On Waking Up — Infinite Choice

Infi­nite Choice — blam­ing, hold­ing on to grudges, all keep us stuck. Let­ting go opens the door to choice

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Our minds are slip­pery things. We have the quite nec­es­sary abil­i­ty to link or chain events togeth­er — it’s how we know, for exam­ple, not step in front of a speed­ing bus, even though our only close call was with a speed­ing car.

The problem comes when we link together things that lead us in difficult directions.

Here are a few examples from long ago:

Case 1: A client expe­ri­enced a depres­sion. After some months, it lift­ed. She spent months walk­ing on tip­toes, lest she fall back in. She assumed that there was only one way to deal with depres­sion. Her assump­tion is that she can only sur­vive (she hopes) a depres­sion… the idea of explor­ing it for its lessons is scary. She though there was no choice oth­er than what she did the first time.

Case 2: A cou­ple with adult chil­dren (the “kids” were in their ear­ly 30s) were fight­ing over how to get them to behave dif­fer­ent­ly. Except that mom wants one thing, the dad anoth­er.
The kids had their own lives and did what they want.
This was not accept­able to either par­ent. They both told me, “They’ve nev­er lis­tened!”
They want­ed me to make the kids lis­ten — and the kids were not there.
When not being angry about the kids not lis­ten­ing, they yelled at each oth­er about who is right. They were caught in repeat­ing the past.

Case 3: A cou­ple had been mar­ried 12 years. They weren’t talk­ing much, nor doing much togeth­er. This, they told me, was because,
a) his dad died 2 years ear­li­er,
b) her mom died 1.5 years ear­li­er, and
c) she had surgery 6 months ago.
They live in the past, with regret.

I always asked what each client want­ed from ther­a­py. Invari­ably, I was told that the client want­ed to have a suc­cess­ful rela­tion­ship, career, or fam­i­ly — to be hap­py — to have the dra­ma stop.

If that’s what they want, how come they’re so successful at not getting what they say they want? How come it’s the same drama, again and again?

It’s like horses and blinders. You put blinders on, and all you can see is what you are looking at.

The odd thing is that “every­thing else” exists, and it’s all “right there.” All pos­si­bil­i­ties exist simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. It’s called choice. Just because you choose not to notice does not make choice go away. The only issues is this: change takes effort.

Our world is rapidly circling the drain, and it’s because people are happy being victims and blaming others

Many moons ago, I wrote a free book­let called, Build­ing a Respon­si­ble Rela­tion­ship. In it I uses the con­cept of the dirty clothes draw­er. I repeat­ed this anal­o­gy in Half Asleep in the Bud­dha Hall

The analogy: This dirty clothes drawer is where the stuck stuff is kept. It’s filled with failures, accusations, and tons of stuff that has never worked.

For many peo­ple, this is an impor­tant draw­er When bored, they sit alone in their dim­ly lit rooms, and fon­dle their dirty clothes. Each in turn is removed and exam­ined. Each trig­gers a sto­ry of “poor me, hard done by.”

Each sto­ry, each dra­ma, is mag­ni­fied — each is made grander — more sig­nif­i­cant — while adding a lay­er of “I have no choice!”

Entire lives are wast­ed, as they sit in dim rooms, fondling smelly clothes.

Leaving the dirty clothes pile takes effort

The per­son states she wants a good rela­tion­ship. How­ev­er, she yells, the good rela­tion­ship is not going to hap­pen until her part­ner has paid in full for every sin, real or imag­ined, that she per­ceives her part­ner has com­mit­ted. Or, things are not going to change until the sys­tem (he Uni­ver­si­ty, the job, the kids, the depres­sion)) changes.

Nothing is clean, fresh, new.

Each thing that hap­pens is added to the con­tents of the dirty clothes draw­er, whether it has any­thing to do with the con­tents or not. 

And just as peo­ple are capa­ble of com­ing up with the odd­est com­bi­na­tions of clothes from their clos­ets, the com­bi­na­tions of “present event” and past “dirty clothes” are breath­tak­ing. As you’d expect, giv­en that the draw­er is filled with 10-year-old funky memories.

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I push people to be honest

I’d much rather hear, “I’ve been tuck­ing this stuff away for years, and hell will freeze over before I let any­one off the hook for any of it!”

Or, “This hurts like hell, but I’m going to choose a dif­fer­ent behav­iour, start­ing right now!

That’s the one that makes the dif­fer­ence, when cou­pled with fol­low through.

All of this requires real­ly let­ting go of what does­n’t work. Let­ting every­one else off the hook, and choos­ing how to live is not a one time for all thing. You can’t go back to what did­n’t work and expect dif­fer­ent results. You can’t give up blam­ing, except for this time.

Choosing differently means every time

Some peo­ple tell me this is too sim­ple. That the con­tents of the draw­er need exam­i­na­tion — there needs to be blame assigned, and they want me to help.

Let me say this plain­ly: I’m not in the least bit inter­est­ed in why some­thing is in the draw­er. I’m not inter­est­ed in what excuse you use for keep­ing it there. I don’t need a long expla­na­tion for why you dig it out and try to throw it at someone.

The answer, to me, is sim­ple. Stop blam­ing oth­ers (or your­self) for your mis­ery. Let go of every­thing you insult your­self over.

Dur­ing my 32 years of pri­vate prac­tice, I watched some (a few…) peo­ple hear me spell out their game, and then imme­di­ate­ly and sim­ply choose to stop doing what­ev­er they were doing, with­out mak­ing a decades long prob­lem out of it. 

As an amus­ing side note, I coun­selled sev­er­al ther­a­pists over the years, and none of them pulled this off. OK for their clients, but…

Every­one can get over him­self or her­self, right now. No excep­tions. The only ques­tion is, will you?

To say, “Well, maybe oth­er peo­ple can, but I can’t,” is to say, “I won’t, because then I’d have to give up being spe­cial. I’ve earned this pain, and I’m going to keep it.” 

That, emphat­i­cal­ly, is not the same as “I can’t.”

Which begs my ques­tion, “If you want a con­tent­ed life, why do you keep doing the very things that screw it up?” Why not be hon­est and say, as I not­ed above, “I’ve been tuck­ing this crap away for years, and hell will freeze over before I let oth­ers off the hook for any of it!”

Or, you could get over yourself!

With hon­esty, there is choice. I’m done mak­ing lousy choic­es. I’m going to explore (both alone and with a ther­a­pist) oth­er ways of being and doing, let go of blam­ing, and find a more ele­gant way of being.”

This, I believe, is the far bet­ter choice.

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