When someone is vicious toward you they are giving you a glimpse of the pain they carry in themselves. Viciousness is suffering. The way you engage someone's pain either reinforces their pain or helps to release it. Be gentle when you can. If you are strong and safe within yourself, then be patient and teach your virtues by your calm example. Try to be less reactive. Try to be very kind to yourself and others. Start with one deviation from your negative and reactive habits. Instead of assuming, which creates pain and suffering for everyone, be open, curious and expect cooperation. Learn to be light. Have you ever tried to catch a tiny feather floating in the air? It's very hard to do. When you try to grab a tiny floating feather, it just flies right around your hand! The more violently you grasp, the faster the wind carries it away. In your heart and disposition, be as light as a feather and when they reach for you — you will blow right by their grip; you will effortlessly float to safety. Be as light as that feather. Have a smile of calm in your heart. Be peaceful. When you walk in peace you will literally see attackers shattering themselves against your inner-calm. They will defeat themselves.
Conflict is a natural part of existence. Life is a struggle for survival for every organism at every level. Everyone must "fight" for something at times, although some struggle more than others, and often unnecessarily. Force will sometimes get you through a challenge, but usually not without hurting and depleting yourself in the process. Brute physical, intellectual and emotional conflict often causes a great deal of collateral damage. There are gentler and more graceful ways to interface with natural conflict. As you spiritually mature you will begin to look at conflict in less self-centered ways. You will realize that engagement is an option. There is an enlightened way to flow with, in, and through conflict. Learn to resist but do not be un-moveable in your resistance. Resist like the water. Flow. You don't have to win. You don't have to be right. You don't always have to teach the corrective lesson. Sometimes you can teach the lesson of patience and non-engagement. Be wise. Sometimes it is best to stand back from conflict and allow other elements in someone's life to do the hard work for you. Time is a masterful teacher. Silence is a masterful teacher. When we want to talk, we can instead listen, and let our attentiveness to another's need to speak, be our silent statement. But whatever you do, always do it in love and not anger, and in compassion, not contempt.
Maybe you never considered yourself a bully, a batterer or an abuser before, but maybe you are — to yourself. The worst bullies you will ever encounter in your life are your own thoughts. Being overly critical of yourself is like having a relentless, inescapable bully who follows you everywhere you go and abuses you. The worst part about this type of bully is that you can't get rid of them, because you can't get rid of yourself. But you can reform yourself and you can evolve yourself. You have to reach out to your inner-abuser and make peace. You can't live your life as your own worst enemy! Go to a mirror, look yourself in the eye and make peace with yourself. Commit this day to putting your self-hatred and unreasonable doubts and fears behind you, once and for all. You are your own essential ally. Get right with yourself. When that inner-voice of doubt whispers against you, have a firm but sweet conversation with yourself, and exert your faith. Healing is a process and could take some time, but begin convincing yourself of your worthiness — no more abuse! Deep in your heart, you know you are good. Your heart knows you are deserving. Your heart knows you are worthy. Your heart knows you are capable. Every word you speak is a prayer, or meditation of reinforcement which creates permanence. Speak kindly to and of yourself. When the voices of doubt start whispering, turn-up the volume of faith and listen to your heart.
There is nothing worse than a treacherous, backstabbing double-talker running you down. It is hard to believe it when we have been treated with such disloyalty. Betrayal by those we trust can send us boiling into a panic of anxiety and pain. Just imagine a close friend or relative talking behind your back and whispering about your failures; prognosticating your doom and undermining your best efforts to lift yourself up. This bully is well informed and knows all of your past mistakes, and knows how to use those mistakes against you — a two-faced bully with a tongue like a switch-blade knife. Even worse, what do you do when the traitor is a very close relative; so closely related, that in fact, the betrayer — is you? That's right, you; the voice in your head that's whispering, "you aren't good enough; you don't deserve it and you can't!" Maybe the self-inflicted battering is a more subtle, "what will people think?" Or perhaps it's a whisper of procrastination to just, "try later, there's always tomorrow." Then there is the foulest pummeling; a total beat-down of, "You're fat. You're stupid. You're a loser. I hate myself! I wish I were dead!"
The most dangerous negativity comes from ourselves in the form of doubts, fears and unreasonable self-criticisms. Excessive self-criticism is a bad habit and is extraordinarily self-destructive. Don't be your own worst enemy! Imagine a bully who points out all the things you have done in your past, such as mistakes you've made and even future things that you "allegedly" cannot do or accomplish. This type of unreasonable self-criticism represents a form of self-hatred and fear.
