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Sometimes we feel buffeted by the waves of life.  Wave after wave comes in and each seems possessed with its own sense of urgency.  We feel pushed toward thing to thing yet we don’t seem to make progress on anything.  It seems like things are out of control.

But ask yourself… “Could I take more control if I really wanted to?”

Sometimes it’s easier to grouse while letting things stay the same than it is take the responsibility of changing our behavior or situation.  Think about the problems in your life right now.

How many of them would go away forever if you just stopped and dealt with them right now?  Make a date with yourself to deal with it and get done with the whole deal.

How many are compound problems that spring from some other thing you’re not dealing with?  Would a multiple of problems evaporate if you dealt with the underlying issue?  You could decide to tackle it today!

How much of the pressure you feel is due to people asking you to do things you don’t want to do (as in favors, etc.)?  Instead of saying, “I’ll try,” and then having it hang over you until it goes away, try saying no in the first place, then it’s resolved immediately.

How many of your problems are things that you can’t do anything about, that are truly beyond your control?  Try changing how you feel about those problems because that’s the one thing you do have the power to change.  You can decide to feel differently about them in any given moment.  Try blessing the situation and intend for it to resolve in a way that is best for all involved.  Try looking for the gift in the grief - what is the silver lining?  Every situation, no matter how bad, has a silver lining - though, I do acknowledge that sometimes one must be very creative with silver linings in the direst of situations.  Sometimes, the only silver lining that can be found that is that, deep down, you are really okay in this moment.

How many problems are really just things you’re worried will happen?  Worry is like regret only applied to the future.  It serves no good purpose and is like shoveling dirt over the light of your soul.  Worry is using your imagination to create an outcome you don’t want.

Let’s look at “create” in a way that people don’t often see it.  Human beings are powerful creators.  Look around you in the world… we have created many wondrous things.  When you have an idea, like for a piece of art or a worry, it suddenly exists - even if only in your mind.  It exists as a possible outcome.  When you take action, like to make the piece of art or to embellish the worry with more thought and details, it’s like you are reaching through the veil and pulling this possible outcome from mere possibility into the realm of reality.

If it’s an outcome you don’t want, why are you creating it anywhere?  Don’t create it at all.  If it exists as a possible outcome because of other people’s similar experiences, why attach any of your own energy to the undesired outcome?  That’s like stamping your name and address on it with a sticker that says, “DELIVER TO”.

Instead of worrying, keep reorienting your thoughts on the outcome you do want.  See yourself attaining your successful outcome and feel the pleasure and relief of it.  See the outcome as being in the best interests of all concerned.  See yourself happy at the successful conclusion as if it has already happened.  It’s a much better use of your energy than creating something you don’t want.

Try it and you’ll see the power of this change for yourself!

Ewww!  I was studying chocolate after reading a partial interview about it here and I happened across this information about Hershey’s process milk chocolate.  Ewww! No wonder I can’t stand milk chocolate.

This from Wikipedia: “Hershey process milk chocolate, invented by Milton S. Hershey, founder of The Hershey Company , is able to be produced more economically, by being less sensitive to freshness of the milk.  Although the process is still a trade secret, experts speculate that the milk is partially lipolyzed, producing butyric acid, which stabilizes the milk from further fermentation. This compound gives the product a particular sour, “tangy” taste, to which the American public has become accustomed, to the point that other manufacturers now simply add butyric acid to their milk chocolates.^[3]“

I only eat dark chocolate anyway because I’ve never liked the taste of milk chocolate.  It always left a burning sensation in my throat and had a weird taste, especially Hershey’s.  I like chocolate frozen, usually, and the darker the better.  I get a 3 pack of Belgian 72% Dark Chocolate for less than $2 from Trader Joe’s.

Here are the nutrition facts for the bars I get.  280 calories per bar of which 170 are from fat.  Total fat is 19g, Saturated fat is 12g, Trans fat 0g, Cholesterol <5mg, Sodium 40mg, Total Carbohydrates 24g, Fiber 6g (YES, I SAID FIBER 6G), Sugars 13g, Protein 4g, 15% of the daily value of Iron.

The ingredients are: cocoa mass, sugar, cocoa powder, soy lechithin, cocoa solids min. 72%  THAT’S ALL.  No artificial colors or flavors and no preservatives.

