On Allowing People To Steal Our Joy

Just the other day my close friend, Sunshine, told me a story from back in her day. She says, after a hard days shift work was over, she was looking forward to getting home and kicking up her feet. She headed to the parking lot, car keys in hand, whistling a happy tune. To her surprise, her parking spot was empty.

“Huh?” She thought. “Maybe I didn’t drive in. Did I forget I got dropped off?”

Then she remembered she hadn’t been dropped off. She specifically remembered driving in and parking her car. So she did the obvious thing which was look behind the building at the alternate parking lot. No car!

“Strange,” she thought. This time around she called her hubby to ascertain he didn’t drop her off in the morning. He hadn’t and No, he reassured her, she wasn’t going crazy.

The car had been stolen, in broad day light, as she toiled.

At first I laughed really hard at that story. Please don’t judge me, I have very funny friends. It was her delivery that had me howling.

Prior to this story we had been discussing happiness and maintaining joy.

Tragically funny as this story may be, it got me to thinking. Sunshine couldn’t help that her car was stolen. The entire event was beyond her control.

However, often I have heard people making statements such as:

“He makes me so mad!”

“She gets on my everlasting nerve.”

“He doesn’t make me happy.”

When you subject these statements to scrutiny, really, does anyone make anyone do anything? I mean, who’s holding a gun to your head telling you to get mad, get mad right this instant or else..... Nobody, that’s who. Why?  Because it’s a choice we make. People don’t make us mad, we make ourselves mad.

There’s an old African proverb that goes: It’s not what you call me that matters, it’s what I answer to.

We let people steal our joy all the time. Sometimes I observe humans, as we slowly deplete ourselves of our joy. This, by “allowing” people to strip us blind of our characteristic, inherent,  in-built  joy and happiness.

If you’re having,(valley girl accent here), The Best Day Ever!, and some grouchy somebody walks up to you intending to muddy your day, DO NOT LET THEM. You have that power….to continue having the best day ever. No one can make you change your disposition but you.

You, You, You! It is you.

Just shake your head, wag your finger at the offender, smile and say, “I know what you’re trying to do-o-o-o. Sorry, but that doesn’t work on me.”
And if you temporarily lose your joy to someone or something, you can always say, "Hey, gimme that back, it's mine. It's my joy, it belongs to me."

Let them leave with the sulky mood they came in with. It is theirs, after all…..

Don't Let That Be Your Joy In There!!

The Role of Intention

Before we begin any conversation, we form an intention. Intention is preverbal. Therefore, no matter the words we utter, that intention will be projected to our anticipated audience. Dr. Wayne Dyer says it best: Intention doesn’t err. The words almost don’t matter.

Rrrrright!

That’s why you can stand face to face with an individual and prior to engaging verbally, each of you has an idea what brand of exchange is about to transpire. Take for instance a loving, hateful, playful, rude, friendly etc. exchange. We intrinsically know.

We’re all born with intention. We don’t speak for 1-1 ½ years after we’re born. Our Mothers innately know what we need when we cry or whine or make a certain sound or facial expression. And just like that, they provide us what we reuire – food, water, nappy change etc. Sort of an, “I intend to let you know that I have a poopy diaper, or that am huuuungryyyy.” You catch my drift, yes?

If our intention is that convincing when we are babies, imagine how much power we have encased as adults. Your intention doesn’t err. I’m sure you’ve witnessed it when you’ve asked someone their opinion on how you look in a certain outfit. If they say the opposite of what they really wanted to say, you can “feel” it. It’s their intention that you feel. You automatically know, regardless of their little white lie, what they really meant to say. Mhm! 

Say what you mean...

Mean what you say!

Think back to a conversation you’ve had with someone. A “surface” kind of conversation; where the words being uttered did not match the energy in the air. And you’re shaking your head thinking, “I hear the words coming out of your mouth, but…um... Something’s not quite right here.” Intention, there it is.

Or how you can be travelling in a foreign country and mistakenly turn into the “wrong” street. You sense the nefariousness of the characters you’re looking at, your hackles are raised…and they may never utter a word. Or maybe they do, and it’s incomprehensible, you don’t speak the language. Somehow, you know they mean you harm. Their intention mixes in with your instinct and you are outta there.

