Don't mess with your destiny - own your emotional baggage
This week I conclude the three part series that looks at the all-important subject of high energies. My basic message is that, without knowing it, we are all loosing large amounts of energy by carrying unnecessary emotional baggage. In truth, motivation and success requires us to have all our energies to use in the pursuit of our goals.
In the first article I explained how past experiences set up a cycle where you take the blame for other people's 'stuff'. In the second article I gave you some tools to stop this cycle and consciously choose not to pick up other people's emotional load, releasing our energy back to ourselves. This week my message is that you need courage and strength to break these cycles.
Years ago when my eldest daughter was little, I had endless trouble getting her up on time in the morning. In fact, come 7am, our home was like a war zone. She would sleep late, I would nag, (loudly) and the housekeeper would run around looking for bits of clothing, schoolbooks and swimming gear. The lift would arrive and this little soul would depart in a cloud of unhappiness, leaving me in feeling unsettled and frustrated, thinking I was doing a lousy job as a mother.
One day I shared our morning 'process' with a friend, a very wise man, with much experience of life. His advice, "separate what is your stuff and what is hers. After all" he said, "your daughter's school life is her responsibility. Let her know that in future, you will not be involved in getting her up in the morning, and that she is free to choose to be on time, or late".
For the many parents who are reading this, you will fully understand the difficulty I had with this suggestion. In my thinking, it was my job to make sure her life went as planned. It was my business to make sure this 8 year old was at school on time. And it is this very thinking that led me to adopt useless strategies, like owning her time management, like nagging - strategies that made not only my daughter, but also the rest of the family unhappy.
Fortunately for us I protested loudly to my wise friend, explaining that I would be a very bad mother if I did this. "Well" he said, "do you think having a morning drama every day is being a good mother? If you let her pick up her stuff, chances are she'll miss her lift - but only once! And how serious is that in the grand scheme of life?"
And so it was. I chatted to her. I gave her back her stuff. She slept on. She missed her lift. She missed school. Never again did we have morning madness. She got herself up on time from that day on. Today my daughter is a very successful, highly together young adult, who takes responsibility for making her life work. Maybe the seeds for this empowering behaviour were sown when she was 8 years old…
Success requires us to be clear and strong. There's no getting away from it. Ultimately, when we stand before our Creator, we won't be able to blame someone else for our deeds, neither will our children, our colleagues, family and friends. Excuses will fall way. We will have to account for our own choices - whether passive or active.
More importantly we will have to account for what we have done with our talents. So don't mess with your destiny, stand resolute, put yourself back into the driving seat of your life by actively owning your emotional junk, and give back what is not yours.
© Catherine M Glennie
