Similar, But Different

Similar, But Different.

I have been having some interesting conversations lately about words that get us fired up in that indignant or annoyed way. Each of us has some; phrases that other folks wouldn’t even notice that hit us like a firecracker. Pow!

One of mine is “you people.” It was amazing to me how many folks would call up and yell at me on the switchboard where I worked and say that phrase. Not so much any more, but I get it.

My point is that we are all, on the one hand, people, and on the other hand, different. We have a lot of things in common, but we have differences that we need to recognize and remember as we go through our days.

What works for me, for thousands of others, may not work for you. You aren’t wrong, or bad, if it doesn’t work like that for you, just different, and we need to find a different way to address whatever the “it” is.

I have many examples from my life where it worked for everyone else, but not for me. I have seen many clients, and friends, where X worked for everyone but them.

Our differences are part of what makes us so amazing. And needing to find ways to address those when conventional stuff doesn’t work is so exciting! A beloved friend was having stuff, and tried talk therapy, which worked so well for me, and a bunch of our mutual friends. It was a disaster for him. Awful. He tried it several times, with the same results. He wasn’t doing it wrong, it just didn’t work for him. He started writing plays, and worked through his stuff that way with great success. Unconventional and very effective.

Sometimes, when something that goes this way for everyone else, it goes that way for us. We feel excluded, we feel like we are doing something wrong, we feel like outsiders. Those feelings are coming from inside us, and we can find a way to change them.

By remembering that truth is only Truth when it is true for every single person and there are over 7 billion of us, that most everything except breathing, is a suggestion, we open ourselves to find solutions that work for us. It may be the case that we have a hidden resistance to X, and when we find and release it, X will work. It may be that we are missing a certain enzyme, or dexterity, or sense, and then we discover a work-around. It may be that we hate doing X, but love triangles, so let’s find a way to work with triangles instead of X.

When we struggle and fight to make something fit, we are resisting our lovely, natural life. We might choose to take a close look at ourselves, and see how we could be committed to the not-side of what we think we want. We see what we are committed to by looking at our lives. We are committed to the way things have been for a while. If we don’t like the way things have been, we need to examine, and change, our commitments. It can be as simple as changing our bad creative questions into good ones. It may require more attention and practice if it’s a situation we’ve been in for a long time.

What makes me consciously choose my commitments?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 02212013