Three Truths

Judith is the author of The Sacred Women’s Circle series, romantic fiction that honors spiritual practices that nourish the soul and celebrates the journey from relationship to romance.

Last month I talked about ‘unconditional acceptance’ and the role forgiveness (which includes giving up revenge) plays.

Why should we care about unconditional acceptance?

Why should we want to give up revenge?

One idea is we can’t give what we don’t have ourselves. In other words, we cannot love someone else if we don’t love ourselves. That does not mean we can’t feel passion, attraction or even positive feelings for another person but our negative sense of self will be undermining our attempts at positive messaging.

And when we are stressed or just in a bad place, we are more likely to lash out at the other people in our lives…treating them with harsh words, etc. much like we treat ourselves when we are disappointed with our choices or outcomes.

Here are three concepts or truths to consider:

One - no one is born hating anyone or anything.

Another truth: no one wakes up in the morning with a plan to disappoint themselves or others.

And the third: no one makes a decision thinking this will hurt me or this won’t work or I’m sure I’ll fail.

Our plans for ourselves and others are based on what we want for ourselves and/or for them and those plans are our best attempt at the time.

I’ve friends who tell me they don’t always do their very best at a task. And I believe them because that is true. We don’t always do a quality job but we always do what we want given the broader picture.

An example: You have the floors to clean and an invitation to go out with your best friend to do something fun. The probability of you doing a quality job on the floors, especially if it will take hours and means you won’t be going to do the fun activity is low. But you will do something with the floors. They will look better than they did before you worked on them.

However, if your future in-law was coming over to your place for the first time and s/he was a stickler for a clean house, you may choose to not go with your friend (depending on how important it is to impress) but stay home and do a quality job on the floors.

And if you decide to do an ‘okay job’ and go have fun, I’m not sure that you are making that choice to insult your future-in-law. More likely you made that choice because you wanted to have fun and/or spend time with your friend.

Remember I believe all behavior is purposeful so the question becomes, what is the purpose of your negative self-talk?

How can you unconditionally accept someone else if you can’t unconditionally accept yourself?

And do remember that unconditional acceptance does not mean you don’t want to improve something about yourself. It only means that you accept who and where you are right now.

If you want to change something, make a positive plan to do so and support yourself in moving forward with it recognizing you will most likely deviate from your plan at some point. All that is then required is that you Resume your course. No berating, belittling, demeaning is needed. You simple start where you left off and move forward.

I do want this to be a dialogue so please share your thoughts in the comments section.

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