

 

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

Stress, Panic, and Being Overwhelmed

It’s Black Friday. The Christmas shopping season begins in full force. Only 28 shopping days left until Christmas! You have dozens of gifts to buy, a limited budget, and after the first shopping day, you are frazzled, tired, your feet hurt, and you aren’t even close to being done!

 

Feel like hyperventilating yet? Feel like throwing in the towel and canceling Christmas?

 

Panic, stress, and being overwhelmed are difficult feelings to deal with, and worst of all, most of the time, we bring them upon ourselves. Even with holidays, we don’t have to give into the consumerism or the pressure family or friends inflict on us.

 

Most of the time, what we feel stress and panic over turn out to be minor concerns. Think back to a time in the past when you were overly stressed—perhaps that big test in high school that you were afraid you would flunk. Now, years have passed. Maybe you passed the test. Maybe you flunked it. How much does it matter now?

 

When we feel stressed, we need to stop and look at the bigger picture. How much will this problem matter to me in ten years, or even next year? Are we over-exaggerating its importance, and if so why? When we get to the point of panic, no matter how worried we are, no matter whether there is a deadline pending, we need to stop. We need to take a break. We need to breathe, to think about something that makes us feel good, to talk to a friend, to go for a walk.

 

Isolation is a major contributing factor to stress and panic. We get tunnel vision, building up something as all important. If we talk to a friend, often that person will help us put things in a more realistic perspective. We can easily forget when we are stressed that the rest of the world goes on around us no matter what happens. The flowers will still bud, the birds still fly, the snow still fall, the sun still warm the earth, whether we make the cheerleading squad or get the promotion or miss the bus. This is just a moment in our life. It will pass. We can approach it reasonably or we can freak out over it. Either way, it will pass and become part of the past that probably will not matter a great deal, and even if something terrible happens as a result of our failure to accomplish whatever we are stressing over, we can trust ourselves that down the road, we will realize that what was meant to be was meant to be.

 

Today, we remember there is a great, big wonderful world out there full of rich and rewarding experiences for us. We let go of the little things; we learn not to sweat the small stuff; we do our best, but we do not let stress get the best of us. We keep things in perspective, and we trust that whatever happens, it will all be well. Christmas will still be Christmas, whether we buy the lotion, the cologne, the toaster, or just five-dozen gift cards. Today, we focus on our well being, on feeling good—that’s what is most important. And then we do what we have time to do.

 

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

Gratitude at Thanksgiving

Tomorrow is the holiday when families get together to share their thankfulness for all that is good in their lives. It’s also a stressful day for many people. While not as crazy as Christmas, Thanksgiving can mean traveling long distances, being busy preparing a meal, and dealing with difficult relatives.

 

Let us not lose our focus on the purpose of the day. Rather than stressing over crazy family dynamics, let’s focus on what we have—including our family—that makes us thankful. In recovery we hear a lot about gratitude. Gratitude is so important that we have a national holiday based around it. It’s a day to be positive. It’s a day of plenty—a day to remind us of all we have—a day to feel the abundance of life.

 

We express our gratitude in many ways. Perhaps we go to the family dinner and put up with relatives we don’t care to see because it makes our mother happy. We can do so with goodwill rather than beating ourselves up for acting codependent by doing what someone else wants—on holidays, we are gracious—we do for others—and it also helps our recovery. We show our love for other people by being with them, even if they are difficult. Today we overlook and forgive their faults silently.

 

Perhaps we have a big family meal. Perhaps we show our gratitude by helping prepare a meal for others. Perhaps “we” consists of just us and maybe one other person. We are grateful for that other person. We are grateful for our food, whether it’s a feast or fast food. We are grateful for whatever we have this day. Whatever we have, we know we could have less. Yes, we may want more, but we could have less, so we are grateful for the blessings we have.

 

We have so much for which to be grateful. We could spend all day just thinking of everything for which we are grateful: living in the United States, having an Internet connection on which to read this blog, being able to read, having sources of recovery, having a meal, having a warm place to sleep, having running water, having loved ones close to us.

 

We are often so focused on work and the stress of our daily lives that we forget the miracles of life around us—our parents, brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles, cousins, children, neighbors, friends, pets—the smell of turkey or mashed potatoes, the crowded joyful feeling of a house full of people, the rich colors of cranberries or sweet potatoes, the countless blessings in our lives we take for granted.