You might be thinking I was previously a chocolate lover.  Nope!  I liked dark chocolate ever since I was a kid, but until lately when I read about some kinds actually have a fiber content, I decided I would experiment with eating it on a regular basis.  It’s purported to raise your metabolism and 6g of fiber means it won’t spike the blood sugar either.

And as far as rotting your teeth goes… chocolate is actually less likely to rot your teeth than other kinds of candy and snack foods because it doesn’t stick to your teeth for very long - it all melts away in a short time.

Disclaimer: None of this was meant as medical advice.  Be sure to consult your own medical professional before replacing sex with chocolate.  I asked my doctor about it and he told me to get undressed and do everything he recommended.  I still can’t find my panties.

Some of my favorite blog posts come during times that are particularly rough for me.  It’s not that I need to suffer to write, but I think maybe by giving you something of what I want, I’m giving it - or something similar - to myself.

All I know is that I can be having a horrendous day and then write something for you and suddenly my interior landscape is transformed.  I didn’t release any anger or frustration or whatever, like they always say to do when things are going bad.  Instead, I let the love out and I always feel better.

I’m a normal human, just like you.  If it works for me, maybe it’ll work for you too.  If you’re having a rough time of things, try meditating for awhile and send blessings to everyone who comes into your awareness for any reason.  Tell someone else who is doubting or in a bad way just how much they mean to you.  Tell someone about the glory you’d like to see them find in life, how you’d like to see them fulfill their every desire.  Help someone, give a kind word, encourage the efforts of another.  Write down a life’s lesson for a friend or even an unknown person.  Pour all the love and gentleness into it that you own.

Then take a look inside of yourself and see if some of your own fear, trepidation, loneliness, anger, etc. has passed away.

Gretchen Rubin in her blog had mentioned a drink she makes that is a “nursery treat”.  From what I remember she fills a cup about 1/3 of the way with milk and the rest with hot water, then she adds a little sweetener and about a teaspoon of vanilla.  It’s wonderful and smells heavenly.

I love this drink and, since I’m lactose intolerant, I’ve been experimenting with using other types of “milk”.  For instance, lactose intolerant people may react less violently to Goat’s Milk, so I tried that.  Wonderful!

But I’m still happiest milk free.  I don’t drink or eat soy anything because soy is POISON and I’m not wild about rice or almond milk.  Rice milk lacks body.  Almond milk has body but the almond flavor is too strong.

But so far, my very favorite way to have this is as follows:

• Fill coffee cup 1/3 of the way with light coconut milk (I use Trader Joe’s)
• Then fill the cup with hot water and stir.
• Add Blue Agave Sweetener to taste (also Trader Joe’s), a capful of Pure Tahitian Vanilla Extract (again, Trader Joe’s) and 1 tbsp of coconut oil.

This is a richer tasting drink with more body and it contains no “milk” at all.  It doesn’t taste super coconutty - it just tastes GOOD.  It doesn’t smell as strongly of vanilla as the drink made with actual milk, but it still smells good - just milder.  I think all that’s happening is the coconut milk has enough of it’s own smell that it competes with the vanilla.

There are health benefits to drinking coconut milk just as there are to taking coconut oil.  Nearly 50% of the fatty acid in natural coconut oil is lauric acid, which converts to the fatty acid monolaurin in the body. Lauric acid has adverse effects on a variety of microorganisms including bacteria, yeast, fungi, and enveloped viruses. It destroys the lipid membrane of such enveloped viruses as HIV, measles, Herpes simplex virus (HSV-1), influenza and cytomegalovirus (CMV). Its usefulness in treating AIDS is currently under investigation. It is a main component of human breast milk and helps protect children from illness during infancy.  Capric acid, which comprises another 7% of coconut oil fat content, also stimulates anti-microbial activity.

This drink tastes so good and it’s such a comfort to me that I make it at least a couple of times a day AND I drink it all gone.  I almost never drink all of it when I make it with animal milk.  I’ll even drink it after it’s gone cold!

If it sounds good to you, give it a try and let me know how you like it.  I feel utterly good drinking it and I can’t explain why.  I’d be interested to know if you experience the same blissful feeling.