I was in Barcelona and espied a gentleman toting a Nike plastic bag. I needed sneakers badly. My fancy sneakers with a heel were not cutting it. So, I asked the guy where I could find the Nike shop. He pointed me in the general direction and I was happily on my way. Halfway there, I needed reassurance. I didn’t want to walk too far in the wrong direction. I asked some hunk of a passerby if I was headed in the right direction. As soon as he said “No, you’re not,” my quills started rising. It was the way he said it, too fast for starters. My brow furrowed, my nose flared and my lower lip curled outward. Cocking my head, I asked if he was sure and he said he was. Furthermore, he could take me directly to the shop but we would have to turn into another street, sideways of where I was headed. Eh..What? In spite of his complements to me and his suave talk, I sensed he meant me harm. I quickly got rid of him. For one my Spanish is limited and he spoke zero English.

Intention. Is it possible that we can turn around and use it for good?  Create harmony in our lives. I’ve tried it at work, in grocery stores, when am travelling. I use a yoga greeting that goes approximately like this: The peace in me salutes the peace in you. I don’t say it aloud. I just sort of “transfer” it from my spirit to the other persons as they walk towards me, or as I approach them. I’ve noticed an overwhelming feeling of peace in me and a sort of “recognition” from the other person. Our conversation following this is easy, effortless, almost guided. It’s a good exchange, each time.  

What you think about, you bring about.

Use your words to encourage people

        https://www.joelosteen.com/Broadcast/Pages/ThisWeeksMessage.aspx 

Joel Osteen's message #532: Tell People What They Can Become{paraphrased}

 

 Seeds Of Greatness:

You don’t know the impact your words have on another. You may think they are insignificant but to the person receiving the message, the words could be life altering. There are people who are grown up and still deal with the crippling words told to them when they were children. Complement your children. Call out your kids’ Seeds of Greatness.

Dream Bigger:

Go much further than your parents. Do not be crippled by your resources or lack of. You can touch your generation in ways no-one has ever seen. Compared to our parents, we have unlimited resources.

Look Beyond Fault:

People rise to the level of our expectations. Your words can make or break someone. Complement, complement, complement! Everyone has great talents. See the potential in each other and point it out. Don’t call people out by what you think they are. Call them what they could be, what they can become. Look beyond fault. People are not “bad”. Their seeds of greatness have been pushed down. All most people need is just one word of encouragement. Don’t write people off. Everybody needs somebody to believe in them. Most people will not reach their potential without someone believing in them and taking the time to tell them so.

You Have Incredible Potential:

Use your words to encourage people not to tear down. The next thing you know people around you are rising to their full potential. You too, are rising to your full potential. And the seeds of greatness that you sow will reap a great harvest.

Always remember, you are surrounded by God’s favor!

Don't Be So Hard on Yourself

·        Lord, restore me to that perfection from which I emanated. Grant unto us at all times, no matter what is happening to us, the certainty that You are working all things together for good.

·        This is a call to arms! A call to be gentle, to be forgiving, to be generous with yourself. The next time you look into the mirror, try to let go of the story line that says you're too fat or too sallow, too ashy or too old, your eyes are too small or your nose too big; just look into the mirror and see your face. When the criticism drops away, what you will see then is just you, without judgment, and that is the first step toward transforming your experience of the world. ~Valerie Monroe

·        “Each body has its art."    — Gwendolyn Brooks 

·        To love yourself as you are is a miracle, and to seek yourself is to have found yourself, for now. And now is all we have, and love is who we are." — Anne Lamott

·        Stop worrying about your looks. Instead of obsessing over your own appearance, try noticing—and mentioning—beautiful things about everyone else. This will make people adore you, which, last time I checked, is what most of us are hoping to achieve by worrying about our looks in the first place. ~Martha Beck

·        We don't need great reasons to be happy; we're after any reasons at all.
In our pudginess, we must learn to value ourselves as sentient beings, not physical objects. We must learn humility and compassion, and activate courage just to show up at a high school reunion. Cellulite is a powerful spiritual teacher. Perfect! 

