Tie Your Laces Before They Become Knots

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t battle with life’s shoelaces of resentment, jealousy, shame, anger, self doubt, insecurity – all of the ugly feelings that come with life. Some days I do sit in my own crankiness and am just angry at the world. I let myself do that, because some days you just need to give yourself permission to feel the way you do. The key is to not stay there.  Admittedly, some days are harder than others. 

The second Agreement in Don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements is “Don’t take anything personally.” This is the hardest “Agreement” for me, but this is the part of the book that had me start seeing things from a different angle. I started to reflect back on every time I got offended or someone pissed me off and I began to realize those moments had nothing to do with me and everything to do with me. When we feel affronted by someone, that person most likely is projecting their stuff onto you.

 Now, that being said, I do believe there is a balance and an element of self-responsibility. I do think the only person who can allow you to feel a certain way is yourself. If I’m feeling triggered by someone’s behavior, I have started asking myself why it triggers me so much. This is going to an even deeper conversation, which I won’t delve into too much, but I do believe if you boil down all of the emotions in the world, they’re all rooted from two emotions: fear and love. 

Anything that is not love, is fear.

The source of my negative feelings always boils down to one person and that is me. Rather than (continue to) project my own issues onto other people, I started looking at them and myself head on. When you start realizing you are the source of your own problems, life gets both a little easier and harder. Easier because you can’t blame others anymore. Harder because you can’t blame others anymore.

A profound, yet simple moment for me was when I was into my second year of selling real estate. I was going through a slow patch, frustrated and just feeling sorry for myself. I called up a seasoned agent who I had become friendly with and asked, “Do you ever deal with this?”

His response was simple, yet powerful. “Yeah. So what are you going to do about it?”

I’m sure he had no idea the impact that statement had on me, but it rings through my head every time I’m having a self-pity party – and not just with work, but with life, in general. He certainly wasn’t going to waste time feeling sorry for me, why should I?

The truth is, there is only one person who can fix whatever issue you’re dealing with and it’s yourself. You always have a choice. It may not always be an easy choice, but you do always have a choice. I made a choice that day to take action and just crank towards getting out my rut. The alternative of just sitting in my own inaction didn’t seem to be solving any of my problems. 

I didn’t get out of that rut over night and I think a hard lesson for all of us, especially in a world of instant gratification, is not everything comes instantly. In my opinion, anything worth having, is worth the work you put into it. And that includes dealing with your own inner bullshit.

I’ll use the emotion of jealousy for an example. There have been friends that I’ve been jealous of in the past. Hell, there are still people in my life I have jealous tendencies towards. That boils down to my own insecurity and my own fear of not feeling good enough (fear versus love). Cheering those people on and being genuinely happy for them has helped me release the feelings of jealousy. Throwing love at a situation feels tremendously better than the opposite. We all know jealousy is an ugly look. When we see it in others, it’s so obvious to us and we shake our heads with disapproval.

But sometimes when we feel it in ourselves, it’s not as obvious – “Bob thinks he’s so great.”

Guess whose issue that is? 

It ain’t Bob’s.

Tie those laces before they come knots.