I've spent a great deal of time recently in both my professional and personal life examining some things. I think reflecting on where you've come from and both the successes and mistakes you've made along the way can be a very empowering thing. What if we look back at things though and don't change our behavior...then what? We've all heard the expression....if you kick a dog enough it eventually will stop coming back. Why do we allow others to continually "kick" us and come back for more??
Here is a personal example...There's someone at work who continually "borrows" the work that my organization produces and doesn't give us credit for it. This has been the pattern now for years....no not just days or months but at least the last 3 years. Yet, some of us still extend a hand to her and we expect the result to be different. Isn't that the definition of stupidity....repeating the same action over and over and expecting the result to be different? Why do we not learn from this experience and adapt to it? I would hope that we are smarter than that and that Darwin's theories of evolution would eventually kick in and that we realize we have to adapt to the situation to survive.
It is hard enough to apply this type of reflection and realization to our work life but, it is even more challenging to and difficult to apply this knowledge to our personal lives. Especially when there is family involved. I know as I see myself struggling with this day in and day out. I keep repeating the same mistakes over and over. I keep allowing myself to be put in situations where my own happiness is secondary to that of those around me. While I agree that should be the case where my children are involved, it needs to stop being the case where others in my life are involved. I have learned some things about myself over the course of the last year or so. I have spent the majority of my life trying to win over the love of my family and that is something in a lot of ways I will just never have. As painful as that is to admit, it has been even more painful feeling and being told I never measure up. I find myself, even though I can identify the bad habits, falling back in to them time and time again. It is a constant battle for someone who is an enabler not to enable those around them.
I have a new understanding of the saying "life imitates art". When I examine the different parts of my life....I see the similarities. I'd like each of you who read this to try taking a look at your life from an objective perspective. I found something interesting when I applied this to mine with the help of someone else. I found myself very unhappy with my current work situation. An astute person asked me to stop and really take a look at my work situation and how that compared to my family...not the immediate family but my childhood family. I was amazed at the similarities in relationships between the people at work and my childhood family. My life did imitate my art so to speak. I am still wondering if I sought out this job and am so good at it because it is what I've known most of my life....dysfunction. Is this why I thrive in this position? Those are all hard questions to ask yourself and to answer. I think I am still reaching for those answers.
The common themes I see in my life keep repeating themselves but, something I hope I have learned through all the adversity I've faced in the last few years is there's only one person whose actions I can control....those are my own. As much as I want what's best for others and as much as I try to make that happen, ultimately, I can only do what is best for me and change my own action. I also learned...the hard way I might add....is that people only do to you what you allow them to do. You can apply Newtons laws of motion to people too. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion....For every action there's an equal and opposite reaction. Those apply to people....once someone starts down a negative path they tend to stay on that negative path. Once someone sees they've got you reacting to something they are doing...they will continue to do it. It is all in the payoff for them. If you stop reacting and stop feeding in to the chaos, it loses momentum.
Don't take from this that I think I am the expert....I know I have a long way to go on breaking these cycles. I just wanted to share my own insight on my situation to maybe help someone out there reading this see how they can change their own life. I want to learn from my own mistakes and history and not be bound to repeat it for the next 38 years of my life.
A very reflective Pandora bidding the world harmony....
xoxo
