The Most Satisfying Adult Sentence?
The most satisfying adult sentence?
“Yeah, I’m not going to do that.”
That sentiment has recently popped up online.
It packs a wallop of empowering truth.
Attention: all people pleasers!
Some deeper reasons why it empowers us?
We get to realize something’s important to us.
Many of us have learned a toxic lie: nothing is, or should be, important to us.
It often shows up in the messaging of whatever IS important to us, it is “wrong,” and we need to be ashamed of it.
It often shows up as we feel the pressure to be and to stay numb. Don’t feel… and certainly, don’t cry or be angry. Forbidden.
We may be surrounded by people, even loved ones, who are emotionally catatonic. They are zombies, just going through the motions. There is no joy, no passion, no wide spectrum of responses.
They are flat and dull, and, seemingly, unaffected by anything.
But are they?
For as much as we have been exposed to these individuals, and to the distorted, harmful lie that there is no emotion to be found occurring in them, they are emotionally affected, even if those emotions are underground, deeply buried, and denied.
Something, for good or evil, is important enough to them, to affect them. These effects can, unfortunately, come out as addictions, compulsions, disorders, and poor choices.
The things all these possibilities have in common, though?
A strong drive creates them and spurs them on.
But, if a person, even one so strongly and negatively affected by things like addiction, cannot even see that they are not immune from having something resonate as important to them, there is a toxic disconnect there.
They have not accepted the reality that something matters.
And they do not know, nor accept, that they can give themselves permission to allow that thing to have that level of importance in their lives.
That’s a sad reality; some people simply do not know something can genuinely be important to them.
And they don’t need to be afraid or ashamed of that.
“Yeah, I’m not going to do that.”
Some of us have received toxic messages that nothing should be important… ever.
Some of us have been told that life is pointless and hopeless. Therefore, “don’t get your hopes up.”
That’s where “Yeah, I’m not going to do that” can be our game changing tool.
What if we decided to allow ourselves the things that are important to us? What would that look like?
Our first challenge is to give ourselves permission to embrace that things can and will be important to us.
We get to learn what’s important to us.
After we secure this permission for ourselves about the important things, next comes the discovery process.
We get to learn.
And, for some of us, that’s a revolutionary concept.
Again, it can be a case of receiving wrong information. Some of us believe that new information is “bad,” even “sinful.” We feel guilty for learning any incoming information that doesn’t align with how we were raised or who we have spent most of our time with.
But what if that familiar information is wrong, abusive, and inaccurate?
And what if the new information we access and learn about is beneficial, joyful, and fulfilling to us?
What if the sheer fact that we are learning is a good thing, not a horrible thing?
So, continuing with the harmful, the ineffective, and the ill-fitting?
“Yeah, I’m not going to do that.”
We can choose to learn more, not less. We can choose to not be rigid. We can choose to do something differently if something in our life is not working.
We do get to learn possibilities of other choices.
And then…
We get to choose what’s important to us.
After learning about possibilities, then comes the choosing.
Not everything is for everyone.
Preference.
It is a powerful word and concept.
Have we been forbidden from our preferences?
Have we been forbidden from the knowledge that we can choose to pursue our preferences?
If, we answer “yes” to that, we have an opportunity to say something else now…
“Yeah, I’m not going to do that.”
We tap into what we like, what we want, what makes us happy. That can be an alien concept to many of us. We, who are accustomed to placing everyone and everything else ahead of us, are not familiar with putting ourselves first, let alone, inhabiting any space, whatsoever, on “the list.”
But empowerment comes when we practice doing just that. It can be in big ways, but it can also be in the smaller decisions as well.
Like…
What is my favorite food? How do I want to dress?
Saying “yes” to these things gradually builds our healthier sense of self. So, besides knowledge and application of that knowledge, we now move into a space where we feel better about ourselves…
We get to feel good about what’s important to us.
Whether it’s an ignorance or a negativity we believe about ourselves as we are faced with our likes and dislikes, we still need to adjust to a new way of being in life.
