At the risk of sounding quite judgmental of others I want to
write about creating our own hells in this life and how many of us don’t
recognize, or won’t admit, that some of the traumatic and dramatic situations
that we encounter in life are of our own making. Of our own making not intentionally of course
but through how we choose to view the world, others and ourselves and how that
affects how we interact with others and how they treat us.
My ‘observations’ are just that. These words are not judgment. I was once a person who created most of the
trauma and drama in my own life so to judge those who do would be to judge
myself which I choose not to do. As with
the words of Ms. Maya Angelou, “I did then what I knew to how to do. Now that I know better, I do better,” if we
chose to we can change and we can change in the most amazing ways to end the
constant turmoil in our lives that we, often unknowingly, create ourselves. While it may sound like psycho-babble we can
only change what we acknowledge so changing this tired old habit must begin
with the realization that our attitude, our beliefs, our thoughts, our words
and our actions very often plant the seeds of unpleasant interactions with
others. It hurts at first to acknowledge
our own culpability but being determined to improve our lives is a great way to
avoid the tendency to feel guilt. We did
then what we knew to do…now we must learn better, right?
We all know people who we like, we love and that we care
about who are ALWAYS in some sort of turmoil with someone for some reason. There’s always a lot of drama and a lot of
blame to go around to everyone who is messing with them. Having been on that end of things so many
times in my youth I can promise you that a vast majority of these people we
know who are always fighting with someone or claims that they are being harassed
by someone cannot, and for most of them will not, take any responsibility
whatsoever for the situation. So often
they view themselves as innocent victims regardless of any contribution they
might have had in creating the situation.
Most folks, according to their beliefs, were just walking along minding their own
business and for no apparent reason this other person, or persons, just decided
that they are going to go around gossiping about them, slandering their name
and trying to set the entire world against them…for no reason whatsoever. That often enough may be partially true as
many people who bully, who troll and who work against other people who have
never done them any wrong do so simply because they can and often enough their
victims are chosen for odd and unidentifiable reasons. However, so few of us recognize that the
outcome of a majority of our interactions with others is the result not only of
their participation but also of our own.
The victimiz-ers need a victim, a willing victim, and so many times we
don’t understand how to avoid being victimized by others by putting out the
correct responses to their initial attempts to victimize us. Also once the victimization goes into full
swing many people have a tendency to join in the fray with great exuberance
mounting a defensive attack of our own that sometimes equals but more often surpasses the attack others have waged upon us.
Sure there are people out there who greatly relish an opportunity
to take someone down that for one reason or another they don’t like or feel
that is getting something that they don’t or they feel is doing something
wrong, according to their standards, who are really doing nothing wrong. Yes those people surely exist and we see
evidence of it nearly every day on social media. However our response to what these people say
about us and what they do to attempt to harm us truly does make a difference in
the outcome. Threaten these trolls and haters
all you want; they will keep coming and will come on stronger with each threat. Try to turn the tables on them by
discrediting what they do, by spreading gossip about them, by doing to them
exactly what they are trying to do to you; they will love it because they are
getting a response from you.
The people who go after other people, after what they do in
life, after all of their accomplishments and hard work most certainly have
serious emotional issues but in spite of those emotional issues they can see a ‘victim’
coming a mile away. A victim might be
someone who shows to be emotionally volatile.
A victim might be someone who is always judging what others do. A victim might be someone who is always in
some sort of controversy with someone about something. A victim might be someone who has shown that
they are unable to conduct themselves in a mature, adult manner and who appears
to be someone who routinely has some sort of ‘relationship’ issues whether it’s
with friends, families or social media acquaintances. Sometimes someone who is being attacked by
someone else literally opens up themselves to be attacked by virtue of
exhibiting emotional instability in who they are, what they do and this is
where OUR responsibility comes into play.
We can choose to change ourselves so that we appear to be strong, to be
capable and to be someone who will not ‘play the game’ with the emotional
black-mailers, the life ruiners or with people who just simply get off on
making other people as miserable as they are.
Sure into each life some rain must fall but we’ve got to be
smart in that we make sure that when that rain falls it wasn’t us who ran like
hell to get under that rain cloud. We’ve got
to work on making ourselves emotionally strong in that we take full
responsibility for our feelings, our thoughts, our actions and our words when
it comes to interacting with other people.
When we learn to be strong and self-assured, as opposed to being
emotionally volatile and judgmental and a gossiper in our own right, we present
the persona of a person who won’t play the game and who will not be an easy
target for those looking for one. In the
end don’t fall into the belief that others ‘make’ you feel anything with their
words and actions but take responsibility for what you feel because if we don’t
take responsibility for our own feelings someone else will and they may not be
so kind to us as we might be to ourselves.
