Helping Hands

Helping Hands

One of the nicest things in my life is feeling supportive. Making space for us to live our natural lives, making space for us to let go of our emo crap, making space for us to love ourselves, is a nice activity.

Thing is, you do that for me, too.

The other thing is that when I was suffering, I couldn’t have cared much less about your happiness or well being. In fact, I kind of resented it. Oi.

It’s one of the features of focusing on what sucks in our lives, a  particular flavor of selfishness. We get ideas about our suffering, how it’s worse than yours. That’s called inverse grandiosity. We end up resenting people in general. If you aren’t suffering as much as me, what makes you so special, and if you are, or, heaven forbid, are in worse shape, how dare you trespass on my particular domain! No one wins.

When we focus on our suffering, our biggest concern is getting our own needs met. We expend a lot of energy identifying our needs, worrying about them, figuring out how they will be taken care of, who will do it for us.

Sometimes we have a sense of being selfish, and know that it doesn’t serve us well, so we pretend we care. That can be excruciating for us, and for the people we are pretending about. We can always pick up that insincerity on some level.

When I focus on the good in my life instead of what sucks, my life gets nicer. I can calm down, and stop feeling like I have to scramble to get my needs taken care of. In fact, I often find I have fewer needs. Things that seemed vitally important might just drop off my radar.

Why am I positive? How do I see the good? What makes me choose?

When I focus on the good in my life instead of what sucks, I find I don’t need to borrow trouble. That means, I want to support you in living your best life, and stop fretting about your situations, your bad habits, your relationships; things, in other words, I have no control over.

The more attention I pay to the good things in my life, the softer I feel. I don’t get riled up about stuff as easily, I don’t go to scared as fast. When my emotions feel even, I don’t need tons of reassurance that things are okay, I don’t need to be convinced, I know. I trust.

And so I have a lot more energy. And because I am feeling good, and it was pretty easy to get there, I want you to feel good, too, so being supportive of you comes naturally with my joy and peace.

And now I am living my natural life. My spirit is renewed from the inside out, and I find bliss and contentment easily, I feel productive, and creative. I feel connected and engaged. And I want to make space for you to find your natural life, not my idea of how you should be, but your own, unique life.

How have I changed from dwelling on my misery to opening my life?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 06152014