·        Feeling emotionally out of control is like having a fender bender: It teaches us to navigate cautiously, pull back before we hurt ourselves or others, and find the calmest aspect of the psyche so we are safer "drivers" in our relationships. What's more perfect?
Taking a jolly, forgiving approach to our failures puts us in precisely the place of kindness and acceptance where positive change is easiest. ~ Martha Beck 

·        It matters what people think of me, I said. A friend replied: “Wow, you have some painful fantasies about other people's fantasies about you." Yup, my anguish came from my hypothesis that other people's hypothetical hypotheses about me mattered. Ridiculous! Right now, imagine what you'd do if it absolutely didn't matter what people thought of you. Got it? Good. Never go back. ~Martha Beck 

·        The pretty girls get all the good stuff. Oh, God. So not true. I unlearned this after years of coaching beautiful clients. Yes, these lovelies get preferential treatment in most life scenarios, but there's a catch: While everyone's looking at them, virtually no one sees them. Almost every gorgeous client had a husband who'd married her breasts and jawline without ever noticing her soul. ~Martha Beck

·        The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances.~ Martha Washington.

·        In the midst of negativity you should be able to realize "At this moment I am creating suffering for myself.~ Eckhart Tolle. 

·        The first form of happiness is sound health. One should partake of nutritious balanced food to keep the body healthy. It's essential to maintain the health of the mind and body simultaneously. When there is harmony between the mind, heart and resolution then nothing is impossible.~ Rig Veda

·        "Having it all" doesn't mean having everything, all at once, all the time. "Having it all" means taking yourself seriously. It means knowing yourself well enough to find your purpose in life. It means knowing what needs to change when you sense that you've lost that purpose. It means having the faith to believe that change is possible and having the courage to make those changes. It means drawing strength from the relationships in your life, and, if there's no strength to be drawn, knowing when to cut those relationships out of your life. It means mastering the skill of using life to fill you up. THAT IS ALL YOU CAN DO, AND IT IS EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO DO. ~ Marcus Buckingham.

·        The world "out there" won't change until the world "in here" does.~ Deepak Chopra

·        Every setback contains its own reward. Self criticism never helps. It just makes you wretched and annoying. Relentless optimism does feel odd. But it also feels good, calm, kind. ~ Martha Beck.

·        Examine what you're telling yourself at times when you feel particularly anxious or stressed. Pay special attention to your use of the words "should," "must," "have to," "always," "never,", "all," or "none." ~The Anxiety & Phobia Workbook

·        Instead of fretting about getting everything done, why not simply accept that being alive means having things to do? Then drop into full engagement with whatever you're doing, and let the worry go. ~Martha Beck 

·        Stop worrying about staining, breaking, scratching etc. your property/ “stuff”. If you'd rather live surrounded by pristine objects than by the traces of happy memories, stay focused on tangible things. Otherwise, stop fixating on stuff you can touch and start caring about stuff that touches you. ~Martha Beck

·        Stop worrying about the past. The word worry comes from the Old English wyrgan, meaning "to strangle." When we fixate on something in the past, we grab our own histories by the throat, cutting off the flow of physical and emotional energy that keeps us fully alive. To start the flow again, look forward. Embracing the lesson always loosens the stranglehold of worry. ~Martha Beck

·        Stop worrying about what others think of you. Today, pretend you're a Martian gathering data on humans. As you notice what they do and say without focusing on your fear of their opinions, you'll feel less self-conscious, and they'll feel the nonjudgmental attention they've always wanted from you. Win-win. ~Martha Beck

·        Some changes look negative on the surface but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge.”
― Eckhart Tolle 

·        “The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

·        Begin this morning to believe that what you have hoped for is going to happen, that good things are on their way. You may have all kinds of problems, and in the natural order, it doesn’t look as though anything is turning around. But don’t be discouraged. Look into that invisible world, and through your eyes of faith, see that situation turning around. See your joy and peace being restored. ~ Joel Osteen

·        "It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all." — J.K. Rowling

