Sunday Sermon [Self-Esteem]

¡Hola! Everybody...
Well, it’s back to the office tomorrow. There’s lots of work to be done this year. Who knows what might happen...

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-=[ The Naked City ]=-

There are 8 million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.
-- The Naked City

Some of the following I am sure you will disagree with...

With the coming of the “new year” come renewed attempts to “fix” things, to start anew, with a fresh perspective, to leave all baggage behind. And with the new year come the voices of doubt, saying you will fail. And in a very real way, most people (about 3/4) will have quit their resolutions before the third week of this month.

Change -- it ain’t that easy. Well, it’s not even an issue of ease or hardship. I know most of you like it rough, but rough or hardship doesn’t translate to change. No, it’s about being smart, not how hard you can get or receive it, and most people like punishment.

One of the first questions I ask people, either individually or in groups is, “What do least like about yourself?” I’ve done this with literally thousands of people over more than a decade and here some of the responses:

• I’m stupid/ silly/ disorganized
• I’m boring/ dull/ predictable/ serious/ unmotivated/ ignorant
• I’m too shy/ afraid/ anxious/ fragile/ passive
• I’m fat/ ugly/ unfit/ lazy
• I’m selfish/ arrogant/ critical/ vain/
• I’m judgmental/ angry/ greedy/ aggressive/ obnoxious
• I’m an underachiever/ a procrastinator (<-- my fave)/ failure/ loser

That’s just a small sampling of the responses I usually get. The list is almost infinite. While we all have our personal dislikes, all these responses point to one basic theme: “I’m not good enough as I am and there is something wrong with me.” It’s a message our mind sends us repeatedly.

It doesn’t matter how hard we try or how much we achieve, our thinking self (what I call the “Mini Me”) will always find something to dislike, some way in which we’re lacking, incomplete, not good enough. Part of this comes from the way our brains evolved. The fight or flight response that helped our ancestors survive (the “don’t get killed!” trigger) by making them constantly compare themselves to other members of the clan, to ensure that they didn’t get rejected, or caught out there on Broadway all alone while a predator made a meal of them.

And this wiring served to constantly draw their attention to their weaknesses so they could improve upon them and in that way live longer. The problem arises when the thinking self’s tendency to point out ways in which we’re not good enough leads us to feel we’re inherently unsuccessful, unworthy, unlikable, inadequate, unlovable, or whatever version of self punishment you prefer. There’s a term for that and it’s called “low self-esteem.”

What is low self-esteem? It’s an opinion, an opinion you hold about who you are. High self-esteem is a positive opinion; low self-esteem is a negative one.

What matters here is that ultimately, self-esteem is really a thought constellation (bunch of thoughts) about whether or not you’re a “good person.” Here’s the really important fact: whatever your self-esteem, it is not a fact, it’s an opinion. That’s right, it’s not the truth. It is nothing more than a highly subjective judgment. You might, at this point be thinking that having a good opinion of yourself is highly important and necessary for success.

Well, not necessarily. Let’s consider the components of an opinion: it’s merely a story, nothing more than words. Secondly, it’s a judgment, not a factual description. So self-esteem is basically a judgment that our thinking self makes about us as a person. Suppose we decide that we want “high” self-esteem. How do we go about getting it? Normally what we tend to do is a lot of reasoning, justifying, and negotiating until, maybe, we convince our thinking self that we’re a good person. For example, we might use our good job performance, our healthy exercise or diet regimen, or our charity work as a way to convince our thinking self that we are a good person. And if we can pull that off, if we can really believe that story about being a good person, then we have “high” self-esteem.

The problem with this approach (and why I detest affirmations) is that you constantly have to justify this good opinion. You constantly have to challenge those “not good enough” stories. And all this takes a lot of time and psychic energy. In fact, it’s like playing a never ending game of chess. Imagine a chess game where the pieces are your own thoughts and feelings. On one side of the board, you have all your “bad” thoughts and feelings. On the other side, you have your good thoughts and feelings. Meanwhile there’s an ongoing war between them: the positive thoughts and feelings attacking the negative thoughts and feelings. We spend an enormous part of our lives caught up in this inner struggle. And it’s killing us because unlike a real game of chess, this game has a never-ending supply of pieces. One piece (thought/ feeling) gets knocked off, there are ten more to take its place.

