The advice we give to others, especially if unsolicited, is the advice we most need to hear. The lectures we teach are the lectures we need to attend. We criticise in others what we reject in ourselves. The finger we point points to what we ourselves are guilty of.
What we deny in ourselves controls us. We are vulnerable and susceptible to it in ways that restrict and confine us. The power these qualities have over us makes us live life reactively rather than creatively.
Our triggers are like a set of loose strings we have. And when life, people or circumstances pull on one of one of these strings, we react by experiencing unwelcome feelings—sadness, anger, fear, disappointment, discontent. When our strings are pulled they create our feelings. And when we respond to our feelings, we are making choices and taking action not from a place of freedom and creation, but in reaction to our constraints. We are constantly responding to our perceived limitations rather than leading from the true essence of who we are. What triggers us is what most bothers us about ourselves—and what we most need to embrace, integrate and transcend.
I was recently pointing out to someone that they were in a victim mentality. They thought that their life wasn’t the way they wanted it to be because other people or circumstances. People weren’t playing their part, life was throwing obstacles their way, things were unpredictable, or they just didn’t have it in them. Different excuses but the same sentiment—it’s not up to me.
I later realised that the fact I’d noticed their victimhood attitude and cared enough to speak to it wasn’t coincidental. I saw in them what I was sensing in myself. People’s victimhood attitude captured my attention because I was guilty of the same. I was playing a victim in my own life and because that bothered me so much I was triggered by other people exhibiting the same quality. If I had been fully responsible for all areas of my life, seeing someone else being a victim wouldn’t have upset me.
The trigger was the invitation to gain awareness of what was going on inside me so I could resolve it. And so I asked myself: Where in my life am I acting like a victim? In what areas am I being dormant and waiting on others? This helped me gain awareness of where I was dodging responsibility. I realised where I needed to step out of victimhood and into my full power.
There are things we can be with and things we can’t be with. The things we find difficult to be with are calling for our attention, so we can resolve them and transcend the limitations we are living within. Anything that evokes a strong emotional reaction in us is a gateway to further growth and evolution.
This level of self-examination is not easy, but the benefits are enormous because it is when we shed layers of constraints, get rid of false ideas about ourselves, and become aware of who and what we’re not, that we can step into the full power of who we are. And our full power only becomes available when we’re 100% responsible.