·        There are very good reasons not to get bent out of shape over a lack of resolve. First, as you've probably heard, our brains are malleable. Repeated self-criticism can literally shape them into patterns that sustain negativity, while persistent self-acceptance can reinforce more felicitous neurological pathways. Second, whenever we go to war with any issue in our lives, the thing we're fighting has a way of fighting back. ~Martha Beck 

·        The "What Went Wrong?" Success
Hundreds of psychological studies have been done on this kind of achievement, and they all end up with the same findings: Much of success is dependent not on talent but on learning from your mistakes. ~Leigh Newman

·        Randy Pausch, the Carnegie Mellon professor who gave the "Last Lecture" in 2007 while dying of pancreatic cancer, talked about how "brick walls are not there to keep us out; the brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. The brick walls are there to stop the people who don't want it badly enough."

·        Another closely related study evaluated the grit of the Scripps National Spelling Bee competitors. Scientists were able to tell how far a speller would advance based only on their level of grit, mostly because gritty kids study harder. Which brings up an encouraging point for all adults: Grit is learned behavior. To increase it—and use it to propel you forward—all have to do to is try, try, try, try, try, try again. The tenacity you learn every time you fail will get you up and over that brick wall. ~ Leigh Newman

       Celebrate your life.  Be your own cheering squad!

Friendship Break?

After losing a friend of 22+ years, I started to think deeply about friendships. How important they are. How friends are the family you never had, the family you get to handpick. But, along with that, comes the break ups. These are gut wrenching, yet inevitable. It is possible to grow in different directions. Maybe my friend and I will meet up later in life, or not. I’m good with either universe aligned result.

Friendship is about reciprocity. There should be a give and take dynamic. You give more than you take. All relationships, in a nutshell, are about service. You should be of service to the other and them to you.

Service means respect and forfeiture of self-will.



I do know this for sure, I miss her and our 4 hour long conversations; the belly aching laughter; and of course the tears (both happy and sad.)

Following this I went on a friendship quote hunt. This is what I found to help ease my pain. It may help someone who also is going through a friendship break up. Toxic friend or not.

·        A simple friend thinks the friendship is over when you have an argument. A real friend knows that it's not a friendship until after you've had a fight. Unknown

·        Friendships require constant renewal. Friendships on auto pilot will waste away. Real friends do conversation and waste time together. A friend should listen without judgment or trying to fix you. They should have patience and compassion. Friendships require time. No time, you say? You MUST MAKE time. People always make time for that which they value! ~ 89.3FM The Light House

·        What's beautiful about choice, is that it gives meaning to everything we do. It's the only thing that enables us to grow from who we are today to who we want to be tomorrow. ~Sheena Iyengar

·        Run away from toxic people. Instead, surround yourself with others who are positive, who support you and want you to succeed. ~Tererai Trent

·        Communication isn't about how much you say but whether each person grasps the other's perspective. ~Darby Saxbe

·        We are the creators of our own experience--remembering this, and living our lives from this perspective, empowers us. ~Mike Robbins

                                                                       

·        Lasting relationships really depend on the ways in which the world changes us as individuals. ~ Cheryl Richardson

·        There is no true security in sticking only to what you are used to, because change is inevitable. ~Unknown

·        The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little. ~Thomas Merton

·        Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning. ~Albert Einstein

·        Unlearn this: Loss is terrible. Ten years ago I still feared loss enough to abandon myself in order to keep things stable. I'd smile when I was sad, pretend to like people who appalled me. What I now know is that losses aren't cataclysmic if they teach the heart and soul their natural cycle of breaking and healing. A real tragedy? That's the loss of the heart and soul themselves. If you've abandoned yourself in the effort to keep anyone or anything else, unlearn that pattern. Live your truth, losses be damned. Just like that, your heart and soul will return home. ~Martha Beck

·        Friends are made by many acts and lost by only one. ~Proverb quotes

·        It's beautiful when two strangers become best friends, it's terribly depressing when two best friends become strangers. ~Unknown

     






In closing, worthwhile relationships must on no account be suppressed, left undeveloped, underneath the encumbrance of these toxic misses: misunderstanding misinterpretation, misapprehension, mistakes, miscalculation….