A problem with positive affirmations is really quite simple. Positive attracts negative (and vice versa), it’s how our brain works. For example, tell your child not to drop a glass of water and guess what you’ve done to the child? You have consigned him to think about dropping the glass of water. In order to get rid of a negative, you first have to think about it. There’s a similar corollary with positive affirmations. Suppose you’re repeating things like, “I am a wonderful human being, full of love, strength and courage.” The problem with this approach is that no matter how often you say that shit to yourself you don’t really believe it, do you? Another problem with affirmations is regardless of whether you believe they’re “true,” it naturally attracts a negative response. In order for our minds to make sense of the world, it needs to have a reference point. In other words, in order to understand “night,” we must have a reference point “day,” to make sense of it. Opposites attract. Try the following:

Read each sentence slowly and try your hardest to believe it. As you do, try to notice what thoughts automatically pop into your head.

• I am a human being
• I am a worthwhile human being
• I am a lovable, worthwhile, human being
• I am a competent, lovable, worthwhile human being
• I am a perfect, competent, lovable, worthwhile human being

What happened as you tried to believe those thoughts? For most people, the more positive the thought, the more resistance they experience, with thoughts arising such as, “Yeah right!” “Who are you kidding?” Yes, some people do manage to identiofy with the affirmations and feel wonderful, but only temporarily. Soon the “chess game” will re-engage and the war will be back in full effect.

Now do the exercise with one more sentence:

I am a useless piece of garbage.

What happened that time? Most people will automatically produce a positive thought as a defensive response and say something like, “Now hold on a minute there, I’m not that bad of a person,” or, “No way can I believe that.” Again, some people will merge with that thought and feel miserable for a while.

This is a cycle of suffering my friends. The reality is that there an infinite number of attacks and counter attacks, but is this really how you want to spend your life? Fighting your own thoughts? Constantly trying to convince yourself you’re a good person? Continuing to justify your self worth?

Well, what about stopping the war?

You’re at the mercy of your thoughts and feelings. If your self-esteem is low, you feel miserable; if it is high, you feel wonderful, but you’re constantly struggling to maintain it. What would your life look like and feel and if you dropped the self-esteem game altogether? What if you let go of the habitual tendency to judge yourself as a person? Sure, your thinking self will continue to spew thoughts and judgments, but if you see them for what they are -- just words and not facts -- and let them go like passing clouds, you could gain some measure of sanity.

For example, you could observe as a response to a negative thought, you can acknowledge, “I’m having that thought that I’m not good enough, again,” thanking your mind for sharing and moving on.

You real self isn’t your thoughts. Your mind is like the open sky, your thoughts -- whether positive or negative -- are like passing clouds. Hoe does the concept of ending the chasing of the clouds, of staying instead with the Big Sky of your mind, sound. Perhaps you will be introduced to a larger picture. Maybe, just maybe, you might catch a glimpse of the possibility of living without the self-generated drama or war.

Love,

Eddie

Surrender

¡Hola! Everybody...
I’m hearing already: “OMG! He’s going to tax rich people?!! It’s the end of the world!” Wake up and stop mindlessly following the false clues.

I’m off to work -- I’ll be gone all day. Yes, this is a repost, Nina. LOL

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-=[ Surrender ]=-

“The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.”

-- William James

In recognition of the time of the year when many people attempt to lose weight to “look good,” and other resolutions, I started thinking about change -- specifically: how and can people create lasting change in their lives. The numbers, at first glance, don’t look good, a vast majority (about 70-80%) drop out of programs or break their resolutions within the span of a month. However, I totally believe that we can alter our lives in such a way to create some measure of happiness in our lives.

People ask me what it is I do for a living and my only true answer is that I specialize in change. For the past ten years or so, I have dedicated a significant portion of my life to attempting to understand the mechanism of change. In other words, the factors needed to create lasting, positive change. I have borrowed and learned from a wide range of different orientations, but in the last few years, I have been most influenced by Buddhist psychology, cognitive psychology and, more recently neurolinguistic programming (NLP).

Mostly, my work encompasses my own personal experience – what I like to call “what works,” and a basic spirituality. Mind you, I didn’t say religion – I’m not selling dogma or a God, what I’m “selling,” if I’m selling anything is, well, freedom. You don’t have to believe in anything, or accept any saviors or anything like that if you choose not to, at least not here.

