Heal the Past

This is the third post (part 1, part 2) on how success and productivity can be stymied by emotional reactiveness.

“Our deepest fears are like dragons guarding our deepest treasure”. Rainier Maria Rilke

I was playing for my local soccer team one Sunday morning some years ago.  During the game a few things had not gone our way, and I found myself blaming the referee for our shortcomings.  As we were leaving the field I went over to the referee (who was only doing it as a favour) and abused him. Among the words I threw at him were “useless”, “incompetent”, “weak” and well, you don’t really want to know the rest. But, I’m sure you get the idea.

My Fault

Almost immediately after this outburst I felt a great deal of guilt and apologized profusely to him and the other players, but it was some years later when I recalled the incident that I applied the mirror to it. No surprises here, but it is a good snapshot of how I viewed myself at the time.

My failure was to not accept responsibility and understand that the result of the game was really in my hands and those of my teammates, not in his.  My eagerness to pass judgment on him was really a way of blinding me to my own perceived faults.

One of the ways to heal the past is to follow this simple process:

• Locate or remember a time in your business, work or socially someone or something upset you

• Observe what it was about that person or situation that you did not like

• Write your thoughts down, i.e. he or she was selfish, arrogant, and ignorant and so on.

• Consider what it was about the situation that you were resisting.

• Go through each of the items you have written down one at a time, honestly look at yourself and see if any of them may apply to , now or in the past. You may see yourself as sometimes selfish for instance.

• As soon as you realise that the part of him or her you don’t like is exactly what you don’t like about that part of yourself, take another look. Do you still feel the same way? The simple act of acknowledging something you were not consciously aware of is part of the healing process.

Different Point of View

Looking at it now, this does not mean that I just changed the point of blame on to me so I could be even harder on myself.

It became an opportunity to understand myself better.  After all, if my feelings towards him could suddenly disappear due to this realization, then maybe I could do the same for the feelings I had for myself.

It gave me hope.

If you see yourself in any of this and would like some help, give me a call on 0421 210 444 to arrange a Free, No Obligation 30 minute chat to see how we can work together.

Committed to YOUR Personal Productivity,

James is a productivity coach specializing in working with people who are procrastinators and those who want results quickly. His ability to get brilliant results with his clients is quite amazing…

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