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A patient said that to me.

She said it, and for some reason I heard it for the first time.

The statement is a reduction of a truth that can be hard to accept for many of us.

I am not exempt from that truth and neither are you.

And the truth is…

Unless you make a change, nothing will change for you or around you.

You are attracting everything in your life that your current habits, thoughts, and actions are displaying what you want.

Your mate is a major reflection of what you think you deserve, and if you have not healed from past traumas, you may be reliving the same toxic relationship pattern at this very moment.

We seek what is comfortable and not necessarily what we need because what we need requires us to acknowledge the parts of us that are broken, vulnerable, and sore.

Acknowledging those things will change us.

Change can cause temporary pain.

But what’s more painful?

Some relationship cycles that stem from trauma can leave you feeling like you keep finding disappointing men (or women), but the reality is there is something in you, that remains in need of healing if you continuously attracting people who fail you.

When we have pain that goes unacknowledged what happens is we need constant external acknowledgement to feel a sense of worth.

And so we seek those who give us attention rather than seeking those that pour into us and add value to our life in a meaningful way.

The problem is that the acknowledgment we really need has to do with something that happened in our past that we have yet to process, radically accept, and heal from.

If you want to see the external things in your life change, it has to be you who takes a look at your patterns and start inquiring about the part you play and how you got there.

The other people will never change for you, and you will not change for them because you shouldn’t change for anyone but you.

You.

You are the one person you should deeply reflect on, accept responsibility for, and heal for.

Every guilt. Every Nightmare. Everything that happened that you call a failure.

You will have to acknowledge and release it all and begin a new narrative centered from a whole place.

The changes most of us seek come as a result of healing. We call it a goal when we want to change, but change is simply what happens when you awaken to everything you are.

When you heal from a narrative, flaws and all, accept the ‘why’ behind it all, and move on, change is the direct result of that work.

Yes, you have to change how you understand and acknowledge what has happened in your life for anything else to change, and it may well be uncomfortable, scary, and worth it.

You will see different.

Your tastes buds will change.

Your body will transform.

You will not be the same.

You won’t care about judgement.

The list will grow and surprise you and fill you wonder about what else you have been missing out on.

You will be totally within yourself for the very first time.

You will live in the present and amazing things will happen and be drawn into your life.

But just like pruning a tree, you have to cut away some of the façade in order to reveal how well molded you are.

And sometimes pruning is painful.

Do it anyway.

You deserve what is on the other side of doing the work so the work must be done.

#strikeamatch

“I am sorry but…”

“I am sorry you feel like…”

“I am sorry it won’t happen again”

An apology needs to be so much more than one sentence.

An apology is only valid if the behavior changes after the apology.

And an apology definitely should not deflect blame back to you or change the argument. That isn’t an apology and that isn’t acknowledgment.

“I am sorry” needs to be so much more because an apology is nothing without context. In the apology should be them giving you the WHY it happened, HOW it could happen and WHAT will happen so that it DOESN’T happen again and THEN they need to remind YOU why THEY know you are valuable to THEM. If THEY cannot do THAT it isn’t good enough.

But first, let’s build a bit of justification and logical reasoning for why you deserve an apology.

If you are in the position of having to justify to someone why you deserve an apology, it should sound something direct like this: “I am at a place in life where I have taken ownership over my path, past and emotional intelligence. I am a high value person to be with/around and I deserve that same energy in return. That same energy will look like someone who changes behavior rather than gives a 5-7 word apology, I need more.”

To summarize: don’t apologize if you cannot change what you are sorry for.

A relationship with you should be your partners largest investment of time, money, and energy so an “I am sorry” conversation shouldn’t feel like work for you.

Second. let’s acknowledge that even having to ask more from the apology a person is trying to give you is a red flag that their awareness is not fully on you.

Before you accept less…

Think about all the work you have done to get where you are and all the work you have done with yourself so that you can bring your best self into a relationship.

With all this in mind, understand that when you become someone who operates at an awareness level that has you on a mission, empty apologies will mean nothing to you.

Sometimes apologies are valid, behavior changes and it won’t happen again. I am not saying that it isn’t possible. But what I am also saying is there are people who can see your value without having to disappoint until they “get it”.

#strikeamatch

One of the biggest mistakes you can make is assuming other people think like you.

They don’t.

You are going to internalize, understand, and take action much differently from someone else.

You ARE going to struggle to understand when someone does something you find illogical or wrong.

Here is the truth: we are really not wired to adapt quickly, but we are wired to adapt.

Here is how adaption works:

First, you have to be so interested in this other persons opinions and thoughts that you will be willing to adapt how you currently communicate.

We make a mistake sometimes when think we will ever adapt our thinking to better understand a person we don’t really care about.

If you do not really care about this other person completely, you will not adapt your process for processing and communicating for them.