I approach my work with several assumptions, the first one being obvious: that, given the tools, people can effect lasting change. Secondly, experience has shown me that people already have all the resources they need. Third, there aren’t too many absolutes in psychology, but the notion that underlying every behavior is a positive intention, comes pretty close. We do things because we get a return on it. Fourth, in my work I find people make the choices available to them. The issue, it then follows, is that people need help opening up to new or unseen choices. Finally, if you keep doing the same actions and expecting different results, then you’re setting yourself up for needless suffering. Suffering is optional, my friends.

Everything starts with surrender. Oftentimes, people come to me and they’re hot and horny for change, but once we start going into uncharted territory, people then want to dictate how to change. In that case, why come to me in the first place? LMAO! Nope, if you want change, you need to give it up – start doing something new. The notion of surrender is interpreted as a weakness in our society, as in admitting defeat. And this is, in a sense, what you’re doing if you’re battling something you can’t defeat. I start with the radical notion of giving up the war. Surrendering, in this context, means letting go of your resistance to the total openness of who you are. It means giving up the tension of the little hurricane you believe yourself to be and giving in to the profound power of the ocean you truly are. It means to open with no boundaries, emotional or physical, so you feel yourself stretching beyond the limitations of the small sense of self you might have.

And it is a scary thing, believe me, I know.

Surrender, in this sense, means to love without limits and that includes those aspects of yourself you may not like too much. Whether that may be being overweight, or compulsive, or whatever little story you’re telling yourself. It means, mostly, putting down your guard so you can feel your authentic self – unhidden, undefended. It means surrendering any preconceived notions you have about change, who you are, and where it all came from. In short, it means to…

Stop the war!

I'll start with a story I heard early in my own journey toward change. This particular Buddhist teaching story opens up the possibility for us to look into what is the source of suffering and sanity, and begs the question: how can we change if we don't start from the inside out?

Many years ago, a monk in a monastery was struggling with his meditation practice. Each time he sat to meditate, he saw a giant spider threatening him. After much anxiety and losing much sleep, he finally decided he would kill the creature.

As he was walking toward the meditation hall with a big knife in his hand, his teacher saw him and asked what he intended to do. The visibly shaken young man explained his predicament. The teacher, listening attentively, offered an alternative strategy to the young monk. He told him first to get his calligraphy brush and carefully paint a cross on the spider's belly, then to put the knife into the intersection of the cross on the following day.

The monk, now armed with his brush and ink, entered the meditation hall. Sure enough, the spider appeared and he carefully painted its belly. Now feeling quite satisfied, he bowed and left the meditation hall -- and discovered on the front of his robes a huge painted X. It is said his laughter was heard everywhere.

And so it is with many people. This monk had placed the “Monster” somewhere outside of himself. To another, the monster could well appear within. In the Buddhist practice of mindfulness, we are encouraged to notice (not “analyze”!) that the mind has a strong tendency to create love and hate, birth and death, sickness and sanity -- even monsters and magic!

The mind is conditioned by culture and society to play hide-and-seek with itself -- a horny game of forgetfulness in the constant thought-stream of the mind. If you sit still long enough and just “look” you will see just how much activity there is in the mind: thoughts, feelings, fantasies, memories, as well as awareness of physical sensations, whether pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. This very mind stream can drive us into patterns of greater or lesser suffering that are difficult to escape.

In meditation practice, we begin to quiet ourselves, to calm ourselves. In stopping our usual activity, we notice how the relentless flow of the mind (conditioning) drives us. Through the experience of stilling and calming, we begin to get a hint of the nature of change, of how all things are constantly changing -- we begin to gain insight into what Buddhists call “impermanence.” Other spiritual traditions have different names for this, but they all try to point to an “alternate” (deeper?) reality.

I think that the reason most people fail at creating and staying with change or resolutions is that they fail to address the core problems. Let’s take the popular diet fads: If you feel inadequate, then why would a diet alone make you feel better? It’s a lot like the monk in our story: we’re projecting our “monsters” out there somewhere, when they in fact reside within us. When you look at the numbers and see so many people going through the “yo-yo effect” – losing and then gaining enormous amounts of weight -- you begin to realize that too many people are intent on losing the outer baggage without addressing the inner baggage, and that will never work, because wherever “you” go, there “you” are.

