Struggling against reality
Coaching Sessions this week have been positively over flowing with struggling against reality, so maybe it’s in the stars right now?
How you doin’?
Are you getting upset by stuff you cannot change?
Like other people and their behaviour?
Me too.
We have new neighbours directly below us and on the planet they come from it is a good idea to build in your dining room, make it another bedroom and squeeze five people, including two small children, +/- five visiting grown children, into a two bed, two bath.
Yep.
They have come from a house and this whole ‘apartment living’ thing is a new experience and boy can we tell!
The incessant screaming of one child, noisy activity in the early hours, all sorts of indiscriminate banging and wall shaking and then there are the copious synthetic fragrances of the cleaning and personal hygiene products in which they are embalming themselves. My home, especially after get-up-and-go time in the mornings, no longer smells like my home. And for those of you who know me and that my other hat is an Aromatherapist and natural product advocate, you will know the chemical smell is especially challenging.
Challenging – that is the word my clients used too.
The challenge for all of us – that is me, my Coaching Clients and you – is in struggling against reality. And by struggling against reality I specifically mean struggling against what is.
Struggling against reality is struggling against what is.
My neighbours are there.
These are the toxic, synthetically fragranced products they use.
They let their kid scream.
They bang around in their two bedder like they’re back on the farm.
For me, at the moment, this is reality.
This is just what is.
And I can get my panties all in a bunch and tie myself in knots about it, cursing their ignorance and lack of awareness – like who died and made me God eh?!
Or…
I can accept this is reality…for now.
This is just how it is.
I don’t get up and curse the sky because it’s raining and I wanted to do the washing.
The weather just is.
If I didn’t leave enough time and I get caught in traffic, cursing the traffic makes no sense.
The traffic just is.
I didn’t leave enough time.
That’s just how it is.
The good thing about living life in conjunction with life, going with its flow, is that when shit happens, as shit sometimes does, all we must actually deal with is the facts, the reality.
All we must actually deal with is what is AND our approach or attitude toward it.
Because when we struggle against reality it feels infinitely worse, infinitely bigger, exhausting.
When we struggle against reality, we lose.
Every single time.
So my advice is to go about life in conjunction with life, instead of struggling against it.
A good question to ask yourself, when your gut’s all tight and your jaw is clenching and your face is puffed up like a red toad struggling against reality:
What are the facts?
What IS reality?
And go ahead and find yourself accepting reality as soon as you possibly can!
Because then you will have more energy to actually manage the facts and you will feel one thousand times better within.
Of course that’s just an estimate!
Now I know what you’re thinking.
Does that mean we must accept crap from people, just ‘suck it up’ and accept uncaring and unreasonable behaviour from people?
The answer is NO!
We never accept uncaring and unreasonable behaviour from people.
There are two important things to consider here though:
- Am I being the turkey or are they being the turkey? (Ta Deb!)
Are they being unreasonable? Or am I being unreasonable? - We can LOVE and accept the person, we do not have to LOVE and accept their behaviour.
And believe me, the screaming kid at 6am is testing this premise for me.
I’m not quite there yet. But that’s okay.
I know I have a choice about how I respond at 6am.
Getting all indignant is only one of my choices and the least attractive I must add.
Because I LOVE living in harmony with everyone on the planet, I am going to take my well earned week’s holiday in the country and decompress. It’s been a long year; largely cooped up inside here in Melbourne. I want to make doubly sure months of lockdown are not contributing to a lack of awareness and patience on my part.
If I feel the same when I return and if the neighbours are still doing their oblivious thing, I am going to have an empathetic and open conversation with them. In my experience, lots of folks are barely hanging on in their own lives, unable to consider themselves, let alone the bloody neighbours!
And this is one of the great travesties of modern life in the West.
Too busy just to BE and actually hear ourselves think.
And yes, like feeding strawberries to pigs, my open hearted and well considered chat with my new neighbours may be wasted. But after my personal introspection and as long as I LOVE them while speaking up about what is happening for me, as long as I BE authentically ME, the result I get will be good.
So I hope sharing my synthetically fragranced travails with you helps you sort out some of your own stuff. Whenever you feel like you are filled with the kind of poison that comes from lots of finger pointing and saying things like: ‘They/it/she/he should…’ then you know you are struggling against reality. For sure!
And now you know you will lose…every single time.
So may as well get a new hobby eh?
I am working on not feeling separate from others.
That’s my new hobby.
I reckon it’s going to help with this one.
I’ll let you know how I go!
And I look forward to you doing the same.
Let me know how you go.
I am always interested.
LOVE
Rachel x
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