Some people get ticked off when I speak about Learned Helplessness. It feels to them like they are powerless and therefore victims of life’s circumstances.
I get it. I too have felt like I was not at the helm of my own life, and that has felt incredibly irritating.
So the invitation is to be irritated. No I mean, really irritated.
What would you have to really feel if you were to bring on all the times in your life that you have humoured away your frustrations, or pretended that things were less hurtful then they really were, and then blamed others for their behaviours and their affects on you?
What would you risk feeling if you let all of these memories and emotions come flooding into your awareness to fuel your irritation? Because until you’re done with being irritated, until you can see through your limiting behaviours and beliefs around irritation…guess what? You’re going to be in conflict with yourself, and others, for the rest of your life.
Personally, I’m done. I am sick and tired of my games and strategies of being relentlessly in conflict, with others, and myself all the time. It’s exhausting. It is soul sucking. It takes all of the fun out of life, which is deadening.
I choose to change NOW.
Learned Helplessness is…learned. So un-learn it!
How do you shift this pattern you might ask?
Well, what if you were to tweak your belief systems by just a fraction? What if you allowed the perspective lens through which you have experienced life to be cleaned and cleared by just a smidge? What would that do for you? How would you feel about life once that shift has been taken?
Whether you witnessed your family, your culture, your religion, your siblings or whomever, role model this dysfunctional behaviour to you in your life, you could choose to just STOP it…You could decide to see just how insidious these patterns of blame and defense have unwittingly become the fabric of your life and just STOP.
Easier said than done. I know…AND…it’s worth it!
What would it take for you to re-evaluate your entire belief system and decide for yourself that it is up to YOU to believe what you choose to believe? What clearing needs to take place so that you can be empowered and free?
Recently, I apologized to my wonderful husband, Cam, for all of the years that I had leaned on him, to do for me, what I felt I didn’t ‘deserve’ to do for myself…things I believed ‘I couldn’t’ do…or tasks I felt ‘I needed help’ with because, truthfully, I just didn’t want to do them.
It made me realize just how many disempowering behaviours and habits I had been running in my life where I had expected him to pick up the slack.
What I have come to realize is that it is absolutely not his responsibility, (or anyone else’s’ for that matter) nor within his ability, to fix my issues or me, as they are mine and not his. And truthfully, I am not broken and there is nothing to fix unless I choose to change. I am the one that gets to clear my belief systems, to change the aperture of my lens, to do my own ‘dirty work,’ per se, so that I can be happy.
If you really want happiness, then choose to be happy.
If you notice that you are waiting for someone else to give you permission to flourish, perhaps ask yourself why? Nobody owes you anything so what’s it going to take to for you to support yourself 100% of the time in all arenas in your life? What would you have to let go of that no longer serves you, no matter how comforting that habit has become?
I have to admit, choosing ME and deciding what I want from and for life, is terrifyingly exhilarating. My intention is to live full out, to laugh and sing and dance…to have fun and to be completely, obscenely happy.
Huge Love,
Bet