Love,

Eddie

Sunday Sermon (Transcending Wounds)

¡Hola! Everybody... You know what? I could give a fuck about the Super Bowl. I came to this realization quite some time ago, but now it just sits here inside of me like a fact. Is that, like, un-American or somehow unmanly?

Yup, as I said, I could give a fuck...

Repost!

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-=[ Transcending Wounds ]=-

“There comes a time in each life like a point of fulcrum. At that time, you must accept yourself. It is not any more what you will become. It is what you are and always will be.”

-- John Fowles (1926 –)

I am firmly convinced there is a conspiracy out to get me! This is true, don’t look at me that way, I ain’t crazy! I know, for example, that there is a covert association of old ladies out there somewhere whose solitary mission is to send its members to block my way on the streets and on subway platforms. And don’t get me started on that group of train conductors whose assignment is to get me stuck in between subway stations and close subway doors right in my face.

Then there’s that damned OAA (Overly-Analytical Association) women’s group, hell-bent on sending me women who “think” through even mundane stuff (like sex, for example) to the point where it is isn’t even fun anymore! And don’t get me started on the “Evil Parents” consortium that determined to have me born into a poor household headed by traumatized parents themselves barely out of their teens.

It’s a conspiracy! It’s true, I tell ya!

I’m exaggerating, of course, but for a long time I took things very personal, as if life had somehow conspired to fuck me without the dignioty of kissing me. While I knew that old ladies weren’t organizing against me (as if I were that important ), my reactions were just the same -- flagrant anger and bitterness that I dressed up in a cynically chic “that’s my life” outerwear. It’s considered chic and cool to wear our wounds nonchalantly – you hear people constantly say stupid shite like, “Life sucks… ” as if it were all predetermined.

There’s a fairly erotic scene in one of the Lethal Weapon films in which Mel Gibson’s and Rene Russo’s characters compare scars as a prelude to sex. “I have this scar,” says Mel, and Rene counters with, “Ha! That’s nothing, look at this one!” They go on like this until both have managed to take their clothes off in their mad dash to outdo one another.

It’s funny a funny scene, but like with a lot of fiction there’s a fair amount of truth to it. As a society, we have developed what the medical intuitive, Carolyn Myss, calls a “language of intimacy.” But that intimacy is based, she goes on to say, on “Woundology.” Briefly, woundology is recognizing that we have come to an important insight, namely that we need to bring out into the open our wounds, discussing them in a healthy manner. This is a very powerful and fairly recent development in the human condition. What has happened, however, is that we have gotten stuck on our wounds -- a “woundology.” We have become addicted to our wounds. We have come to be defined by our wounds.

You see it all the time. You meet someone, and before you even get to know them, you’re privy to some pretty much intimate details of that person. This is what happens when we merely admit our shortcomings, or wounds. Everything is now filtered by the fact that you’re an incest survivor, or a widow, or an addict, an abused child, etc. Please, don’t get me wrong here: it’s extremely important that we bring into the light that which resides in the shadows. And many, many people, keep all this shit stuffed inside, in the process causing both physical and psychological dis-ease, but that is only part of the issue. There are other steps we have to take.

If only I had a better childhood…

If only I didn't have my hardships…

This over identification and obsession with our wounds is so powerful that we actually become attached to them. In fact, many people don’t really want to heal or change, they’re too enamored of their wounds to do that. I have a relative who’s always harping on her parents and how her parents are the cause for her inability to relate, to be a good parent herself, the rain, and the car that just cut her off… well you get the idea. When I challenge this belief system, she freaks, or she just stops listening. The end result is that she’s an essentially unhappy person actually infecting her own children with the same disease of learned unhappiness.

Take away the wound, we seem to be saying, and what do we become? I’m no longer just a recovering addict?!?! I’m not just an incest survivor?!?!

OMG!!!

Acceptance is the gateway toward forgiveness. I am not speaking here of passive acceptance to how things were or are. I am also not speaking here of forgiveness in the way we normally see it. Acceptance in this context is coming to the realization of things how they are (as opposed to how we wan them to be). Forgiveness in this context is not forgiving others, but forgiving ourselves. When we cling to our wounds, we are actually punishing ourselves because we do not see ourselves as worthy. When we accept the facts of our lives, we then can move towards maturity and the development of true happiness. We all deal with hardships; you are not that unique, really. And life sometimes isn’t fair, but it isn’t about fairness, it’s about reality.

