Inspiring Change

Esther Perel - "Always ask yourself, what am I fighting for?" You fight for care and closeness. You fight for respect and recognition. And you fight for power and control." Care and control is trust. Respect and recognition is to be valued. Power and control is for having your priorities matter. 

Another morning, another day to fill the thoughts with figuring out how to do a new house project. How will the ladder be stabilized so that 12 foot 6X6 post come down with the header on top of it? How will it be forced to fall away from the house and not damage the new siding? The physical effort complete, body tired and sore, the mental agitation continues. 

What's next? Groceries... go to the store. The need to move seemingly on autopilot moving through the aisles of salty snacks. Popcorn, yes. Chips, yes. Then home with Netflix and NA beer snacking, watching, ignoring, numbing. The desire to ignore and suppress the difficult feelings, the stress imposed by the circumstances. It seems like an eternity of stress. The financial uncertainty, disability and illness, death of loved ones, the distance of loved ones, Covid, the uncertainty has not ended. When will it end? When will things be safe? 

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Conflict in our relationships, even within our relationship with ourselves, can be spearheaded by one of the 3 needs previously listed;

• A need for love and belonging
• A need for trust
• A need for control

The world owes us nothing. There are no guarantees in life that we will be safe. The only thing we can control can be an antidote because we can control:

• Love for ourselves
• Trust in ourselves
• Control of our choices

There is an interconnectedness between the 3 things we control. When we chose things that reinforce our love for ourselves, that foster our trust in ourself, we feel stronger, more capable. However, when our choices reflect a lack of trust in ourselves, or a lack of self love and respect, we will perpetuate making more choices which reflect our sense of lack. 

My choice to physically and mentally exhaust myself with house projects and then become a couch potato in my feeble attempt to keep reality and my feelings about it at bay are perhaps not the most skillful choices. Definitely better than a drug addiction, but still perhaps a little less skillful than using my time to both experience my feelings, feel compassion for myself and trust I would navigate the difficulties.

Watching greats like Tommy Caldwell overcome the challenges faced in Kyrgyzstan, then the loss of a finger and still moving forward with trust he would could come back from the darkness is inspiring. We love to hear these stories of overcoming. They inspire us. They move us.

But do we change?
Are we motivated to make the choices which are harder to make? Are we inspired enough to change how we live? Or must we also suffer the same degree of darkness before we are willing to change?
​What's your experience? Comment and let me know.