A real problem you may encounter when you are trying to change your life often comes from old friends and family who only know and accept the "older you" and not the person you are striving to become. A lot of people are not really evolving themselves, and some of these people don't like it when they see someone from their social peer group advancing, and maybe even doing better than them. So, these people will sometimes be quick to point out something negative you may have done in the past, or they may bring up a negative behavior when you "slip-up" while you are working on yourself. Sometimes these people can even encourage the old negative behavior you are trying to eliminate, because they enjoy that part of you, or they may even secretly, or sub-consciously, want to see you fail. You want to avoid all messages that reinforce your old patterns, whether those reinforcements come from yourself, or from others.
There are many reasons why people become "stuck" in their development. One common problem is habitual thought patterns and the self stories that people tell. For example, some people have stories from their past experiences that they tell over and over again when they meet new people. This may be a story about a challenge they faced, or some terrible event that happened to them, or maybe even a repetitive story from their youth, about rebellion, pranks or trouble. Sometimes these stories involve interpersonal drama in the form of social, relationship or family "war stories." They tell these stories repeatedly without noticing that these stories reinforce a part of their old self (or lower self) that does not represent the person they presently desire to be. So, an important part of becoming your best self is being very careful about your self-talk and self-stories. These stories, though seemingly harmless, represent a form of self-hypnosis. Negative self-talk and negative affirmation can keep you anchored in old thought patterns and identities. My advice for everyone is to carefully analyze the old stories that you choose to perpetually tell, for these are really life-long meditations. If those stories are negative or not supportive of the vision you have for your future self, it would be wise to quit telling those stories completely. Instead, develop new stories from new positive experiences and relationships — the experiences of your emerging new self! Resist at all cost telling your old negative stories.
At the very basic level all people are creators. We are all creating at every moment. Sometimes we are creating positive experiences and sometimes we unfortunately create negative experiences for ourselves and others. We all want something out of life and it is very natural that people want to create, re-create and continue to develop themselves. It is natural and healthy to want to enhance your creative skills and abilities so that you can access your own version of joy and abundance. The problem for many people is that they get stuck in old, negative patterns. Now, I talk a lot about what I call the beautiful path, in which I encourage people to adopt a lifestyle of positive life patterns. The problem that some people run into, is that they are not able to easily escape their old negative patterns because they are habituated to a certain type of thinking. Most healthy people innately want to be their best possible self. Every person wants to advance in life and be surrounded by beauty, prosperity, abundance, and most of all, love. However, many people find that when they attempt to advance themselves, they slip back into their old, negative patterns and behaviors. Why?
Stop always wanting to please and not disappoint others. Sure, you may disappoint others, but their disappointment is totally irrelevant. What matters are your standards for yourself. What matters is how you feel about yourself. Being disappointed with yourself is useless, unless it is attached to an intention to take action and create personal change. What matters is if you can see yourself. You can't move forward unless you can see yourself. You can't move forward with the same poor vision and inner-dialogue that put you where you are now. See yourself honestly. Set new and better standards for yourself. Do it for you, to please yourself, and with absolute disregard for other's approval or acceptance. Cast out your negative self-talk and limiting beliefs. A pessimist's first position is doubt and they are surprised if they succeed. An optimist's first position is confidence and they are surprised if they fail. Quit making excuses, quit denigrating yourself and quit lying to yourself about your lack of ability. Tell the truth; you can, you will and you are. You are not going to move forward unless you firmly commit yourself to change. You must be stubborn about what you can do, not stubborn about why you can't. Be adamant about your standards. To really change requires violating certain parts of yourself, cooperating with other parts, and creating new behaviours. What are you waiting for? Empowerment happens when you face the profound responsibility you have for your own life.
You know how your old entrenched bad habits harm you. You know how your negative self-talk and limiting beliefs continue to paralyze you. You know how you have talked about "change" and "working on yourself" forever, but it never seems to happen. No more procrastinating. No more excuses! Your will has to be stronger than your excuses. Your will has to be stronger than your fear. Nothing great was ever built on excuses. You can't whine your way through life. Kick your inner-whiner's ass and get to living the good life. Abandon your excuses and fears, and move forward. Don't be afraid of failure. Don't fool yourself — everyone fails constantly. Failure is an essential part of the success process. Embrace it. When you make a mistake or something doesn't turn-out right, just say, "I'm practicing imperfection." Successful people fail more! Fail, learn, recover, regroup and retry. Practice being at peace with imperfection and even enjoying it. You may have made some mistakes, but your life is not a mistake; it's a miracle. Change takes time. It takes time for the seeds to begin growing within, time to understand and process, time for the growth to mature, and time for the old self to die and fall away. Do it now and do it for you!