It’s okay to not be ashamed, nor afraid, of our preferences.
Too, often, we are told, in unnecessary and harmful ways, that we are bad or wrong for liking and choosing what we like.
Shames and fear are our default settings.
But, if we start saying, first, to ourselves, then, to others…
“Yeah, I’m not going to do that…”
…what will happen? What freedom? What happiness?
And yes, what pushback?
But we need to learn, apply, and teach this statement to ourselves, as well as to “everyone else.”
And not everyone will enjoy hearing that.
But that’s okay. We can still like what we like.
We don’t need to prove anything.
Satisfaction: What can we choose?
It can feel just as, if not more, satisfying to say “no” to something or someone.
Why is that?
There are multiple personal reasons.
One of them involves the reality that, when we say “no” to someone or something, we say “yes” to something else.
And what if that “something else” we say “yes” to is ourselves?
What does that look and feel like?
Many of us do not know, because we have little-to-no experience making that choice for ourselves… for whatever reason.
“Yeah, I’m not going to do that.”
This statement, therefore, can become a declaration of independence.
When our preferences, choices, likes, and pursuits are not predicated on someone else’s pressure, influence, expectation, pleasure, or needs, we can become more connected to ourselves.
And that, in the “say yes to ourselves” realm, can promote personal happiness, growth, success, and self-esteem.
We learn, and develop, and know, more fully, who we are.
“Yeah, I’m not going to do that.”
Let’s see what happens when we embrace that statement in our lives.
Copyright © 2024 by Sheryle Cruse
Go Ahead, Wild Thing, Feel Sorry For Yourself!
Self-Pity gets a bad rap, doesn’t it? We are discouraged and shamed for participating in it. We are made to feel guilty, self-indulgent, selfish, and wrong if we feel sorry for ourselves. This culture, in particular, emphasizes independence, grit, and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. If we don’t…or can’t, we are often viewed as weak and the embodiment of personal failure.
Pretty bleak, huh?
Cue D.H. Lawrence for still further feel-good edification…
"I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself."
Great, now we’re talking about death as the alternative to self-pity. Sounds like a winning approach.
I love D.H. Lawrence’s poem, “Self-Pity.” Like any good Type A, perfectionist people pleaser, I wanted to improve. I wanted to do better in life. And part of that plan involved attempting to adapt this poem to my life. Struggles, and I had a lot of them, could, somehow, be overcome if only I could subdue all expression of self-pity.
Sounds really doable, doesn’t it?
Yeah.
So, I tried to master the poem in this vehicle called my life. I wanted mastery. I wanted to be bulletproof. I wanted to be immune to hurt.
Also doable…and so realistic.
Terminal Uniqueness (I am the Only One Suffering):
"I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself…”
It’s only happening to me. No one else.
I saw that in the abuse I survived. I saw that in my eating disorder behaviors. I saw that as I went through my breast cancer paces. I am alone.
Only, as I silently said those words to myself, I didn’t fully realize, at the time, what I really meant was, “I am ashamed.” The shame of going through whatever I was going though hijacked the “aloneness” of my situation.
Where did the shame come from? Well, childhood conditioning played a significant role. But I became my own jailer from there.
I was ashamed, and perhaps, too myopic in it to see that that there have been countless others, throughout history, who have have similar experiences to mine. I was not the only one. And that triggered a special shame of “how dare I be miserable and feel sorry for myself” with that fact in place? It was kind of the equivalent of “Clear your plate. There are people in Africa starving.”
And the shame equivalent feels like it smacks that of “You should not be okay with yourself unless and until everyone else is okay and has all of their needs met FIRST!”
Big, big sigh exhaled here. Around and around I went.
And I wanted to be the poem’s “wild thing.” I wanted to be the strong creature, valiantly enduring even with a hurricane’s wind whipping in my face.
Doesn’t it sound romantic? Brave? Inspiring?
I could just muster up feeling like it was “windy” instead.
An “And” World:
Terminal uniqueness. Shame. Shame about the shame.
