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Today's
quotation:
The unhappiness we
experience is not so much a result of the difficulties
encountered along our journey as it is of our
misperception of how life instructs us. We may see a
failed relationship as an indictment of our self-worth
when it is really a lesson in using better judgment, in
valuing ourselves more, in expressing greater
appreciation for our partner--lessons to prepare us for a
more loving and fulfilling union. If we are passed over
for a much-anticipated promotion, it may be just the push
we need to get more training or to venture out on our own
as an entrepreneur. As we rise to meet the challenges
that are a natural part of living, we awaken to our many
undiscovered gifts, to our inner power and our purpose.
Susan
L. Taylor
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Today's
Meditation:
I
think that Susan Taylor must have known me years
ago. Her line about setbacks leading to
"self-indictments" hits very close to home, for
I spent many years doing just that. Almost anything
negative that happened to me led me to get down on myself,
and this tendency often led to full-fledged
depression. If someone did something unpleasant to
me, it had to be because there was something wrong with
me, because I was worthless, because nobody cared about me
or what happened to me.
The
sad thing was that these feelings on my part often served
only to perpetuate the cycle, as my negative feelings led
people to avoid me at times, for even though I tried not
to let my negativity affect others, it was there and
others could feel it.
To
make a long story short, I finally found the source of
those negative feelings, and I've spent years trying to
work my way past them, but they did affect me very
strongly for a very
long time.
Since
I don't do that to myself any more, I'm able to see the
profound truth in Susan's words. How we see
what happens to us definitely affects our perceptions of
our selves and of how the world treats us. If a
coach sits me on the bench during a game, it's not an
indictment of me as a person, but a statement on how I'm
playing. If a teacher puts red marks all over a
paper of mine, it's not because that teacher sees me as a
bad person, but because that teacher is paid to respond to
my writing and make corrections. If I take these
things as statements about me as a person, I am doing
damage to myself.
Somehow--and
I find this to be particularly true in the United
States--our culture teaches us to take things
personally. If someone says they don't like my
shirt, then that someone is rude or arrogant or uncaring,
and it can lead me to be angry at or uncomfortable with
myself. But perhaps that person considers himself to
be my friend, and feels comfortable enough around me to be
able to express him- or herself honestly. And more
importantly, if I like the shirt, why should it matter to
me at all if someone else doesn't?
We
can take lessons from everything that happens to us, even
those things we see as negative. If we spend our
time berating ourselves, though, we can blind ourselves to
the good that's imbedded in the situation, and we can lose
a wonderful learning experience. What other people
do to us is a reflection of them, not of us, and what the
world does to us is a reflection of the world's complete
neutrality, not of our self-worth. Only we can build
our self-worth.
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