 

We remember too those who came before us. The Pilgrims, whatever their faults, did what they thought was right—we respect their courage. We remember leaders like Abraham Lincoln who established this day as a holiday, and all those who came before us and contributed to the prosperity and well-being of our country. We remember those no longer with us—parents, grandparents, those who influenced our lives. We miss them today, and we are grateful for the blessings they gave us. We are grateful for family, however we wish to define family, and to be with those we can truly call our own.

 

We are grateful for a day to remind us to be grateful. And when the day is over, hopefully we will carry gratitude with us into the days to come.

 

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

Self-Denial and Being a Martyr

How often have you wanted something but you didn’t allow yourself to have it? What was your reason?

 

If you are hungry, you are allowed to feed yourself, but if you want to eat an entire cake, you might deny yourself and settle for one piece. That is a reasonable form of self-denial. Similarly, perhaps you’d like to buy a new car, but you also know your old car runs fine and you need the money to pay for your college classes. That’s also a reasonable form of self-denial. But sometimes, we aren’t reasonable.

 

How many of us know someone, usually a mother or grandmother, who will always take the piece of pie that is smaller, or the cookie that is a little burnt on the bottom, the worst piece? These people play the martyr to themselves, accepting the least, sometimes out of love for others, but what about when no one else is around?

 

Do we buy only generic brands at the grocery store, telling ourselves it’s a good way to save money, but actually because we don’t believe we deserve the better brands. Do we stop ourselves from having something we want because we know something else is “good enough”?

 

Self-denial isn’t just about food or possessions. Sometimes we hold ourselves back from opportunities or relationships. We might not ask the cute boy or girl out because we figure that person would never go out with someone like us. We may sit at home lonely in the evening because we are afraid if we make the effort to talk to people, no one will want to be our friend. Or we put off things—we feel we have obligations to work or family that we have to perform before we allow ourselves time to do the things we want.

 

Self-denial can exist in little and in big ways. Either way, we need to become aware of it. Self-denial can be tricky. It can be so ingrained in our minds that we don’t even realize we are denying ourselves. We need to make sure when we deny ourselves something we want, we are doing so from a rational place where what we do not allow ourselves is for a greater benefit to ourselves. We should not deny ourselves something that could make us happier.

 

Next time you find yourself saying “No” to something you want, stop and ask yourself why you are saying “No.” Consider the bigger picture. Will it make a huge difference to you or anyone else if you go without the thing you want? Will you be even a little bit happier if you let yourself have it? Allow yourself to have it this time if it truly would be good for you.

 

We need balance in what we give and what we deny ourselves. We do not have to act like self-denying martyrs. No one gains when we do so, least of all, ourselves. Don’t be afraid to let good into your life and to care for your own needs.

 

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

Having a Human Experience

The saying that we are spiritual beings having a human experience has become quite common in recent years in recovery circles and among people who are spiritually minded.

 

Most of us are searching for meaning, for a spiritual experience, but while we are so constantly yearning for that spiritual connection, we risk missing out on the full joy of the human experience we came here to have. Often we deny ourselves our human experiences—we do not eat rich foods because we shouldn’t be gluttonous, we repress our sexuality, we do not spend money on frivolous items that might give us some joy because we do not wish to be materialistic.

 

Sometimes, I ask myself why we are so afraid to embrace our earthy humanity. We were given five wonderful senses—touch, taste, smell, sight, and sound—to experience this human world. If it’s true that we chose to come into this world to have a human experience, then it’s about time we start having it.

 

It’s time to be sensuous—to stop and smell the roses, to wow our senses, to take time to listen to music we love, to eat food that tantalizes our tastebuds, to spend time just gazing at something beautiful, whether it’s a sunset, a painting, or another human being, to enjoy the sensation to our skin against different fabrics or to enjoy the feeling of our cat’s fur, our wife’s hair, of the sand between our toes.

 

Humans are programmed with senses and emotions, and we are here to enjoy them. To deny them may well be to deny why we have come to live on this planet. What would be sadder than to die, to pass back into the spirit world, only to find out we did not have the human experience we came forth to have.

 

Go out today and be human! Celebrate your humanity! Embrace this world that was created for us to enjoy in our human form.

 

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

Unresolved Grief

Psychiatrists and other experts tell us that when we react emotionally to a situation we often are only partially reacting to the current situation while we are also reacting to situations in our past that we view as similar. For example, being rejected by a friend may bring about grief over the lost friendship, but it might also stir up unresolved grief over a grandparent’s death.

