Hi! I'm the Problem! It's Me!

Credit to Taylor Swift!

I’m not sure Taylor Swift knew how much truth was actually contained in this line from her song, Anti-Hero, but it’s a powerful reminder of how much impact we have on our own realities.

We are the common denominator in our own lives. When we begin to recognize the patterns in our experiences, it offers us the opportunity to question how we show up in the world.

When you’re on the dating scene and all of your relationships end the same way, what do you do? Do you complain that you can’t find the right person? Or do you look at yourself because you recognize that you are the common denominator in all those relationships?

If you keep finding new jobs and getting fired from them, do you look at yourself or blame the employers?

We all have repetitive behavior patterns. They are habits that often begin in childhood. Some of them will cause pain and some of them won’t. The ones that cause you pain are the ones you need to be looking at first.

Why does this experience keep happening?

It’s a powerful question to ask because it allows you to begin to take responsibility for yourself instead of simply waiting for the outside world to change. It’s a recognition that you do have some control over what’s happening. You can control who you date. You can control how you show up in those relationships. You can control what time you get to work, how you dress, how you act when you’re there, and whether or not you’re productive. When you deny your ability to control those things, you create a sense of victimization. You put yourself at the mercy of your experience. That’s like being a pinball in an arcade machine. You’re just being bounced around without any ability to change directions or slow down. You’re not under your own control.

To begin to understand my insecurity, I needed to see the patterns in my relationships. Insecurity made me continually give my power away even when I didn’t need to or wasn’t being asked to. Until I recognized that I was giving my power away and I didn’t need to, I made myself a victim of those relationships. I had to let go of the story of blame I was telling to recognize that I was the problem.

Blame is a powerful story that says it’s your fault I feel this way.

The story is not true. Spirituality and philosophy both offer the idea that the experience and our individual reaction to the experience are separate things. If my reaction to the experience is separate from the experience that means that not only do I have control over my reaction, it also means I can’t blame you for my reaction. It’s not your fault I feel this way, it’s my fault I feel this way. That’s a powerful, life-changing truth when you can fully embody it.

For example, if somebody insults you, your reaction is likely going to be to defend yourself and get mad. Your anger is your own. It is not a result of the insult that was thrown at you. Why did you get mad? What did the insult trigger within you? If you’re willing to do the internal work to understand why you’re bothered by other people’s comments, you will understand that you don’t have to be mad or hurt. The insults will stop bothering you because you’ll understand that the trigger is within you and you’ll be able to manage that for yourself without needing to control the experience by defending yourself or getting angry.

It’s easy to blame the experience for how we feel, but it’s also a missed opportunity to examine where the feeling came from without the story of blame. In the case of my insecurity, I examined why I felt like I needed to give my power away without blaming anybody for it. Where did that come from? Where did I learn to do that? How do I change it?

I recognized that I learned those things from my mother who was also insecure and victimized. I had taken on her pain as a child. Like most kids, I didn’t recognize that I had done that. The strategies that she gave me for how to be in the world were flawed because they were based on her pain. She unintentionally passed her pain onto me, as many parents do to their children. My job as an adult is to unlearn those strategies and drop the pain because it wasn’t mine to begin with.

Most people do not give themselves enough credit for the power they have in their own lives. People spend a lot of time in blame, shame, guilt, and victimization. Those stories diminish your sense of power in the world. They conceal the truth, which is that you are the common denominator in your own experience.

The way we’re all taught to deal with it is to try to control the outside world. That’s a very frustrating, difficult, often useless way to handle your life because it puts your power outside of you. The minute I try to control you instead of managing myself, I create a problem I don’t have control over. I made you the problem and I don’t have control over you. I do have control over me, but I’m not taking responsibility for myself, so therefore I still fight in vain to control things that aren’t mine to control.

Understand where your power is in every situation you find yourself in.

Your power is not out there. It’s not in other people or circumstances. It is in you. Taylor Swift is right - you are the problem in your own life. Only you have the ability to change that.

What patterns have you noticed in your own behavior and what are you doing to change them? Share your stories in the comments below!

Love to all.

Della

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