I was going through my feed subscriptions and was reading this article from Copyblogger.  It’s a typically good article on online marketing called The 3 Secrets to Massive Online Marketing Success from Copyblogger by Sonia Simone. I can hear you saying, “OKay, so what does an article about online marketing have to do with the subject of this blog?”

Innocuously buried in her paragraphs about the fact we must take action on the good online marketing advice we read in order for said advice to aid us in achieving success, the following quote gleamed before my eyes like moonlight on the ocean.  I’ve lined-through the part that doesn’t pertain.

“Most customers for “business opportunity” products value the dream more than they do the result.  They want to get out of the cubicle, out of their crummy apartment, out of credit card debt. They might even want it desperately. But they don’t take action.”

What I like about this quote is that she could be talking about any dream and any advice - not just that of online marketing.  We’ve all heard the snarky comments about the effectiveness of self-help books and the people who read them.  I disagree with the bulk of those snarky comments and not just because I’m a person who reads and writes self-help books.  I don’t think there’s anything wrong with most people who read self-help books and I outlined in a previous article why the majority of people are not able to enact the positive changes inspired by self help books.  Mindfulness is usually the missing ingredient.  A lack of mindfulness is not a personal flaw or shortcoming, but simply a missing ingredient.  It’s within our power to add it into the mix of our endeavor.

There are books that tell us how to be mindful, but it remains the hardest thing to do because the noise in our heads is so loud and our days so full that we operate on auto-pilot most of the time.  We have our own in-flight movie playing 24/7 and because it’s all re-runs of old programming, we don’t even monitor what’s in there anymore.  Add self-talk to the mix and the din is so loud we spend our evenings watching television or playing video games so we can get out of our own heads and avoid all the stuff that’s rolling around in there.

Part of this is not your fault.  It is to the benefit of those that truly run this world for you to believe there is nothing you can do about getting what you want.  The social conditioning has taught us for generations that one can’t do the impossible and no one wins when fighting city hall (or the law or whatever bureaucracy one feels inclined to fight).  There is a reason they don’t teach intention and mindfulness in 3rd grade classes all across America.  If you felt effectual, you’d be out in the world doing things instead of sitting home at night being guided by the all-knowing blue-light of the television.

But now that you’re awake to it - now that you know - you cannot allow inaction to rule your days and nights.  Inertia kills more than dreams.  Inaction is most often a passive decision, but our lives bear the fruit of all decisions - whether made actively or passively.  Now that your eyes are open, it is incumbent upon you to take action - to move a little bit in the direction of your dreams every day.  Small steps add up.

Was it Frank Sinatra that famously said… Do be do be do… ? See, there are more do’s than be’s.  The doing is the preparing of the way.  Just as you must get prepare the way for dinner and payment when you order a pizza, you must also prepare the way for your other goals in life.  Yes, even in Law of Attraction.  Yes, we must align ourselves with our desires rather than the lack of them, but we must also prepare the way.

If you’re doing to download software, you must have adequate space on your hard drive.  You must know where you’ll save it.  Even a free download requires that we prepare the way.  The rest of life is no different.

Prepare the way, my darlings.  Prepare the way.

“Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster. Your life will never be the same again.” — Og Mandino, The Greatest Miracle in the World

Wow, isn’t that incredible?  How do you think your life would change if you treated everyone as if they’d be dead by midnight?  Would you hug more?  Laugh more?  Schtup like there’s no tomorrow?  Would you be more giving of the words that matter, the words that could change another’s life?

I think I would look at others with softer, less critical eyes.  And when people bothered me with silliness or drama, I’d say to myself, “just like me this person is stuck and can’t find their way out of the dark”.  I’m not stuck now, but I remember the last time I was.  I remember when I couldn’t keep the past separate from the present.  So I’d be mindful of those days and send these people what worked for me.

I’d more generous with my words, telling people things about themselves that other people often don’t for fear of seeming weird.  I do that often anyway, but I’d be especially careful to do it with those I love the most. Often, it’s easier for me to give stuff like that away to people I don’t know, but much more difficult with the people I dearly love.  I don’t know why this is so, but my whole family is kind of like that.  We are all so vulnerable around each other.  I would try to give people the words they were starving for, whatever that may be for them.

