Choosing a focus

Well, I wrote out a long long post about the past few weeks, and my app lost most of it.

So instead, I'll write that whilst ultimately I had a really good visit, and a good friend picked me up tonight after over seven hours of traveling to get back to Pittsburgh, I am sitting here, surrounded by softly purring cats, feeling wound up over someone saying they had problems with me as a manager.

Now, the truths behind that are (a) no one is beloved by everyone; (b) I was put into a management role although I was vocal about not thinking it was necessary; (c) the individual in question did things wrong and when it was my job to correct that, I did; (d) when it wasn't my job to say something, I still did, based on what I understood the rules to be...and then I apologized for what I'd said because it wasn't my place to do so; (e) based on most of our interactions, including the last time we saw each other, I assumed we were on good terms. Apparently I was mistaken. (I begin to suspect there's a whole pile of issues being carried around by the gentleman in question that have nothing to do with me, to be honest.)

I am bothered because, clearly, he and I have a very different set of experience memories. And because there's precious little I won't discuss, so I'm sad that we didn't talk it out...as well as sad that I apparently misinterpreted our acquaintanceship. And because, overall, I am a damned good manager, with a damned good track record and reputation...so it bothers me that I missed something.

But. There's that pesky point a up there.

So I can obsess about something said about me, but not to me, or I can...ya know, not.

popfiend used to post Drama Free Thursday essays, and frequently the just came down to, "What do you want to focus on?" It's usually pretty darn tempting to focus on the bad - the negative voices, the things we can't fix, all the words and thoughts and nasty that we can use to beat ourselves up with.

That feeds the drama.
That makes it harder to look up and see the good.
And Life contains so much GOOD.

I know some amazing, good, talented, evolved people.
I'd much rather use them as a mirror, I'd so much rather give them real estate in my head, than give energy or attention to people that do not enrich my life.

Our worlds are made up of our choices.

I'm going to keep on making better-for-me choices.

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

Forgiveness

This motivational thingala passed across my Internet stream today, and seemed very timely/relevant.

One of the lessons I've learned from my family is that people are capable of inflicting lots of unintentional hurt. Their inability to register the damage doesn't in itself make them bad. You're just not the thing they're focused on. And so they scatter shrapnel across you and it literally has nothing to do with you.

This? This, I grok.
It's why I don't talk to most of my family. Too much unintentional damage.

(In a healthy family, of course, we would have talked it out and figured out a different path..For my well being, with the family I was dealt, walking away was the road better traveled.)

So. You control what you can. You control your Self.

You can't make someone read your heartfelt apology, or hear your accusation. What you can do is get that thought, that sorrow, that regret, that anger out of your head and out of your throat. You can't make anyone listen..but that doesn't mean you have to hold those things to fester inside you.

And, going back to that image...sometimes people hurt you and have no earthly idea they've done it. You carry that around until, like a splinter, your body works it out of your system.

You find that you've worked the bad out of your system. Or you find that being angry isn't as important as being happy. Or you realize why that word, that action, hurt you, and that it had nothing to do with what you thought after all.

You find that you caught the reflection if that action/word/thought/deed, you owned it, you sculpted it into something and you internalized it, you made it yours in a way no one else could ever have forced you to do.

You realize the ear that needs to hear forgiveness is the only one you can control. Yours.

And so you say 'I forgive you,' and if you're lucky, the other party hears you. And if you're luckier still, you say it, and you believe it, and the badness you're carrying around finally has permission to go away..

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.