Come on. You’ve been there with that in your life. We are not immune from suffering these slings and arrows. And there’s the key word in that Shakespearean phrase, a little, itty-bitty word, in fact: “and.”
“And” covers any struggle or pain; “and” covers feeling sorry for ourselves.
You and I are unique human beings AND the life experiences we deal with and suffer through are not solely, entirely unique to us. Someone else, right now, is going, or has gone through what we are experiencing.
“I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.”
Ecclesiastes 9:11
Just because we have shared like human experiences does not disqualify our inherent preciousness and our ability to be strong or courageous. It is not a case of one or the other. It’s both. At the same time.
“And.”
So, go ahead, Wild Thing. Grant yourself permission to feel sorry for yourself in whatever challenging life circumstance you are facing. And, while you’re doing so, please remember you are strong; you are brave. This is tough stuff, whatever it is for you.
You are too valuable of a creature; honor that, even with the painful struggle. You are worth it.
Unhealthy Instead of Pity:
“…A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough…”
Ah, yes. It’s inevitable in this classic poem. We introduce the concept of death. And it only took the second line of the poem to get there. Fun.
Years ago, when I first encountered “Self-Pity” by D. H. Lawrence, I was struck by the stoicism of our little feathered friend. I romanticized it and I idealized it. I was also no stranger to “near death” as well. Everything from almost dying as an infant, to suicidal thoughts, to emaciation from anorexia. And this was WAAAAY before my breast cancer diagnosis.
And I had been repeatedly told- shamed- that what I was going through “wasn’t that bad.” Yeah, sure, I almost lost my life a few times, but, hey, it could have been so much worse. I made a mountain out of my circumstances when I should have taken a cue from “small bird” here to, instead, drop dead, frozen from my bow, and make that sucker a mole hill already!
What WAS my problem, anyway?
I had a severe case of turning to the unhealthy instead of the sorrowful pity of my reality. I chose to berate myself instead of love myself. I made the death of a frozen bird my answer to my pain and my life.
That’s a dangerous thing to do to any of us who are more on the results/achievement-oriented side of things. It’s dangerous because it removes all grace, all humanity, all wiggle room to make mistakes. Hell, in my case, I didn’t even want to be me? I wanted to be a bird, a frozen dead bird?
Something’s screwy with that notion.
Stay Thawed Out:
As much as it pained me to realize, going through all of my “near-death” situations, I was more valuable dead than alive. I give you an excerpt from Neil Gaiman’s “The Graveyard Book:”
“…‘They are for the most part, done with the world. You are not. You are alive… that means you have infinite potential. You can do anything, make anything, dream anything. If you can change the world, the world will change. Potential. Once you’re dead, it’s gone. Over. you’ve made what you’ve made, dreamed what you’ve dreamed, written your name. you may be buried here, you may even walk. But the potential is finished.’”
Go ahead, Wild Thing, keep your blood flowing, your heart beating. It is not time for you to go yet. Even if it feels like it is.
Part of us staying thawed out is being messy, upset, unkempt,but, nonetheless, we are still tweeting on a branch somewhere. Even if it’s a pathetic, near silent tweet, we have a voice and we have a life and, as long as we keep living, we have the opportunity to use it.
Use it, Wild Thing! Don’t die frozen.
Only Perfect is Acceptable:
“…without ever having felt sorry for itself."
Line three: perfectionistic expectation.
You can imagine how little old me ran amuck with this concept.
It’s an impossible standard to set, uphold, and accept.
“Suck it up.”
“No pain, no gain.”
“Pain is temporary. Pride is forever.”
“Go hard or go home.”
Ever encounter these phrases? They can often be found in high school locker rooms. I have seen my fair share of banners made by the Varsity cheerleaders.
Well, of course, I added Lawrence’s poem to that collection. But I did more that that. I convinced myself of the lie that EVERYONE ELSE was completely, thoroughly, and perfectly executing it, while advancing to such extraordinary results in their own lives. Success! EVERYONE ELSE was achieving it, repeatedly, daily, with the best attitude, and a pleasing smile on their faces. I was the only loser who was failing constantly, because I wasn’t tough, strong, cheerful, or disciplined enough to achieve those exact same results.