I’d definitely hug more.  I’d hug the really crabby looking people because I don’t think they get touched enough.  I think many really disagreeable people have a hard time asking for love and they are so crusty on the outside because they are starving on the inside.  I wouldn’t want anyone to die starving.

I get feelings about people to where I can mention something very personal to them that wouldn’t make sense to anyone else standing nearby.  Like once I saw a lady putting her groceries away alone in the Safeway parking lot and I had the overwhelming urge to approach her and say, “He loves you.  He just doesn’t know how to show you.”  She cried when I told her.  I don’t even know totally what it meant, but she did.  So I would tell people those things without worrying about looking like a weirdo.

But yeah… softening my eyes would probably be the most significant thing I did for others.  What would be most important for you to do if everyone you saw today wasn’t going to live past midnight?

What would you do-oo-oo?

Okay, let’s take this a step further… How would you treat people if YOU were going to be dead by midnight? How would you treat yourself if you had only those scant few hours?  How would it affect how you treated others?

Man, I think sex would definitely be in there somewhere, but probably not with whom people would think.

I’d definitely hug more and kiss, kiss, kiss.

I’d tell each person what I thought they needed to know to get through life.

I’d forgive myself for wrongs I’d done and mistakes I’d made.

I’d have a great heart-to-heart with my 15 year old self.

I’d moisturize.  Yeah, you heard me.  Sounds silly, but it’s one of those things I really don’t give myself on a day-to-day basis.  If I wasn’t going to be around past midnight, I’d want to show some self appreciation in a thanks-for-the-memories sort of way.

So what would YOU do?  What would be most important to you?  Would you take some time to thank yourself or show some self appreciation for all you’ve done and been?

I hear a lot of commentary from other people about my stretched lobes because many people, particularly those that are older, don’t understand them.  If I mention I’m thinking about a nasal piercing, some people really try to talk me out of it or they make comments about what they are assuming my motivations might be.  I’d like to talk today about my own personal motivations because perhaps it will help someone understand someone they know who is into body modification.  I don’t speak for everyone and my reasons may not be like the reasons of anyone you know, but perhaps they’ll lend some understanding as to why someone might want to do this.

If I get my nose pierced (and I’ve wanted it done for 6 or 8 years now, ever since I went to this ob-gyn in Gilroy, CA named Dr Jumnah Thanapathy and saw her beautiful, but diamond-studded nasal piercing), it would be for the same reason that I stretched my lobes – because I think it’s beautiful. It doesn’t have anything to do with expressing anything to anyone and it doesn’t even matter to me if anyone else thinks it’s beautiful. It’s something I’ve wanted for myself. If I could get stuff done that only showed up when I looked in the mirror, you’d be amazed at the piercings I’d get lol.

Wouldn’t that be cool? If you could have stuff done that only showed up in your mirror? Like piercings or makeup or whatever. Maybe nothing was really on your face and you presented a plain ol’ face to the public, but in your mirror, you were this exotic creature lol. That would be groovy and I’d totally sign up for that service.

I wouldn’t be getting the piercing for attention or to make any kind of statement. When I was 12 and wanted my ears pierced, I just wanted to be like my friends and get to wear the pretty earrings that seemed so special and grown up. When I got a second piercing in each ear when I was 23 or so, I got it done because that look was the current trend and I liked the way it looked on my friends. When I got a 3rd piercing in each ear, it was so I could experiment with some jewelry ideas I had. When I stretched my lobes, it was because I’d seen it on other women I respected and admired and wanted it for myself. I loved the way it looked and at first thought that “someone like me” couldn’t pull off having stretched piercings, but then I saw it on another jewelry maker (Sica Roman of Namaste Metalworks) that I admired very much and she didn’t look tacky at all – she was still classy. So that’s what I gave myself for my 45^th birthday - all the jewelry I needed to stretch up to 2g (1/4″ or 6mm). It came with the bonus of designing cool earrings for that kind of piercing.

We can’t control what other people think about the “expressions” we make with our physical appearance. Whether we pierce or not pierce, tattoo or not tattoo, stretch piercings or not, makeup or no makeup – even the kinds of clothing we decide to wear - we are still making choices about our physical appearance that other people can use to make snap judgments about us without knowing us at all. Even if we never modify or embellish ourselves in any way, other people will still read the “statement” that makes and use this information to define us in any way they see fit.  Virtually anything we could do, someone will love and someone will hate and still others will feel indifferent about – so the bottom line is that it doesn’t matter. We need to do whatever appeals to us and makes us happy and excited to be that person in the mirror.

