Mistakes

Self-Compassion

Posted by James Browning on May 12, 2013
Posted in: Accurate self-view, Mistakes, Self Esteem. Tagged: , , .

self-reflection-self-compassionA growing body of research… suggest that self-compassion, rather than self-esteem, may be the key to unlocking your true potential for greatness. Self-compassion is a willingness to look at your own mistakes and shortcomings with kindness and understanding – it’s embracing the fact that to err is indeed human. When you are self-compassionate in the face of difficulty, you neither judge yourself harshly, nor feel the need to defensively focus on all your awesome qualities to protect your ego. It’s not surprising that self-compassion leads, as many studies show, to higher levels of personal well-being, optimism and happiness and to less anxiety and depression. People who experienced self-compassion were more likely to see their weaknesses as changeable. Self-compassion – far from taking them off the hook – actually increased their motivation to improve and avoid the same mistake again in the future. Why is self-compassion so powerful? In large part, because it is non-evaluative – in other words, your ego is effectively out of the picture – you can confront your flaws and foibles head on. You can get a realistic sense of your abilities and your actions, and figure out what needs to be done differently next time. When your focus is instead on protecting your self-esteem, you can’t afford to really look at yourself honestly. You can’t acknowledge the need for improvement, because it means acknowledging weaknesses and shortcomings – threats to self-esteem that create feelings of anxiety and depression. Here’s an unavoidable truth: You are going to screw up. Everyone – including very successful people – makes boatloads of mistakes. The key to success is, as everyone knows, to learn from those mistakes and keep moving forward. But not everyone knows how. Self-compassion is the how you’ve been looking for. So please, give yourself a break. Taken from “Forget Self-Esteem” by Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-science-success/201209/forget-self-esteem

If you had a friend who spoke to you in the same way
that you sometimes speak to yourself, how long
would you allow that person to be your friend?
unknown

Letting Go Of Toxic People… Part III

Posted by James Browning on March 12, 2013
Posted in: Learning From the Past, Mistakes, Self Care. Tagged: , , .

man-praying-alone1Trust your heart; if it is ready to embrace someone who has harmed you, it will open, without force. Indeed, by giving yourself permission to say “no,” to follow your truth, you are offering yourself the only real chance you have to genuinely want to be with them, at some time. Without permission to say “no,” we cannot find the authentic desire to say “yes.” And if that desire never comes, that too is as spiritual a path as any other. Spirituality is not about becoming the person that you are supposed to be — not about doing the “spiritual” thing. To be spiritual is to compassionately welcome your truth — what you actually feel — whether you like that truth or not. To be spiritual is to stop trying to be a more spiritual and open-hearted version of yourself, and instead, to open your heart without judgment to who and how you actually are. Perhaps the hardest task of all, being spiritual is about letting yourself — and what is so — be. By Nancy Colier “Letting Go of Toxic People: When Staying in It Is Not More Spiritual” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nancy-colier/toxic-relationships_b_2758794.html

To be true to yourself takes courage. It requires you to be introspective, sincere, open-minded and fair. It does not mean that you are inconsiderate or disrespectful of others. It means that you will not let others define you or make decisions for you that you should make for yourself. Be true to the very best that is in you and live your life consistent with your highest values and aspirations. Those who are most successful in life have dared to creatively express themselves and in turn, broaden the experiences and perspectives of everyone else. http://www.essentiallifeskills.net/betruetoyourself.html

Few are those
who see with
their own eyes
and feel with
their own hearts.
Albert Einstein

Gratitude for Bygone Errors

Posted by James Browning on August 3, 2012
Posted in: Getting Better, Learning From the Past, Mistakes. Tagged: , , .