(Oh, and by the way, “those exact same results” were always an ever-moving target. And here was an extra fun fact: I was the major person doing most of that moving!)
Everyone’s Flailing and NONE of It is Perfect OR Pretty:
So, go ahead, Wild Thing. Flap those wingers and flail spectacularly!
Once again, there seems to be this unrealistic expectation and pressure placed upon us to not only do incredible feats perfectly, but also do them with the most wonderful smiling attititude that ever existed on Planet Earth.
Be that perfect little birdy.
I couldn’t do that. I could do ugly, embarrassing, ridiculous, pathetic, messy, undignified, and sorrowful, but I couldn’t swing perfect little birdy.
Perhaps, a good illustration of that reality was when I was violently bulimic, dumpster diving just outside of my college apartment. I was not stoic as I dumpster dove; I was desperate. I was in despair. I choked back tears as I rummaged for half-eaten pizza crusts.
“…without ever having felt sorry for itself."
Nope. I was despairing the entire time. I felt I was only a weak failure.
Years have gone by since that time. And I now see that I needed to be in that dark place and, yes, feel sorry for myself. It’s probably not a popular thing to say, but, had it not been for that big time “bottom” experience, there would be no book I wrote about it later on. There would be none of the life I experience now. It’s cliché, but life is often that. The lesson comes, many times, after you and I have disgraced ourselves, after we have been disgusting and filthy.
Perhaps there can be no true cleanup if you and I were never dirty in the first place.
We need to remember not to buy the lie that stoicism is constantly, perfectly achieved by the entire humanity, that it is the only way toward success, answers, happiness, love, and life’s meaning. It is not.
Sometimes, we find the answers, the help, the heart’s desires as we are the exact antithesis to “Self-Pity.” Fraility, vulnerability, and humility serve us much more than the hardened stiff upper lip. Don’t equate stoic with strong. Strength shows up looking like its exact opposite, more often than not.
You are already the Wild Thing. You have nothing to prove.
You are strongly weathering your life right now, feelings aside. We need only look to the pandemic to see how we all are enduring some harrowing events and issues. You and I are doing so, right now, while also, yes, often feeling sorry for ourselves. Don’t underestimate its power. We are, via the vehicle of this misery moving closer to who we are meant to be, and to the lives we are meant to live.
Wild Thing, be assured, that is a wild and incredible thing!
Copyright © 2024 by Sheryle Cruse
Go Ahead, Wild Thing, Feel Sorry For Yourself! | elephant journal
You are Salsa.
“Never forget that you are the salsa on the taco of life. I mean, it’s technically still a taco without you. But it’s flavorless and dry. Life without you is a sad taco.”
This online post started me thinking about what we add that’s of value to life.
What’s in a taco?
The staples…
Lettuce, tomato, shredded cheese, meat, or plant-based protein are some of those essential ingredients.
Similarly, life staples are…
Birth, death, loss, milestones, growth, mistakes, success, failure, laughter, tears, sadness, joy, and love. There are some things we will not get away from. They happen to us all.
And often, within that reality, we can be convinced that there is nothing additional.
We can only see the basic ingredients.
Nothing else.
What’s in salsa?
But there IS salsa.
Those staples often include tomato paste, lemon juice, garlic, salt, pepper, cilantro. Zesty things. Extraordinary ingredients besides the basics, like lettuce and tomato.
Likewise, when it comes to us, the extras can include things like unique spark, unique joy, unique personal meaning, unique victories, and unique self-discovery.
“Unique” is code for “zesty.”
These are as one-of-a-kind ingredients, as special and stand-out as snowflakes.
And they deserve to not be minimized, dismissed, or ignored.
To do so invites the following…
Flavorless and dry…
Boring. Lacking color. Uniformity. Tasteless. Unpleasant. Unappetizing.