I’m well past the age where I do anything because I want to be cool or whatever other external reasons people have for doing things - and when I was that age, I was very busy being a responsible full-time local government employee raising a child on my own. Nowadays when I do something, it’s for me and not one other soul on earth. It’s because it’s something I admire and I would like to try the look on for myself and experience being the kind of person who does that before I run out of time in this life. If I get it done and I don’t like it, I can stop holding the hole open with jewelry and just let it close up – no harm, no foul.

As for the nasal piercing, I want the smallest blue sapphire I can find, which would be 1mm, to bring out the blue of my eyes. My son, JoS, is always trying to talk me into getting a nose ring because he thinks that’s cooler and I’ve had to explain to him that it isn’t about doing what’s cooler. It’s about pleasing myself. A nose ring doesn’t fit into that picture for me - at least not right now.

We go through life, we mix with other people, many from other cultures, and we see things we admire – things we think are beautiful and exotic – and sometimes we may get to thinking we might like to try a little of that for ourselves. Maybe we want to capture that certain something we felt. For me, the nasal piercing, and even my stretched lobes, is like an inner journey to another country or time or culture and I came back with souvenirs. I’ve always seen myself as a brave pioneer, tramping through the jungle with just my machete, being and doing things I never imagined I’d do. I’m not putting the machete down till it’s time to go.

I remember sitting in front of the mirror when I was 15 and wondering what I would look like and what I would be doing when I was 25, 35, 45, 55, etc. That was 30 years ago, but in a lot of ways it’s like I’m still sitting there hoping for a glimpse of my future self in the mirror and dreaming of the tales I’ll tell my 15 year old self of my adventures one day. The world I knew then was so small compared to the world I know now and there are possibilities I never even dreamed of back then. Even if I get my nose pierced, my 15 year old self is proud and looking on in awe at all she has become because she never imagined some of the places she’d go or the things she’d be and do. At the end of the line, she won’t have any regrets and I won’t either. She’s still blown away that I’m too fat for my pants right now lol.

I’m on the right - about 16 yrs old.

So for those that have asked me about my motivations and sent me information on the dangers of body modification (and those that will ask and send in the future), thanks for the info and the concern. Really.  I’ve done lots of research too. I don’t go blindly into anything. I’m happy that you care enough about me to say something when you think I might be headed down the wrong path, but if I do decide to get the nasal piercing, it will be after many years of thought and desire and for personal reasons that are very meaningful to me.  It will be a personal symbol of an inner journey that I have taken. You can worry if you want to, but you don’t have to.

I was reading an article by Mike Adams and was nodding my head in agreement until I got to about the last 1/3 or so of it where the article seemed to degrade into name calling and insults toward the segment of the population I like to refer to as “those still asleep”.  He was talking about people who still eat processed food, take prescription drugs, eat fast food, and watch television.

It’s negative and degrades the self when we feel we need to denigrate those we consider to be less than ourselves.  Those people still asleep are you as much as they are me.  We are all one.  Those other faces are just facets of our own face.  To denigrate them is to denigrate ourselves, which is no healthier a place than the divide-and-conquer of organized religion.

I try to have a world view of life.  I endeavor to be accepting of people and hope they’ll come to me from “where they are” rather than waiting until they are at a place from which they feel more acceptable. (I can just hear my beautiful friend, Zia, crowing that I’m not as generous to myself as I am to my clients.  I get it, girlie - it ties in to my post about myself at my other blog.  l love you :D)  I cultivate the view that I am no better than anyone and there is no one better than me.

Those still asleep are not better or worse - they are merely different.  They are at their own place in time, at their own stage in development, and they have a role to play in this life - whether we like that role for them or not.  Perhaps, in taking the path on which they are, they are learning and experiencing what they came here to learn.  It’s not for us to decide whether it’s appropriate for them.  It’s not for us to push our morality onto other people.

Yes, it’s scary that we must share the running of the world with those still asleep, but one must realize the world is also inhabited by those still asleep.  They have a right to vote for what they want, even if it’s to their detriment.  However, I do wish there were more choices for those of us who consider ourselves awake.