Second, you have to be willing to turn off your old habits, maladaptive coping behaviors, and defensiveness when someone triggers you, in order to understand and acknowledge this other person’s request of you without taking it personally.

Third, and the most important. If this person is asking you to work on the way you think about something, you have to determine they are as high value of an individual as you are.

Standards matter, and you can’t compromise and change for people who are not at your awareness level or they will bring you down.

Don’t settle by spending your time on people that will not pour back into you in a positive way.

Pour into people who understand your value completely. They are the ones worth adapting for.

#strikeamatch

We like the feeling of newness because there is a feeling of hope that accompanies it.

Everything that might come feels like an opportunity.

There is a fresh air feeling to the beginning or a plan.

We hold onto the moments that feel hopeful and new to balance out the memories we have of times where things didn’t go the way we wanted.

I just think we should also stay hopeful when the road gets tough too.

Maybe if we can learn to do that we will resort to pointing the finger less.

Let’s not just be accountable for the celebratory moments but also for the ones that test our resolve.

In this new feeling moment let’s also promise to see our course through with courage and honor if the road gets tough.

Let’s work and carry ourselves on the back of our virtues so that we don’t need to look for new, rather, we need only to rely on our resilience and our determination.

If someone expresses they are in pain, and you can’t rationalize or see where the pain is coming from, is it still considered real pain?

This question is in the same vein as asking if a tree falls with no one around. Did it make a sound?

This kind of questioning requires you to consider that neither of these scenarios are about you.

It requires a line of thinking that is focused on someone else as the experiencer.

Sometimes we are just witnesses and there isn’t going to be a relatable experience we can pull from to sympathize. 

Our brains are always occupied with memory and experience so the acknowledgement of another person’s pain, perceived or not, fails to be a priority to our me centered thought processes. 

When my Grandma was diagnosed with dementia the Doctor advised she may complain of perceived pain. The disease influences perception in some cases and he assured us nothing was wrong physically with her so we shouldn’t worry about her being in real pain. 

He clearly did not put value on perceived pain.

Her kind of pain did not count as real. 

He was not the experiencer and he had no way to verify the experience.

His words gave him away without his actually having to say: If you can’t feel or verify the pain yourself- it isn’t real.

He had no idea how to treat the kind of pain he couldn’t understand the source of.

So he dismissed it.

Empathy was not a part of what he offered.

We found a different doctor who understood that to alleviate any pain, first you have to acknowledge it and she has not indicated any pain since. 

Nothing was different about the new doctor except for his perspective and that is the only difference that was needed. 

America is acting like the first doctor in this scenario. 

Different people are experiencing different kinds of pain and discomfort and as Americans we are struggling with how to acknowledge everyone’s experience of pain and transition forward.

There are too many flavors of pain and fear in the mix to sort it all out in a non emotional way and so, everyone is crying out and no one is feeling acknowledged.

Unacknowledged pain results in some people reacting frantically and drastically.

Just because others of us have not felt the need to act out does not mean that others are not experiencing a kind of pain that influences their actions. 

All of the actions taken by protesters is a cry for acknowledgement of a particular plight that isn’t felt by the majority.

People who protest and people who riot both want other people to feel their pain by experiencing their actions. 

The actions may be different but the cause is coming from the same instinct of wanting to be acknowledged. 

The answer we need to come up with needs to be centered around fully recognizing and acknowledging the way other groups are feeling. 

First we will need to listen and regain the tone of the conversation.

We have to start with a mental mission of understanding the why behind the actions.

We have to speak in a way that disarms hot emotions and transitions us all back on a path that we all feel comfortable to walk on together towards a common goal.

You can’t do that in a society where no one is listening and acknowledging the other. 

It is time to stop talking to each other about our issues and acknowledge someone else’s concerns. 

Zig Ziglar said if you help enough other people get what they want you will by default get what you want because you have become part of their solution. 

Acknowledgement is always part of the solution.

The people are not desensitized.

The people are traumatized, terrorized and tortured daily by what they are fed by the media.

The people are a tinderbox of explosive and dangerous emotion because of the media.

We have been poisoned by the vitriol that the media in this county creates every time they fictionalize what the majority of people think and feel.

Shame on anyone who weaponizes the emotions of people who already feel helpless to know what is actually going on in the world.

When you victimize people who already feel like victims you do nothing to bring them back up.

Unity, strength, logic and faith is the only way up and out of bad situations.

The media contributes nothing positive in our society.

The media is decisive and it divides us.

It is more important now than it has ever been to use sound judgement when deciding what to believe.

Do not be bullied by the media into believing that you have no power to think for yourself.

Do not let the media make you fear your neighbors.

Do not let the media be the reason you become a judgmental person.

Expose yourself to positive perspectives.

Seek out the facts.

Data almost always tells a story that is far less terrifying than what the media would have you believe.