So Choose Differently

Human interactions can be vexing and difficult for us at times.  We struggle day in and day out with the same themes with different people over and over again throughout our lives.  We don’t seem ever to give much thought as to the lesson that is the real reason behind a relational struggle.  We just either take the victim or villain stance and engage in preemptive strike, offense or defense as our minds dictate is necessary.  We even spend a lot of energy trying to force and change people around us to be more like we are and in our minds that might be considerate, loving and understanding.   But, if we do not have clue one about ourselves, who we are and what our purpose is here, forcing change on another is nothing but selfish self-created psycho drama to varying degrees.  If we could just learn to live and let live, we’d find our human interactions going so much more smoothly.

The truth is, you can absolutely guilt, shame and manipulate people into being who you want them to be.  While that might seem to go well for a little while, the forcing of inauthentic behavior in another can never gain your sustainable change and the soul you worked so hard to change and “make right” will only revert back to the true being they are for the full purpose they and you intended for them to be in your lives.  Without this understanding we spend lots of time angry, sad, depressed and sometimes even worse.  We are choosing this but so unconsciously that we are doomed to merely repeat the same dramas over and over again.  This cycle will continue until you have learned that it is truly your understanding that is lacking in a situation and your own selfish self-preservation at play that forces another soul to be who you want or need them to be for you.  In truth, you are much better served spending your time and energy understanding all of the themes at play in your life and why you might be creating them.  To begin to understand, consider...what is it that you most wanted to learn?  It must be something important to you or you would not find yourself in similar situations with people over and over again.  When you boil it down, the majority of the struggles are the same at the core.  What is at your core?

When you can learn to step outside of the fight for energy, the fight to be right, the desire to be externally validated by people who are incapable of authentically doing this for you, you free yourselves from the drama and embrace a life of understanding and peace.  When you get to this place, and you can get to this place, you begin to realize that you can live and let others live.  You will learn to see the energy and psycho dramas coming and you will be able to lovingly decide what you will or will not participate in.  You can set boundaries with love and understanding rather than in frustrated and emotionally desperate animosity.  It can be done.  Even when souls rail against your boundaries set with love and understanding, you still get to choose whether you will take it personally.  In time your response will be no different than when someone walks up to you and screams at you that you are purple and green and how dare you be purple and green.  You’d scratch your head, look at your skin and then begin to wonder why someone would become so upset with you that they would attack you for being purple and green when you know definitively you are not that.  And you will begin to understand that it isn't your job to change everyone's reality.  

So often we do not know what we do or why.  We just react.  We think when someone comes unhinged and treats us differently than we treat others that it diminishes us in some way.  It doesn’t.  Someone who disparages another for not behaving the way they think another should behave is not disparaging the object of their rant, they are in truth only disparaging themselves.  It’s hard to see this and to get the ego to conform to the truth of this thinking but hard things in life are more worth it than you could ever possibly imagine.  So, the next time someone slights you, insults you, treats you with disrespect, rather than retaliating with dagger thoughts and planned vengeance, seek to see the truth of what is transpiring.  Who are you in that moment and who is the other person in that moment?  Rethink and distill the moment down to the theme at play and seek understanding instead of defense or retaliatory thoughts.  The truth is there waiting for you to uncover it and/or choose to see it and when you do, often you will find there is no need for your anger, upset feelings or other derogatory emotions at all.  You will find you can retain and maintain a strong sense of peace and serenity no matter who stands before you with a lesson either they or you decided to learn.  There is a bigger picture but we choose to be mired in illusion.  We choose not to see.  We can choose differently.  So just choose differently.

(c) 2013 Jaie Hart - Photo random internet find