We are not a glum lot, but we are highly sensitive bunch of people aren’t we?  We can be offended at the drop of a hat or catch a resentment off of somebody else’s resentment.  Hell, we are so sensitive we can even feel OTHER people’s feelings!  Isn’t that something?  

It’s something alright, but it ain’t something good.  Feeling other people’s feelings and projecting emotions onto a situation, a friend, or even a dog, can be very confusing and often times way off base.  The relief comes when you realize that not only do you not have the power to feel other people’s emotions, you no longer need to.  Yours are more than enough.  I think our history as a group has proven to us that our emotions are more than enough for us to handle, which is perhaps why we, in an attempt to deflect attention away from our most glaring weakness, put the blame on other people’s emotional inadequacies. 

I, personally, have given up feeling other people’s emotions.  I realize that what I feel is based almost entirely on my present mood and my historic reaction to said person, place, thing, or event.  So if my feelings are based on my mood and my experience, what makes me think that I know what you’re feeling?  Delusions of grandeur, that’s what.  We think that if we feel a certain way about something, then everybody else probably does too.  After all, we are right about how we feel.  This is a half truth, because although we are definitely entitled to have our feelings, but that doesn’t mean that everybody else is entitled to have our feelings too.  What might jam me up might roll off another person’s back, and vice versa.  On top of that, what might jam me up today and not matter to you, might piss you off and not affect me tomorrow. 

It’s just too confusing and daunting of a proposition for me to get inside your heart, but the real danger comes when I try to get inside your head.  THAT is a dangerous position for anybody to be in, especially somebody that can barely handle their own feelings.

My advice to you, is figure out how YOU feel about a situation first, before you go around with absolute surety assigning emotional states to other people.  Master your own emotions, and then perhaps after that, I’ll let you tell me how I should be feeling.  

It’s been said that your level of expectation has an inverse, yet very accurate effect on your level of serenity.  Some people have taken this beautiful concept and totally fucked it up.  They take it to mean if you expect shit, at least you won’t be disappointed when you get shit.  What actually happens though when you expect shit, is you get shit, because you pick shit out of the ether to show up in your life.  You don’t see the beauty so you pass it by like it never even existed, when really it’s been all around you all along. 

Keeping expectations low doesn’t mean expect poor things to happen, it means expect nothing and handle everything.  The more you’re focused on what you should be getting, the less able you are to handle what’s actually on your plate.  When you can’t handle what’s on your plate it feels like it’s too much, even if it’s only a little.  It’s like putting a full plate of food in front of somebody who’s starving versus putting a tiny bit of food in front of somebody who’s stuffed to the rafters.  You get the point right?

Trust yourself to be able to handle life as it happens and when the going gets rough, get going.  Make a move. If your thoughts are the problem, the action MUST be the solution.  Einstein said that the same mind that created the problem can’t be the same one to fix it.  The problems of the world will not be solved by the world.  The problems that YOU have manufactured to feel interesting or have something to do, will not be solved by the same brain that created them. They can, however, be turned around by some right action. We all know what this is, yet we seldom engage in it because we think that will render us useless or boring.  Little do you realize how quickly life will bring you problems to solve all by itself without you creating your own.  The world is unpredictable though, and it brings different problems all the time, and that is why we’re attracted to creating issues to deal with that are, at the very least, familiar.

With this style of living, it’s easy to feel victimized and that we’re not getting our fair share of freedom to live how we want.  I heard a woman say recently “Live as good as you can, but don’t expect everything to always be easy just because you’re doing the right thing.  And when you find yourself in a pit, don’t decorate it.  Ask for a ladder.”

Ask for a ladder.  And use it. 

While working with somebody today, it became apparent to me just how wrong our approach to life is.  We want to be accepted, which is totally normal, but we go about it in a very weird way.  Rather than be who we are unconditionally, we allow ourselves to be told how to feel by how others treat us.  And then, as if that weren’t bad enough, when we act badly or inappropriately, we see ourselves through the perceived perception of other people.  We are mind readers and our own worst critics.  We accuse others of being judgmental when really, we are the ones who are judging ourselves, but it seems less painful because it’s through somebody else’s eyes.  

Let me tell you why this is more painful.  Because you’re combining thought and emotion. When the two are in sync and coming from the same entity, they have the ability to move mountains, however, when it’s our emotions and what we THINK are their thoughts, that’s when disastrous results occur.  

There is no way to safely combine my emotional experience with your thought pattern. I wind up as the loser every time.

The man in the mirror is not the man that stands in front of the mirror.  The man in the mirror is a 2 dimensional reflection of what is being presented to the world.  How the world receives the man is up to the world.  You exist in the body, mind, and heart of that man standing in the mirror.  Spend less time focusing on the reflection and more time manipulating the actions of the body and mind you live from.  (Or woman).  

It’s always the same shit.  Every time you read a self help book, a piece of spiritual literature, or check up on ancient principles and philosophies.  It’s all the same shit. 

But why are you waiting for an inanimate object to change?  There is no such thing as an original thought anymore and there hasn’t for quite some time.  Everything is a derivative of something, if not a duplicate. 

The impetus is on you to be disciplined enough to continue searching within the proven way of living that brings the majority joy.  Keep reading the same thing over and over again every day.  It’s up to YOU to change by the next time you read it.  I’ve read certain books hundreds of times and I get something different out of them every time.

It’s shocking to realize how much you miss. Take that and multiply it by a million and then you will get a glimpse of how much you’re missing in life in general.  You’re hit with billions of stimuli a day.  How many instances do you remember from yesterday?  Or an hour ago? Exactly.

On a side note, recovery is not a self help program.  It’s a help others program.  I think some self help programs could benefit from adopting that attitude.

Your main function in this life is not to avoid pain.  It’s not to run towards it either.  Your main purpose is to rouse yourself up to the task of peeling the ever expanding onion.  When you do this, and do it with a vengeance, you show those around you that it is possible to be hard on yourself and easy on others. 

Some people, the wrong people, will be intimidated by the constant attention you pay to your own conscience. They’ll be annoyed by the lengths you go to to honor your own moral code.  The path we choose is narrow to begin with, but it gets much narrower as time goes on.  I’ve learned though that there is very little traffic on the extra mile.  The road less traveled may be a little bit rougher than the beaten path, but it’s easy to get caught up in the crowd on the latter.  On the road less traveled you may misstep here and there on a rock or root, but first off, nobody will be around to see you so you won’t be embarrassed.  Second, you’ll have the time to figure out where you went wrong since you’re not getting pushed forward at an uncomfortable rate by the flow of people.  

When you familiarize yourself with the road less traveled, the progress you make will shock those around you and take you to a place you would have never known had you not had the bravery to take that leap in the first place.

To avoid pain is to deprive yourself of one of life’s greatest pleasures; the bounce back.  For every action  there is an equal and opposite reaction.  However far down you feel you are right now, you can get through it by knowing that there have never been truer words than “this too shall pass”.

However, when things go right, you can remind yourself that there doesn’t have to be an inevitable crash by assuring yourself “this too shall last”.