Tue 27 Nov 2007
Wow ! I’ve been really reflecting on my life lessons over the past year.
One major lesson has been rising above the negativity of others. I have had folks around me that were constantly complaining, judging, criticizing and circumstances would have it that I had to be around them. I couldn’t avoid them.
At first I was like really frustrated by it. I mean really frustrated.
However, as difficult a lesson as it was to to understand I began to realize that it was perfect for my personal character development.
I went on a mini-retreat and discovered that it was a precious gift that they had given to me.
You see, I needed to know how to use the negativity. I say, “how to use it” because as long as I don’t know, wherever I go, I will continue to encounter toxic people, and my very own negative reaction will use me up. How about that ? !
See, I had to experiment and determine that when I walked in the door, my attention was to remain with my reactions to these people and not on on the people themselves. This shift in my attention helped me realize what it is I really need to be free of…hmmm…namely, “Me” ! And “need” is the key word in this instance.
I decided I would focus on me. Who do I want to be in this situation, with these people and then it wasn’t about them at all. It was about me. What vibration did I want to operate in.
One of the reasons people act out on us sometimes is that they are feeded off of us in many different ways, especially when we return a negative energy.
Try this sometime: consciously refuse your own negativity in the face of someone else’s. Just go silent, and then watch what happens to the person who attacked you and you will feel so much better about yourself.
Any conditiion we meet that is unwanted, such as a rude person, is not the cause of our stress. All conditions simply offer a momentary mirror for us in which it is possible to begin seeing what we have brought with us, within ourselves, into that moment. I always ask my students, can we change other people ? They always say, no. It is like fighting the air trying to change people without first changing the part of ourselves that believes our very sense of self, of well-being, somehow depends upon how others act. We have this one life. Our most important capacity is to feel happy, let’s not give it away. Don’t give them your life, and you’ll discover they have a life of their own…and that you want nothing to do with it.
February 19th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
I found this quote hanging in one of the bathroom stalls at Hyman’s Seafood in Charleston this past fall . While sitting there contemplating, I read this and had to have a copy. According to Hyman’s owners, they hire their staff based on this motto. They’re passing it along to others by making copies available free of charge. Their request of those who receive a copy is that they pass it along as well.
Here is my past to you all.
I’m going to live by this in 2008..won’t you join me?
“ATTITUDE”
BY
Chuck Swindoll
The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than success, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. It will make or break a company…a church…a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we embrace for that day. We cannot change our past…we cannot change the fact that people act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude…I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you…WE are in charge of our ATTITUDES.