 

We generally associate grief with death, but any loss in our lives can be a cause for grief. Because we don’t associate grief as easily with other losses, we may not take the time to mourn these losses, and consequently, the repressed emotions can come back later to upset us when we experience another loss. For example, a friend moving away is a loss that might bring back repressed grief from childhood when our best friend who lived next door moved away.

 

Losses that need to be grieved may include the death of a loved one, the loss of a relationship with a relative, friend, or coworker, the loss of a job, lost hopes such as not getting accepted into a school or program, the loss of a material possession we value such as a grandmother’s ring, or the loss of a sense of community by moving to a new place.

 

If we find ourselves overreacting to something—as codependents we are often trying to control a situation we can’t control, such as trying to stop a child from moving away to college—we may ask ourselves why we are so upset about the situation and what it is that we fear will happen. Then we can ask ourselves why we hold that fear—where did that fear come from? Most likely, it is a fear based in our past. Something went wrong in the past—we underwent a loss, and now we fear the same situation will recur, even if that fear is completely irrational and what we fear is unlikely to happen.

 

We need to grieve our losses. There are many ways to do so. If we are having difficulty determining what unresolved grief is troubling us, it’s a good idea to chart out every loss we’ve experienced in our life, from a friend, to a pet, to a job, to a grandparent. Some of these will evoke emotions of anger or depression, while others we may simply smile nostalgically over and move on. We can resolve the grief by writing a letter to the person or thing we lost and then burning it. We can try to understand the loss. We can figure out why we didn’t mourn the loss then and mourn it now. We can nurture ourselves, taking time to cry, time to mourn until we feel the pain inside us diminish.

 

Then we can face the current loss in our lives with greater strength and a new perspective where the loss may not seem as traumatic. We came through the earlier loss, and we will get through this one too. So many good things have happened for us since that earlier loss, and we trust this new loss is also going to be followed by much good. We can be thankful for the experience we had, despite the loss that followed, and we can go on with life.

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

Forgiving the Dead

On November 2^nd, I posted about researching our family tree to understand our ancestors and the history of dysfunction in our families. A friend of mine, who wishes to remain anonymous, wrote to me in response to that blog, and I’ve asked him to share his personal experience from working on his family of origin. What follows are his own words:

 

I was raised a Catholic. I always struggled with understanding why the Catholic Church honors people as saints and why Catholics pray to the saints for intercession. After reading your blog about family of origin, I think I better understand this partly by better understanding my paternal grandfather.

 

I was always close to my maternal grandfather, and although he’s been dead more than twenty years, I still find myself talking to him and thinking perhaps he’s watching over me. I’ve never talked to my deceased paternal grandfather in this way. But after doing my family of origin work, I’ve gone from seeing him as an ornery old man to a human being deserving love.

 

The same day I read your blog, I happened to be reading Melody Beattie’s book “The New Codependency,” in which she briefly talks about praying for our ancestors. I have started praying for my paternal grandfather now, asking God to forgive him for his faults, or perhaps to let him know I forgive him and I still value his contribution to my life—I want him to know that despite his flaws, his life did matter.

 

The first time I prayed for him, within just a few minutes, I felt overcome almost with tears but also with a great feeling of release. I felt love beyond just sympathy for him. I barely knew him because he died when I was only nine and lived a few hours away. I know him mostly from what people said about him—mostly negative things about his temper, but I’ve learned to interpret these things against the larger picture of how difficult his life was. Now I feel I do know him. Now I talk to him like I do my other grandfather.

 

This experience has made me think I better understand about asking saints to intercede for us, or even the idea of ancestor worship—we pray or simply talk to our ancestors—it’s like we are asking them to witness our stories just like people would do for us at a Twelve-Step meeting. The saints may not respond to our requests, but they witness our struggles and our words. The Bible says the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with great groanings when our own words are inadequate. By talking to saints or ancestors about our lives, we are putting our thoughts into words. We make our thoughts and intentions more clear and we bring about healing in the process. The Bible tells us the Word is the Creation. I get that now. Even if it’s only in our heads, by believing we have a loved one, a sympathetic soul listening to us, we create our own healing.

 

By speaking to my paternal grandfather, I’m letting him know I honor him, that had he lived longer, as an adult I would have wanted to know him, to have a relationship with him. I am healing a family rift. I’m providing healing for him and healing for myself, and hoping that someday my loved ones will equally forgive my faults. Sometimes I even listen to my grandfather. I feel he is telling me to love his son, my father, since he is not there to do so any longer and he wishes he had done a better job of it. My relationship with my father is not what I would like, but by reconnecting with my grandfather, I better understand my father now too.

