What Do People Want?

The people I work with want freedom and they work hard for it. They may feel hopeless, lost and deflated, and yet the human spirit is amazing, isn’t it?

What gets in our way most of the time is thinking. Once upon a time, I went to India to learn how to meditate. My guru-du-jour said to me: “If a thought is bad, then it is a bad thought.” In other words, “Knock it off.” If it is making you miserable, then it is a bad thought. Use your imagination. Find another one.

We are married to our stories and our thoughts – which are just stories we tell ourselves. Do you see a circular pattern here? It is so comfortable in the “I can’t, I won’t, if only” land of self-pity, as we plunge into another bag of chips. And so we don’t and won’t.

Try this. Decide that this is a lie. What you are telling yourself is a miserable lie and has a lot of staying power. Like any habit, it repeats over and over and becomes ingrained. And yet, it is only a thought. Like vapour.

So, how much encouragement do you give yourself? What do you tell yourself on a daily basis? And is it serving you?

I can hear you say, “But you don’t understand…” and no, I do not want to understand, and neither do you. Stories get stale and boring. Stamp your feet and get mad and have a ten-minute pity party, and then get on with yourself. Get over yourself. You know the stories of people who have overcome so much that you are in awe of them. There are no excuses to give constant voice and power to our saboteur-like inner critics and gremlins, are there? And besides, we want freedom from our self-limiting beliefs, don’t we? 

You are a human being with immense inner resources and good stories to live into. You can have your own back and be a friend to yourself. Say, “Wow, I shifted my energy today. I told myself that I was good and patted myself on the back for the efforts. I made a call to someone who needed to hear another human being. This was a good day.”

Say thank you for every wonderful action you take today. That’s what it takes for some of us who have come out of rough patches or backgrounds. We have some job to do re-parenting ourselves. Okay. And, there’s a village of us out there. Find your peeps. Turn your thoughts around when they are stinging you. See what’s good in you, hard as it is some days, especially when the rains come down and the skies are like charcoal, though we love Vancouver, those who are here.

Have thoughts that serve you as you look in the mirror and say, “ I can take this little step today and feel good about myself.”