Rumi said,

“Those who don’t feel this love pulling them like a river, those who don’t drink dawn like a cup of springwater or take in sunset like a supper, those who don’t want to change, let them sleep.”

So, Mr. Adams, instead of disparaging them by calling them idiots and saying other insulting things, why not instead be something to aspire to?  You should be out there making “awake” look good rather than shaming us all by making it look petty and small.

Have you ever had an experience with an authority who thought they were better than you?  Do you think a person can be an “authority” on a topic without having an attitude of superiority?

I was remembering something that happened to me a few months ago.  I felt like an emotional hostage in someone else’s drama.  Have you ever felt like that?

Left to my own devices, I tend to be drama-less to the point of other people thinking I’m boring or that I don’t care.  I go out of my way to avoid other people’s drama.  Sometimes it almost feels like I’m immune to the drama of other people because it’s been so long since I’ve twisted on someone else’s hook.  Every once in awhile, though, something happens that reminds me I’m not immune.

What happens?

Without even realizing it, I get sucked into someone else’s drama!  It doesn’t happen often, but it can still sneak up on me sometimes.  This time, I didn’t wake up to it until I caught myself wondering over and over what I did for this person to disrespect my attention and act mad at me.

One of the things that smacked me right between the eyes, when I realized this, was that I’d forgotten a cardinal rule from The Four Agreements which is, “No one does anything because of you.”  How’d I forget that one?  Huh?  I say it all the time.  I’m mindful of it most of the time.  But not this time.  I was accepting the implied blame the person put on me by acting mad at me.

A problem I have when this kind of thing happens is that I don’t want to let go of it.  I don’t want to just let go of it because the situation hurts my feelings and makes me angry.  I don’t want to let go when it’s still so raw.  Somewhere inside of me, I don’t want it not to bug me.  It’s that defiant streak I have.

I catch myself in this negativity and try to roll myself over into good thoughts and then I tell myself angrily, “No!  I don’t want to just give up my feelings!”  The grown up in me answers and says, “But those feelings are making you feel bad and wrecking your days and nights.”  But letting go feels like letting another person run right over me.  Sometimes I’m just not ready.

I was reading at Kate Nowak’s wonderful site and saw this sentence.  It so reminded me of this very problem.

“May you always remember to turn loose of every pain.”

The more I thought about it, the harder it hit me.  Even though it’s basically the same thing as letting go, I could accept this particular expression of it.  I didn’t want to let go, but I did want to get away from the pain of my hurt feelings.  I wanted to take my power back and I wanted to stop twisting on this person’s hook.  I don’t like being manipulated.  I don’t like it when people know they’re hurting other people (what I mean when I say they have people twisting on their hook) and that they could calm the hurt with a word, but they choose to punish the people involved or let them suffer.  It’s a kind of emotional torture that the person who started the drama enjoys inflicting on people.  Then when they feel better, they spontaneously go, “All better!  Love me!  Pay attention to me now.”  I resent the hell out of this.

So during times like this, I don’t want to just “let go” because it’s such bullshit, but I had to admit I wouldn’t want the pain of my hurt feelings and of twisting on this person’s hook.  So maybe I couldn’t “let go”, but I could be willing to “turn loose of every pain.”  It has a different feel and it doesn’t sound at all like getting walked on by someone else.  It doesn’t sound like giving up or giving in.  It sounds like something that will make me feel better and, during those times, I want to feel better.

Isn’t that silly?  It’s just semantics, really.  But sometimes our brains don’t want to let go of something.   It sticks in our craw and we just can’t abide.  Sometimes it’s too raw or too “still happening” and we get that bone in our mouth and we just can’t drop it.  But look around.  Look around for an acceptable alternative like “letting loose of every pain”.  While the two phrases mean practically the same thing, and I know this, the feel of them is totally different - one I’m willing to do and one I’m not.

“When we consciously decide that we will not label life — that whatever is happening is neither good nor bad, but simply is — then any and every situation immediately loses its power to harm.” –Kate Nowak, Better To Bless

I realized too that I had labeled the happening of this person’s drama as a bad event in my life and thus it was hurting me.  My thoughts went something like this… “This person is disrespecting my attention and acting mad at me and that’s bad, that’s something to feel bad about - it means something terrible.  It means I’m not as loved/liked/respected/worthy/etc. as I thought I was.  This person is withholding love and affection from me and what if they don’t give it back?  That would very bad.  Maybe I can’t live without this person’s love/approval/attention.”  Labeling again.  Blah, blah, blah.  I bore myself.