 

Doing family of origin work and praying for and talking to my grandfather has made me realize how human we all are, and it’s given me gratitude for this incredible learning experience that our family gives us. It makes me appreciate that only by having this human experience can our souls learn these lessons about the value of relationships.

 

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

You Talk Too Much

We all know one of these people. Someone you can’t have a conversation with because you can’t get a word in. I once knew a girl who never finished a sentence. If she finished one subject, she would say “and…” until she thought of something else to say—she didn’t want me to respond to anything—she wanted to keep talking from fear I would say, “I have to go” and then she’d be left with silence. It’s funny that she even needed someone to talk to since she could have just talked to the wall, and it would have had about the same effect, but truthfully, she needed attention; she at least needed someone to listen to her.

 

The longer we are in recovery, the more we learn about how codependency plays itself out in different ways with different people. Talking too much is a form of codependency, or more specifically, a form of control. People who talk non-stop are trying to control the conversation—perhaps because they are afraid of your responses, perhaps because they are afraid of silence—perhaps they don’t even care about the conversation; they are just lonely and want to keep you listening—we see this especially with older people who will use talking too much as a way to keep someone around. It’s really a form of manipulation.

 

We can love these people. We can feel sympathy for them, but we also can take back control of our time from them. Out of kindness, we can call them or visit them when it’s convenient for us. If they call us at a bad time, we can let the answering machine get it, or we can say, “I only have ten minutes right now. Will that work, or I can call you back later?” We can schedule them into our lives when it’s convenient for us, not when it’s convenient for them.

 

Admittedly, it is harder with elderly people. We may have a duty to a parent, or feel we have one to a grandparent, aunt, or uncle. In such cases, we can try to be active in the conversation. Rather than just letting them talk and saying “Uh huh” we can plan a conversation with them ahead of time—we can think of things we would like to talk to them about and visualize how the conversation will go. This preparation will make us more in the mindset for the conversation, and it will make us more present during the talk. It will make the talkative person feel we are listening to them, that we are interested in what they have to say. They might even start listening to us.

 

There but for the grace of God go I. We are in recovery just like the talkers. Our codependency may have manifested itself in different ways, but we can still sympathize with these people. We try to find balance, while remembering out boundaries, and we hope the other person will meet us part way.

 

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

Dealing with Controlling Know-It-Alls

Dysfunction can come in many forms. Sometimes it comes in the form of someone who knows it all. Such people may not even realize they know it all, but they apparently do since they are always ready to tell us how to do something or to do it better.

 

A kind suggestion now and then is appropriate, but when people tell us what color to paint our kitchens, why we need to buy a bookshelf, which school we should send our children to, how to vote, and how to trim our rosebushes, they obviously have a problem. They are control freaks, and if we’ve learned anything in recovery, it’s that controlling is a form of codependency.

 

Control freaks and know-it-alls deserve a little sympathy. That doesn’t mean we do what they want. That doesn’t mean we let them take over, but as people in recovery ourselves, we can realize they probably have low self-esteem issues or suffer from feeling their opinions are not of value. They are looking for gratitude and praise for sharing their ideas and making a difference in our lives. If they give us a good idea, we can thank them. If we implement the idea and it works, we can let them know it made a difference—after all, there’s nothing wrong with letting other people feel good about themselves.

 

Sometimes, however, we don’t care for their suggestions, and we can say “Thanks, but no thanks.” If they become insistent, we need to set a boundary with them. If we tell someone, “I don’t want to shop at Dick’s Family Foods even if the prices are lower because I like shopping at the FastMart” and the other person keeps telling us about the great prices at Dick’s Family Foods and tries to push the store’s coupons on us, then we can politely but firmly tell them to drop the subject. If we need to, we can also ask them why it matters so much to them and ask them why they feel the need to control us. Hopefully, it won’t come to that, but we don’t have to put up with people badgering us to do what we don’t want to do.

 

If we need to, we make it clear we do not want the person in our life. Such people may start out acting helpful but pretty quickly it can become clear that they live by the rule “It’s my way or the highway.” If that’s the case, wish them a nice journey and take the highway—you’ll get where you want to go faster without them. Even if they “know-it-all” that does not mean they know what is best for you, and even if they did, being controlled by someone else is never best for us. We are adults who can make our own decisions. We got this far in life without such people’s help and we will continue to do so.

 

We can part without anger—we can keep them in our prayers hoping someday they will know the one thing they still haven’t come to realize.

 

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.