I love the quote today’s share starts off with…

 

“When you can’t look on the bright side, I will sit with you in the dark.”

~Unknown

 

This is one of my work in progress personality traits that I still struggle with. As a typical male, I believe in fixing things. Looking deeper into my own motivations and beliefs, it’s probably because fixing things brings me validation and worth. Maybe that’s why men try to fix. They want to be seen as worthy and valuable.

 

In fact, I think another reason I try to fix someone who’s emotionally off is to ease my own discomfort. My former spouse has always told me I tend to flip things an make them about me. Ugh! I guess she’s right. If someone else feels happy, I don’t have to experience their pain.

 

Using a story The Most Powerful Way to Help Someone Through Emotional Pain reminds me that I don’t always have to make someone happy and pretend things are ok.

 

This was the main reason for starting Together We Can Heal. So that we can support one another through our pain. So we have have someone that will listen to us. So we know we aren’t alone.

 

So we can sit with one another in our darkest hours.

 

I’m grateful for my recovery program. I’ve learned that it’s not that I won’t struggle in life, but how I manage my struggles that matters. What is the story I make up? What are the tools I’m going to use when I’m feeling off? How do I allow myself to accept my emotions, work through them, and learn from them?

 

Jack Canfield states in his book The Success Principles:

E + R = O

(Event + Response) = Outcome

 

The basic idea is that the very outcome you experience in life (whether it is success or failure, wealth or poverty, health or illness, intimacy or estrangement, joy or frustration) is the result of how you have responded to an earlier event or events in your life.

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