Doom or Bloom?

Doom or Bloom?

Helpless, hopeless, doomed. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. Nothing ever changes. Nothing ever goes my way. Everything happens to me. My misery is all your fault.

Huh.

Some of us feel like this. I was one of them. I couldn’t leave my rotten job for a hundred reasons. I couldn’t leave my rotten living situation for a thousand reasons. I couldn’t leave my abusive relationship for a hundred thousand reasons. Most of them were your fault. And then, when I got fired, or evicted, or dumped, well, that was clearly your fault, too.

Please accept my apologies. I had a powerful heap o’ mislearning I needed to dump.

Can’t is a crazy word. Can’t stops us cold, tenses our muscles, cramps our thoughts, constrains our behavior. When I choose can’t, I stifle myself. I curb my enthusiasm, I cage my heart, I chain my mind. When I choose can’t, I don’t grow.

Why am I capable? What makes me choose?

I drew those two cards this morning. When I throw in “Why am I competent?” and “Why am I strong?” I can unchoose victim/martyr. I can choose to accept the circumstances I find myself in. I can choose to do what I can to change them. I can choose to get some help. I can choose to leave.

I can choose to accept you as you are, and stop fighting to make you be different. I can choose to take responsibility for my well being and walk away from our relationship if I need to.

When I approach the world from a place of resourcefulness, where I believe all the support I need is there for the asking, I feel powerful. In the olden days, I believed I was powerless to impact my life, except sometimes with a tantrum. I learned that when I was very small, and it was pretty true then, but I got older, and bigger, and it became less accurate, and a deeper mislearning.

Why can I relax? What makes me peaceful? Why can I decide?

Every so often, something would happen to shake that belief, until I finally noticed that I actually did have some power of choice. I began to seek out good teachers, I began to leave “friends” who encouraged me to stay small and helpless. I started to notice my really bad habits that left me feeling awful, like abusing recreational chemicals, and got help to replace them with habits that showed me new ways to think.

I didn’t change this overnight. I did take baby steps. One little change here, one little change there. Some of them took right away, some I had to revisit again and again. Some I am still revisiting. The habit of being competent, of feeling capable, of knowing I can, has gotten stronger. The habit of taking responsibility for my own well being is stronger, and easy most of the time.

Each of us is the only one who can change our own internal experience. Each of us has all the resources we need available. We just need to learn how to ask.

How have I changed from being wedded to “can’t” to feeling the power of “I can?”

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 07082014