There are far less things I do now which end up as sizeable regrets. When there is something regrettable, it is usually smaller with lesser pangs of guilt than before. Sometimes it is because I have grown to see my tendencies more clearly and with that knowledge am able to avoid repeating past mistakes. At other times it is a feeling of regretfulness for what I have done in the past that are the road markers keeping me out of the ditches. Wisdom came when I could allow the lessons of what was behind me to be a guide in the present. Instead of seeing old transgressions as only actions to regret and try to forget, I came to see how the past is helpful in lighting the path forward. At first it felt very strange to find gratitude for the bygone errors. However, once thankfulness came not for the deeds, but for the lessons learned, my life became better. It was then hope began to arrive in greater quantity than I had ever previously allowed myself.

One must always maintain one’s connection to the past
and yet ceaselessly pull away from it.
Gaston Bachelard

Negative Feeling About Taking

Posted by James Browning on July 30, 2012
Posted in: Appropriate Behavior, Mistakes, Wants and Desires. Tagged: , , .

Lust is bewildering. Lust is powerful and intense. It can feel good, even great, but usually only for a relatively short time. By itself lust is only a man’s primal drive for sex and is superficial attraction based on instant chemistry rather than genuine caring or emotion. It’s easy to mistake feelings of strong attraction with love and though my codependent tendencies I have confused it many times. The draw can be incredibly intense with feelings fanned like a wildfire by pop-culture all around us. Advertising more often than not shows lust when love is being talked about. In movies, all over television, in music; everywhere there seems to be an insinuation lust is good. Physical attraction is an important component within love, but the real thing goes deeper. Love is a shared feeling between two people who have a vested interesting in one another’s happiness. Love is a positive giving feeling. Lust is a negative feeling about taking.

‎True love isn’t expressed
in passionately whispered words,
an intimate kiss or an embrace.
…love is expressed in self-control,
patience, even words left unsaid.
Joshua Harris

Not Uniquely Crazy

Posted by James Browning on July 27, 2012
Posted in: Getting Better, Mistakes, Self Care. Tagged: , .

A dead giveaway that I am a codependent is loving people who can’t love me back. Often in my past meeting a woman who was damaged and emotionally impoverished, yet smart, attractive and sexy caused a deeply yearning response. Like a moth to a flame I would be drawn to her and not infrequently ‘fall head over heels’.  While thinking I’d found a great love I’d usually just fallen into the pit of my own neediness. My feeling was if I could show her with all my being how much I loved her she would fix me and give me the love I lacked.  Getting “fixed” by “fixing” someone is not the path to love. That knowledge has been mine for a good while, but the knowing didn’t stop me from continuing to hit the trip wire of my old conditioning from time to time. The compulsion to “fix” others can make me crazy and has… frequently. Those tendencies still exist but I don’t let them take me over like they used to. The only difference is being in recovery. No one can over come the power of codependence all by them self. The force is too strong. Therapy helped but substantial growth only began when my higher power led me to CoDA (Codependence Anonymous) where I met others much like me. Discovering I was far from alone and not uniquely crazy was a HUGE step forward.

If you can’t get what you want,
you end up doing something else,
just to get some relief…
Just to keep from going crazy.
Because when you’re sad enough,
you look for ways to fill you up.
 Laura Pritchett

Being Miserably Alone

Posted by James Browning on July 14, 2012
Posted in: Mistakes, People, Wants and Desires. Tagged: , .

The fear of being alone is one of the most power emotions I have ever encountered. As the view of myself has cleared somewhat in recent years the realization has come that some romantic relationships, even long-term ones, were not about love but instead about trying to fight off loneliness. That such unions never worked out is testament that having physical contact with someone is NOT a cure for feeling alone. Worse yet was the discovery of being lonesome while living with a partner is pure agony. A deserted and empty feeling while in a relationship is far worse that being miserably alone.

If you marry the wrong person for the wrong reasons,
then no matter how hard you work, it’s never going to work,
because then you have to completely change yourself,
completely change them, completely – by that time, you’re both dead.
Anne Bancroft

The Pain to Stay the Same

Posted by James Browning on July 9, 2012
Posted in: Change, Getting Better, Mistakes. Tagged: , , .