In short, the sad taco.
How many of us have experienced grey, dull, lifeless moments?
How many of us believe these to be the only realities of our lives?
It’s incorrect, however.
We have a presence, a wonderful presence.
Sad taco: you’re the antidote.
Quirks. Silliness, imperfection. Spark. Personality. Humor. Creativity. Expression. Capacity for love.
We should never underestimate the power of who we are. What we bring. How special those qualities are.
Like that of salsa, we add flavor. We add interest.
Beauty. Fun. Love. Laughter.
That cannot, nor should not, be underestimated.
We put our unique stamp on it.
We make things yummier.
If you have never been told that, I’m telling you now.
Copyright © 2024 by Sheryle Cruse
Energy Matched
See if you can recognize yourself here.
You feel like you are in a one-way relationship. You are involved with someone who expects you to do most, if not all, of the interaction. You are expected to initiate communication, planning, and resourcing of the other person’s life.
You are the “go-to” person.
You are the emotional support, the therapist, and, in some way, the constant source of help.
Feel tired yet?
Somehow, in some way, for some reason, this person waits for you to come to them. All visits are one-way: you, going one-way, to them. All plans, and funding and facilitating of those plans are done by you, because “they” expect and wait on you to do it.
There is the expectation that any text, email, phone call, or personal visit, as well as any task or chore, will be your responsibility to initiate and carry out, regardless of what is happening in your life.
There is not only the expectation that you will do any of these mentioned things, but also the pressure of their dependence upon you to do them, or else…
Some version of worst-case scenario ensues.
Things like…
Death…
Eviction…
Endangering a vulnerable person or pet…
Legal ramifications, including prison…
You get the idea.
It’s up to you to protect, support, and rescue them. They, however, do not feel the same way concerning you. They don’t think about your needs, issues, and vulnerabilities, while you are consumed with theirs.
And this social media thought may never ever even seem to dawn on us…
“Nobody notices what I do until I stop doing it.”
Resonate with anyone?
Being loving, kind, moral, and healthy.
Living this way is a challenging master class.
And many of us, at best, are C-Minus students.
Let’s face it: being loving, kind, moral, and healthy all takes energy.
And we have a finite amount of that energy.
Yet, somehow, we believe we need to overextend that energy to others.
And the “do unto others” principle, seemingly, doesn’t let us off the hook easily, does it?
“Do to others as you would like them to do to you.”
Luke 6:31
So, how do we better steward our precious energy?
There is something to the concept of matching energy.
“Sowing and reaping,” for instance. Action and reaction.
Even “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” comes into play a bit.
Now before we go about plucking out everyone’s eyeballs, and knocking other people toothless, let’s just take in the possibility of more evenly, and accurately, matching the energy that comes at us. This isn’t about vengeance, “getting even,” or punishing someone. Rather, it’s about being a better steward with what, and who, gets our precious energy/attention.
We have focused so much on our end of “doing,” that we often forget our responsibility concerning “don’t.”
Some “don’t” possibilities to incorporate?
Don’t over-give.
Give unconditionally. Give lovingly.
“Give, ‘til it hurts.”
Giving can feel wonderful to our spirits. It can feel rewarding to show love, and to help someone in need.
However, it is often hijacked and exploited by others.
“They” just love the “freebies.”
Who doesn’t love free stuff, right?
However, some people and systems have no problem with only being on the receiving end, never the giving end.
They feel entitled to that setup.
“Give, ‘til it hurts.”
In the name of family. In the name of love. In the name of relationship. In the name of business. In the name of “teamwork.”
“Give,” translation, “over-give… and under-receive.”
Don’t self-abandon.
This “don’t” is next on deck.
Self-sacrifice is revered and applauded. It’s viewed as holy, noble, loving, kind, and “right.” To not over-give, through self-sacrifice, is to sin and neglect.
It is viewed as “wrong.” End of story.
But there’s a difference between self-sacrifice and self-abandonment.
The first, arguably, has an element of giving something of us that is precious, for someone or something else that needs it.
