Empowering powerlessness

I lived for many years in victimhood.  It hurt living that way and I knew no way out for a very long time.  I felt utterly and completely powerless in my fear and I was convinced there was not a thing I could do to change it so I hoped someone else would be able to change it all for me.  I searched far and wide and spent thousands of dollars over time in my search for that special someone or some thing that could make it all okay.  Some person, therapy or drug that would fix it all-fix me.  Little did I know that nobody but me could change things for me.  I had essentially empowered myself to be powerless, to stay stuck, to remain trapped and inert-frozen.  There was a huge payoff too - I could lay the blame squarely on everyone and everything else.  Everyone else was hopeless, or 'out to get me', or didn't understand, or didn't care, or didn't know, or didn't see, or let me down, or was stupid, I even thought God and the whole universe was playing some awful trick on me.  I never for a moment considered that I could make any changes of any kind.  I truly believed I had no choice but to suffer and search, so convinced was I that everyone else needed to wake up and feel my pain, see my pain, end my pain.

Eventually I ran out of hope.  I gave up all together.  Even that was a feeble attempt to control what I thought was uncontrollable (life), an empowerment to render myself completely powerless (death).

Fortunately I failed (many times).

As I began healing and discovering how to surrender my ego and accept responsibility for my own fear, my own behaviours and decisions, miracles started happening all around me.  People I had judged as stupid suddenly became wise sages who had simply been misunderstood by me; I became aware of my own short comings and the pain that awareness evoked; my eyes, mind and heart began to open up; I began to recognise a long-standing rage inside me that excited me and scared me at the same time.  I decided I would choose how I used the power of that anger and learned healthy ways to express it that did not involve 'dumping' it on anyone else.  Of course there were times when it spilled out unchecked but I felt so mortified when others heard my fury that I quickly resolved to work harder to ensure I caused no further harm.  

I've learned that if I need to be heard or validated, it's me I need that from and journaling it works better than involving another person coz in my journal, I can dig to find the original root of my fear and release it before re-empowering with a new ending to the story and nurturing myself with joy.  I do not need someone else to validate me and what I feel.

I'm learning that expressing my anger at/to someone else is dis empowering myself coz I'm then handing my power to them and when I do that, I am not only relinquishing my own power to them, I am also burdening them with my responsibility to myself which dis empowers them too.

I am learning that I can now choose how I feel and what I think (most of the time).  That patience was the quality I most needed to learn and practice all along.

I am learning that I have a choice over whether I get sick or not and whether or not I heal.

I'm learning that every moment is an opportunity to learn and every person can help me learn something I need to learn about me.

I'm learning that I'm not perfect and I don't want to be.

I'm learning that when I blame I am disempowering myself and others.

I'm learning that when I rescue, I am controlling others and denying their right to choose for themselves and their right to learn from natural consequences.

I'm learning that mindfulness is my goal.

I'm learning to accept things and people as they are and I'm learning to let go of the need to change anything.

I'm learning to not empower powerlessness anymore.

I'm learning to be just me.

xxjxx

I'm a Fellow!! Not quite

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10152463059557179&id=591537178

I was informed today that I have earned the qualification of Fellow of Australian Instite of Management (FAIM).  After feeling numb, I felt surprise, shock, fear, elation, gratitude and then some more numbness.  Having 3 decades of experience and study recognised at such a high level is such validation.  Right now I feel proud of my efforts and extremely grateful to all the people who believed in me and mentored me, especially those who currently do.  Wow!  I'm a Fellow!

UPDATE

I learned the following week I am an ASSOCIATE Fellow. A little disappointing after such excitement but still a great acknowledgement too. I'm now also accepted into the AIM CPMgr program, making me a Certified Professional Manager.

Victim no more

In 2004 I reached a point that almost finished me.  I had no roof over my head and was living in a hatchback wherever I could park it; no money (Centrelink wouldn't give me a cent; no contact with my beloved kids at all; no friends or family; no phone; no help of any kind and in a strange place one thousand kilometres fro everything I'd ever known. I had major, complex health and mental health issues.  I was depressed, suicidal and vagrant, $40,000 in debt with not 1 cent to my name and absolutely no idea how to change it.  I was a goner and I believed it!!