Six years ago I went through a painful break up that ended an eight year relationship. Being truly in love with my wife, I was heartbroken when she filed for divorce. Old bad habits of medicating my problems conjured up a compulsion that caused her to push me out of her life. No, it was not drugs or alcohol, but sex for sex sake. That old compulsion I had managed to stave off for quite a few years took me over at a difficult time. There was little to no physical intimacy happening in the marriage, so I went else where. I regret it to this day. Yes, there are factors I can blame like divorced parents who set a horrible example, abused their children emotionally and caused them to feel neglected and without self-worth. That’s all true, but was a good excuse only into early adulthood. That I was still lost in the haze of dysfunction that screwed up my life 50 years later was my fault and not my parents. For the majority of people getting  into recovery is because something deeply emotional happens. Change usually takes a jarring catalyst, just as the breakup and divorce was for me. When the pain to stay the same exceeds the pain to change, we change.

Sometimes it’s the smallest decisions
that can change your life forever.
Keri Russell

Bright Light of Full Acceptance

Posted by James Browning on June 19, 2012
Posted in: Depression, Mistakes, Self Care. Tagged: , .

My accumulated history can pull me into the quicksand of my thoughts. At times remembering wrongs done and actions regretted I fell dingy, soiled and permanently stained.  It feels then like everyone can see the dirtiness all over me. The weight of such thoughts can drag me down into depression if I am not careful. I cannot undo what I have done and my past can’t be rewritten. There is no benefit to anyone pretending things did not happen as they did. In the muddiness of my thoughts, I can become lost in the darkness if I don’t take care of myself. The best way out of the gloom is to use my errors and mistakes as self-teaching tools. Only in the bright light of full acceptance do the shadows of my past no longer show.

Remember today, for it is the beginning of always.
Today marks the start of a brave new future
filled with all your dreams can hold.
Think truly to the future
and make those dreams come true.
Walter Winchel

You Are Not Your Mistakes

Posted by James Browning on June 6, 2012
Posted in: Mistakes, People, Self Esteem. Tagged: , .

Sometimes it is difficult to accept responsibility for mistakes I have made or wrongs I have done without feeling the need to explain. That’s a reflex action taken with a mostly false sense that an explanation somehow changes what happened. Unless I have been asked to talk about my actions there is no good reason for jumping to rationalize and justify them. In most cases it only makes things worse by reliving the blunder and dragging someone else through it as well. The appropriate words to say are “I’m sorry”; apologize and move on.  In all circumstances, feeling misunderstood and the need to make myself abundantly clear usually comes from a weak view of myself; a shortage of self-esteem. Thinking I am what I do as it is perceived by others is not healthy. What matters most is accepting myself as a fallible human being. I am perfectly imperfect and will make mistakes and do wrong things. To see myself otherwise is to expect myself to be something other than human.

If people refuse to look at you in a new light
and they can only see you for what you were,
only see you for the mistakes you’ve made,
if they don’t realize that you are not your mistakes,
then they have to go.
Steve Maraboli

Time to Check Your Yardstick

Posted by James Browning on June 4, 2012
Posted in: Accepting "what is", Appropriate Behavior, Mistakes. Tagged: , , .

Until a few days ago it never fully occurred to me that my view of imperfection in others is mostly a shadow of my own imperfectness I was casting on them. Not a single human being on Earth is “perfect”. No amount of success, exercise, education, money, willpower or plastic surgery can change that. I have missed out on a lot because my focus was too much on what I saw as flaws in others, especially women. It is a symptom of a ‘love avoidant’, as I have been diagnosed, to find fault in a subject of their affection. Within such thinking I held imperfection up as a barrier to prevent a woman from even having a chance to become fully emotionally intimate with me.  The realization is painful, but the knowing now means I am not nearly so prone to repeat that dysfunctional behavior.  As long as I have life, there is always the chance of living it better.

When nobody around you seems to measure up,
it’s time to check your yardstick.
 Bill Lemley