It is a part of ourselves, not the entirety of our being.
Self-abandonment, however, is more subtle and sinister. It can disguise itself as sacrificial in the noble sense of the word, but it demands we must give everything, even if it’s detrimental to us. We are expected to walk away from the innermost sacred and important parts of us: values, morals, and our true natures. We are expected to comply and abandon ourselves for the “greater good.”
Slippery slope, though.
How much, exactly, constitutes, and fulfills, us completely giving ourselves away for a worthy cause?
That is the place many of us wrestle with being “enough.” Giving enough. Loving enough. Doing enough.
We seem to be on this spectrum. Somehow, we determine that, unless we suffer, via sacrifice, which is really abandoning ourselves, unless we are in pain, we cannot have access to things like love, relationships, peace, safety, and a wide variety of assorted dreams and goals.
Maybe we’re masochists, but there usually is a realization that the thing we desperately want will cost us.
And sometimes, yes, it costs us everything about ourselves.
Yet we can rationalize it’s a fair trade.
Is it though?
Can you see the harmful setup coming?
Don’t put oneself in harm’s way.
It’s a hop, skip, and a jump from abandonment/sacrifice to harm here.
With “giving” being our central focus, out of love, fear, obligation, guilt, or perceived “necessity,” we will place ourselves between someone needing some kind of rescue, and the proverbial oncoming train, barreling down the track.
Usually, by this point, we have decided and accepted that this person will not return our giving actions. They are only in “take” mode.
Therefore, we also decide, to some degree, that there is no other solution than to put ourselves at risk: physically, emotionally, financially, spiritually, and personally.
This last one, personally, especially cuts deep. We can, move into a space, no matter how aware that we are doing just that, into relegating ourselves to “savior,” “martyr,” and “fixer.”
This is our lot in life. Does it sound ridiculous?
Well, check yourself.
Is there any part of your life that feels like you are martyred? Are you swooping in, saving someone’s day, in any way?
How “go-to” are you?
“Go-to” is a reality that happens in life, yes. Usually, at some point, each of us will encounter one instance in which we helped someone.
That, by itself, is not problematic.
However…
There’s a difference between the occasional versus the abusive dynamic.
“Crisis” should be a rare event in our lives, not just “another Tuesday.”
One time is an occurrence. Repeated instances are a pattern.
We need to examine, just exactly, how much repetition is going on here.
And then we need to ask ourselves about its unhealthy nature.
“How much unhealthy is tolerable?”
In unhealthy situations, we often find ourselves overextending our energy to make something bearable. Ideally, any kind of “unhealthy” should not be tolerated.
But life is not ideal; it is complicated, and we cannot always just leave a situation.
Therefore, adjusting how we expend energy becomes more important. To protect our peace, sense of self, and, yes, personal safety, we need to rethink our energetic responses to certain people.
If something is a pattern, a recurring dynamic, then we have every right to protect ourselves.
Remember “self,” not just “other.”
“Do to others as you would like them to do to you.”
Luke 6:31
What do you want done to you?
What are those things?
Help? Love? Support? Listening?
Feedback?
Connection?
Energy is contextualized and on a spectrum. We emit and we receive.
What does that look like?
Therefore, pulling back our energy can provide the truth of a situation or a relationship.
Don’t over-give.
Don’t self-abandon.
Don’t put oneself in harm’s way.
Withdraw energy from this one-way person.
What happens?
Do they change their behavior?
Do they seek you?
Do they express how important you are to them?
Do they withdraw further?
Do they blame or try to manipulate you?
Do they attack and criticize your decision to pull energy away from them?
Do they disappear from your life completely?
We, through the act of giving, know we are giving.
By now pulling back that precious energy we give, we can see their response, their action. Pulling back ourselves, then, can help to make visible how they view us, what they want from us.
Do they want us, or do they only want what we give to them?
Do they want a one-way, or a two-way street?
Do they want matched energy, or not?
Copyright © 2024 by Sheryle Cruse