Well, this person’s drama is not about me, even if they were to point their fingers at me and say it was.  Because why?  “Because nothing anyone does is because of you.”  This also means it’s not a reflection of me either.  It means it’s their drama and their problem.  I don’t have to have an attachment to their drama just because they are disrespecting my attention and acting mad at me.  I don’t have to be threatened by their withholding of love and affection.  I have a choice, which I always knew, but wasn’t thinking about while I was twisting on their hook.  I was too busy suffering.

If I don’t see the person’s dramatic event as good or bad, but instead see it as simply the way it is right now, then it doesn’t have the power to hurt me anymore.  It takes the teeth right out of that tiger, doesn’t it?  The person is still doing whatever they’re doing, but I’m not on the hook.  I’m not twisting.  I’m watching impassively from the sidelines (and I don’t even have to watch if I don’t want to).  The picture doesn’t look any nicer than it did an hour ago, but I’m not attached to the picture anymore.  It’s just a picture.  I have my own life, my own problems and challenges.

“May you always be willing to see the blessing even in those times when it is hidden well.” –Kate Nowak, Better To Bless

And so… to round this off, is the knowledge that there is a blessing in every situation, no matter how horrible.  Now, don’t get all excited and ready to argue.  I’m not saying you have to love every situation or enjoy it or even be happy in it.  I’m saying there’s a blessing in there somewhere.

As an example, let’s say I was married and my husband died, leaving me with two kids to raise alone and $384,000 worth of debt totaling $2,600 in monthly payments when I only had a $9/hr. job.  Okay, well, that sucks and saying otherwise would be a lie, but maybe the blessings in the situation are: that I find out that me and my children are an unbeatable family unit and we’re closer than ever, I learn how beloved I am by my husband’s family and am awed when they step up to help, I learn about the generosity of other people when even strangers have donated in a fund to rescue my financial life, that the situation pushes me to create an online business I’d only thought about before that pays all of my monthly debt payment, that I can be successfully independent, etc.  That’s a lot of good stuff that I’d never see if I only focused on the suckiness of the situation.

Even during the hardest times - most especially during the hardest times - we learn incredible and wonderful things about ourselves and other people.  We learn about generosity, caring, the depth of self, the wellsprings of love and hope, personal courage, and so much more.  Many of these things are only things we learn in times of crisis and we may feel we could have happily lived the rest of our lives without knowing them, but it doesn’t diminish the gift of knowing.  It doesn’t take away from the fact that somehow, someway this particular gift was necessary to our development so that we may understand or appreciate some future happening.  Catastrophic events are doorways we pass through (or feel like we’re pushed through) and we are altogether something different when we come out the other side.

Hard times are indeed challenging, but the greatest challenge of all is finding the blessing.  The next time someone holds you in an emotional hostage situation:

• Give up your judgment about the person and the situation.
• Look for the blessing - it’s in there somewhere.
• Remember that no one does anything because of you.
• Bless the person, bless the situation, and bless yourself.

You can also try saying to yourself, “May [your name here] and [the other party's name here] be reconciled!”  This works like a charm for me.  Another thing to try is compassion.  Let go of your anger for a moment and try to see through this situation to what the person really needs or what you would need if you were the one holding people hostage.  In your mind, surround that person with love, see their vulnerability, and send them what would make YOU feel better if the situation were reversed.

Another thing to consider, especially if the person is an emotional vampire and does this a lot, is avoidance.  Make less time for this person and only respond to positive comments.  Sometimes that’s all we can do if we don’t want to get sucked into another person’s habitual drama.  We can’t control other people, but we can take responsibility for our part in the drama.  By backing off and showing respect for ourselves, we teach the other person what it takes to spend time with us.  If we are very consistent, they may get the message eventually and learn that in order to spend time with us, they need to check their drama at the door.

Whether you saw yourself as the hostage holder or the “victim” in this article, I send you love and whatever stuff you need to feel peaceful inside.  Many blessings!