Then angels appeared.

Some of those angels really pissed me off and even life seemed to me to be out to get me in every way.  I felt even worse but more angels appeared and slowly (excruciatingly slowly) I started to 'come back' from the edge of destruction.  I fought harder than ever and made my healing my only priority. I ate, breathed and slept healing 24 hours a day.   It was SO hard!! I saw 2 counsellors EVERY day for 2 years while I 'died' and re-created myself from the ground up.  I pulled down and smashed apart the old, toxic, comfortable beliefs and values that were all I'd ever known and became like a totally defenceless infant again with no defences or security outside the centre that gave me the counselling.  It was agonising, terrifying and agonisingly slow.  It was brutally hard and yet, I had lost EVERYTHING already, my home, my kids, my family, my job, my 5 figure income, my health, my dignity and my self.  I had lost all hope and it seemed the Bly way from there was up coz I couldn't get any lower.

During that first 2 years, I cried, screamed, wailed, moaned, complained, cried some more and I learned.  I started to find hope again and I eventually started to dare to believe I might even be happy one day (something I had lost all hope of ever being).  I started to dream of a future for myself for the first time ever and then.....

I suddenly felt terrified to heal.

I imagined what the future might look like if I really did become happy.  These angels in my life were not friends, they were workers.  I knew they cared but once I was on my way, I would need to let them and all their support go and that terrified me beyond imagining.  I actually wasn't sure right then if I wanted to heal or not.

It took me about a year to decide and I was too ashamed to tell anyone so I did that bit alone, afraid and unsure.  There was actually a payoff for me in staying a victim and I had to choose what I wanted.  I really could not decide and it was harder still to admit it to myself. 

 I realised a few years later that I had been a victim for so long that being a victim felt 'safe' to me, safer than anything else ever had.  I did not know how to be anything but a victim for 35 years and I blamed everyone else on the planet because I had been taught to do that and been led to it by example.  With horror, I slowly came to see the me that others experienced and I was not even a shadow of the nice me that I thought I was. I was bitchy, hostile, judgmental, controlling, sarcastic, hurtful, bigoted, disassociative, discouraging, argumentative, obstinate and deceitful and I had no idea that I was like that at all.  I blamed all the people around me for my misery because as a victim, I felt completely and utterly powerless .  I took responsibility for everyone else's happiness but no responsibility for my own.  I wanted everyone else to 'make' me happy and I was angry at them because they wouldn't.  I feel sad for that old me and for the people I hurt.

Thankfully I did make the choice to heal, to take full responsibility for my own happiness and that is about the time I came to Heal For Life and started to truly believe that nobody can make me feel anything unless I give them the power to do so.  That life is not out to "get me" and that I can have all the love I want if I just start by giving it to myself and others without expecting anything in return.  Nobody owes me a single thing.  I've learned that not ALL counsellors are idiots like I had previously declared, many, many of them are fabulous and very helpful.  I learned that I had created my own misery because I had not let go of it years before.  I had carried it around like a badge and suffered in public expecting others to fix me, fix it all for me so I didn't have to change or do anything myself.

I don't know how people could bear to have me around the way I was and I'm so grateful they did and that I lost everything.  Because of that 'wrecking ball around the head' I have rebuilt myself cell by cell over the past 10 years and now I am the me that I love.  Life is different for me now because I put much different energy into life than I used to.  I have friends now and I've asked them to please not let me bitch or moan because that's not who I want to be - I want to own my own fear and heal without blaming others for what I'm telling myself about them.  I want to en-joy the miracle of life and be of service to others.  I know that there will never again be anything more painful to lose than what I already gave up back then so I can give up anything I choose to in future in order to keep my self.  I am the only thing that will always be with me in this life and the next and I matter to me.  Money and possessions will never make me happy and the only thing that I really have any control over (or want to control) is myself, my feelings and my perception.  I can choose how I want to feel, think and act and so can everyone else.  

I've learned so much and I have not been 'lucky' as some people have judged me to be.  I have worked really hard and now I am more aware of what I "put out" and what energy I am sending into the universe.  I choose love and any fear I meet now can just step aside and get out of my way coz I refuse to be a victim of my fear or of anything else ever, ever again.

xxjxx