Everything ends.
But nothing really does, does it?
Things might end on a material level. A relationship, a job, a moment. But there are threads that keep us attached to things that have ended, and that make them come back. Memories, feelings, thoughts.
It’s the accumulation of everything that happens that makes us who we are. Nothing really ends.
Your choice is whether you want to keep all that in a messy closet or if you want to give it a shape that you can call your story.
Most people are scared, preoccupied, hurt. And until you help them get at the root of what makes them such, they will not be able to move past that behaviour that is bothering you and damaging the community.
The only shortcut to this is to cut the relationship altogether. That’s never progress and very rarely what you actually want.
The effort we put into avoiding difficult conversations.
The energy we invest into keeping that bad feeling at bay.
The thoughts we dedicate to finding ways to reduce uncertainty.
That’s what makes everything more difficult, bad, and uncertain.
When you accept that as a part of being a colleague, a leader, a partner, a friend, a parent, a human being, then the rest of the journey is downhill.
I’m not suggesting that we should cease efforts to alleviate pain, our own or that of others. But as psychotherapist Sheldon Kopp was keenly aware, our “mistaken belief that it can be cured” is what makes pain unbearable.
Ed Batista, Pain Is Mandatory. Suffering Is Optional.
You are a person who belongs to a category of one.
Or probably better put in the words of somebody who knew better.
Every individual is an exception to the rule.
Carl Jung
That does not mean that you are alone, not necessarily. It means that you are unique. That what works for others, maybe will not work for you. That what others consider ok, maybe is not ok for you. That you have the full power to write your own story and to be proud of it.
Of course, it also means that others around you are unique. That they might have a completely different point of view. That they might see things that are crystal clear to you in a completely different manner. That they might argue with you, disagree with you, be mad at you, while still fulfilling their own unique story. And be proud of it.
This is scary and also exciting.
The way you look at that changes everything.
When you are looking for a culprit, remember there’s always someone who ate the last cookie in the jar.
Of course, that jar was full at some point. And the person who ate the last cookie might be the one who ate them all, the one who ate most of them, the one who ate some of them, or the one who just ate that last one.
Blame is assigned with great ease to those who are most exposed.
But if it’s reasons you are after, if you want to avoid the jar getting empty sooner than you expected the next time you fill it with your favourite cookies, you have to look a bit farther, a bit deeper, a bit more carefully.
You've got this 