How To Feel Free
This week’s Wednesdays With Wayne invites you to explore some irritants you have carried all these years, those stories you’ve hung onto, and the wrongs that you know deep down, can never be made right.
Today, you get to look at how to break free of all of that.
Welcome to a new vitality.
A few days ago, I did a FB Live Video that centered around second chances. In the video, I asked a few questions:
- Have you ever felt like you needed a second chance?
- Does someone or some business or some product you use deserve a second chance from you?
- Ultimately, what are your criteria for giving a second chance?
These are the building blocks to THE Step that will set you on the path to living with greater freedom.
When you’ve felt wronged, your reaction will go in a couple of predictable directions: You either lash out, retaliating for the violation, or you withdraw, awaiting an apology. On either path, you have made a judgement about the other person.
You might even be holding onto that judgment and the harmful wrong to this day.
Yet when you judge to condemn, it is really you who continue to put energy into the situation. The event that caused the judgmental reaction may have long since passed. Let’s say you had a family member that put you down. Somehow, whatever comments they made in conversation sounded like judgement and condescension. You felt demeaned. You didn’t say anything about it at the time. Perhaps you couldn’t out of fear. And now, five, ten, or twenty years later, you still remember or re-live the personal pain of the event.
What would happen if you recognized two things:
- The other person must have been in a lot of pain in order to have acted this way (even if they always act this way, just think of the life they must be living).
- YOU did the best you could in the circumstances. The you of yesterday (or many years ago) didn’t have the perspective or resources that you have today.
Honor both of those things –
They reflect your history and bring you to today, your personal NOW.
And this, my friends, is where THE STEP to freedom happens.
It’s forgiveness…
It’s time to forgive yourself for not knowing everything you know now.
It’s time to forgive yourself for not speaking up in the ways that you’ve replayed the conversation in your head over the years.
It’s time to forgive yourself for being afraid.
You are allowed all of those things. AND you get to recognize that the you of today would handle the situation of yesterday very differently.
And if, for some reason, you are still in that painful relationship where the abusive messaging or actions have continued, then it’s necessary to take action to stop that. You need to get out of that relationship and/or you need to directly interrupt the pattern of engagement.
If it’s a scenario that you’ve been carrying, you need to ask yourself how many times over the years the other person has re-lived that one incident. The answer, you know, is approximately zero. For them it wasn’t even a “thing.” For you, it was a painful blow that you’re still not over. You’re waiting for the apology that won’t come because they don’t even remember the conversation.
It’s time. Forgive yourself for not having the “right” answer at the time and give yourself the opportunity to create the relationship you want. Let go of the energy you’ve been putting into resentment for something that the other person doesn’t even recognize happened. Freedom, then, is yours.
It’s time.
See you here next week. Until then, keep making your magic™!
~ Dr P ~
LAST CHANCE to get in on the www.StuckAtTheTop.com breakthrough retreat.
You will come away with great clarity about your future and the steps you’ll take to make it a reality. You’ll gain support from our small group, and you’ll get follow up as you take courageous steps and grow your influence at home and in the world.
Click here to enroll today. Last chance: www.StuckAtTheTop.com