Blog 57- Do you give the power of how you feel to someone else?
Why do we give the power of how we feel to someone else?
This is a great and complicated question, which I have been asking myself. If I want somebody to love me, to make me feel wanted, loved and appreciated, respected, accepted, then they become the holder of the keys to whether I feel happy or not. I give them the power, I give them the control. I don’t know about you, but I certainly don’t want to rely on somebody else loving me for me to feel ok.
What if they are having a bad day, or somebody has been treating them badly or unkind, are they then going to turn around and give you love, kindness and attention? Probably not, they will probably be feeling empty themselves, and now I feel unloved & uncared for because they can’t give me what I want or need. It doesn’t seem logical to give them my sense of self esteem. To give them the control over that. So whether it is my children or partner or parents, it doesn’t seem like a good idea to give them the power of how I feel.
I can see myself being constantly disappointed hurt and lonely. So how do we take it back, this power we have given away? How do we get back the control of how we feel? Easy! Refuse to give the power of how you feel to someone else. Know that you are the only person that is in charge of how you feel. Start loving yourself, love your character, love the different parts of your personality – love your body as it is the one you where given, love your own style, love your creativity, love your sense of humour, love the food you like. But most of all love and accept the things you don’t like about yourself. The inner child that’s spits the dummy when you don’t get what you want or feel put down or rejected, or ignored and love the part of you who reacts to these things by attacking the person who makes you feel like that. Or the person who makes you react like that.
Even though on a higher level, nobody can make you do anything, it’s your reaction to them, your choice. Nobody can make you angry, you make yourself angry, or you react angrily to them. Love the part that judges other actions, love the part that judges your own actions, love the part of you that sometimes wishes everyone would just go away.
It is often the things we don’t tolerate in others because we don’t tolerate them in ourselves.
It is hard to love ourselves unconditional even though we want others to accept and love us unconditionally. Maybe if we could love ourselves unconditionally then we wouldn’t judge ourselves.
I have observed this myself and in my own actions, that the more I accept myself for who I really am, the good and the not so good bits and see them as not good or bad but just parts of my personality, and that I’m not perfect; then the judgement of others has subsided and the acceptance of others has grown. I realise we are all just doing the best we can in the chaos, and because we are all so different from each other, how can I judge another anyway?
It’s like comparing apples and a grapes, they are both fruits. But that’s about all.
So now I take back the power of how I feel, I have the choice and I feel a little more content.
Cheers Pete C
