More on the same: choosing for yourself.
March 9th, 2007
So after writing the previous post, I went to clean out my inbox. I just read a post by Christine Kane (thanks to Dave Lorenzo for the link) that I think is well in line with the idea of choosing your own stress:
You Teach People How to Treat You
You teach people how to treat you means that it all comes back to you. It’s up to you to allow or not allow certain treatment. It also means that you have to first get clear about how you want to be treated. It means that you have to take responsibility enough to write your own owner’s manual. And you are accountable for living by your owner’s manual. For some of us, it may be the very first time we ever even gave this any thought.
I particularly like the idea that Kane finishes up with, when she talks about “a belief in lack”. Too many of us have that belief — that there’s only so much goodness to go around. This is the sort of thing that lets us accept ill-treatment, at our own hands or others’. It’s not worth it.
Poking around on Kane’s blog, it looks even more like she and I agree on this:
Feeling, Doing, and Choosing Emotions
From that day on, even in my worst self-pitying emotional attacks, I felt this little inner-observer watching me, scratching her chin and thinking, “Hmmmm. Now, I’m doing insecurity. Now I’m doing jealousy. Now I’m doing hopelessness.” Was I “doing” emotions? 85% of the time, I was. The challenge then became to choose differently.
Ooh, the more I read of that one, the better it gets:
My view is that many of our emotions keep us stuck (and safe). If, for instance, you want to take more risks and start sending your poetry out to publishers, you’re going to have to deal with the emotions that come up if your stuff gets rejected. For some, that’s a huge pattern to work with. You might not want to have to face all of those feelings, so you stay safe and don’t send out your poems. You think you’re lazy and label yourself a procrastinator, but really you’re just staying safe. You might say that you “can’t take” all that rejection. But what you really can’t take is what you’re telling yourself about all that rejection.
That just hammers it home, doesn’t it?