So, in a sense, it would be correct to say that we need to love those aspects of ourselves we like least in order to move beyond the wounds to the space where healing begins. Acceptance opens the door to forgiveness which opens the door to Love, which in turn leads toward integration, healing, and wholeness.

Many of us like to say we’ve moved past all this, but I still see the bitterness, unhappiness, and tendency toward blame. I especially see it in the people who often comment on this blog by saying some bullshit like, “Yeah, people need to get over it... ” or some bullshit like that. It’s not about getting over it, it’s about integration, not negation.

Then again, maybe there is something to this conspiracy theory thingee...

but I doubt it.

Love,

Eddie

Love Power

¡Hola! Everybody...
Good writing is re-writing and I guess part of blogging is an opportunity to re-write my madness. I’ve been looking at some of my older posts and sometimes I wonder who wrote these things. LOL One year, for the months of January and February all I wrote about was change LOL...

Repost!

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-=[ The Power of Love/ Love Power ]=-

“To love is not a passive thing. To love is an active voice. When I love I do something, I function, I give. I do not love in order that I may be loved back again, but for the creative joy of loving. And every time I do so love, I am freed, at least a little, by the outgoing of love, from enslavement to that most intolerable of master, myself.”

-- Bernard Iddings Bell

I believe that the Beatles song , “All you need is love,” is true. The current of love is what flows through everything. No healing techniques in the world, all the fad diets, all the self-help books, will not really help unless love goes with them. Too many of our problems -- physical, emotional, even spiritual -- have their origins in the lack of love. My experience has taught me that people generally need to love themselves again in order to actually heal themselves.

I have found that many problems come from a form of self-hate or self-rejection to one degree or another. Check it out for yourself: many people, for some reason, keep creating uncomfortable experiences for themselves -- substance abuse, dysfunctional relationships, smoking, or through food abuse, for example. Until they are willing to release the need to punish themselves, there is not a lot that can be done for them. I think this is why people who, lets’ say, manage to lose 100 lbs often experience the yo-yo effect and end up gaining back 150 lbs later on. In too many cases, there are signs of healing, but the results are too often temporary.

When love is present, things are different even when it is a life-threatening illness. For example, I have witnessed amazing changes in consciousness within people in an AIDS ward where I once volunteered. In fact, I see such changes all the time when love is present.

How to start? Well, the first thing we need to do is stop criticizing ourselves, because it doesn’t help -- it actually only helps in keeping us stuck in our problems. It is only when we are willing to love and accept ourselves -- even those aspects of ourselves we like least -- that we can begin to create real change.

A large part of loving ourselves is actually nothing more than accepting ourselves as we are. Most of us (and this is especially relevant at this time of the year), have long mental lists of what we must do before we will love ourselves. We have to lose weight, or get an academic degree or new job, get a raise, or get a new relationship, a new car, new apartment, or whatever. In actuality, what we really create with these lists are more reasons why we can’t love ourselves. In addition -- and this is the kicker -- if we do manage to accomplish those things, we still don’t love ourselves; we make a new list of reasons why we can’t love ourselves yet...

Can I get a witness?!!

Don’t misunderstand: when we make the conscious decision to say that we will love and accept ourselves as we are, it doesn’t mean we’re not going to change. What it does mean is that we’re going to change by starting with the idea, “This is what I’d like to do,” rather than with, “What a bad person I am to have this problem” -- eating too much, drinking too much, or whatever. What’s important to note here is the subtle shift in perception: the positive idea, so much more open to possibilities, is more powerful than the negative idea.

The difference may seem small to you at first glance, but it’s extremely important. It’s the difference between feeling that we are inadequate or insignificant, or instead saying, “This is me as I am, and I think I would like to change some things.”

In my work, I often encourage my clients to move away from using the word “should” and replacing it with “could.” That’s really a small thing that huge ramifications. When people work with that, it helps open the door to the awareness into how rigid their thinking is. Many of us have rules about how things should be, rather than allowing ourselves to enjoy what is.

We also create certain kinds of illnesses within ourselves. We actually cause our minds and bodies to go off balance to the point where they disrupt our lives. At first glance, this may seem like a totally negative thing. But there is a hidden benefit even from such experiences -- a learning that can arise from illness -- if we are willing to see it.

A large part of what I do is to try to show people how they are not loving themselves, then asking the question, “Are you willing to let that go? Or do you wan t to hold on to it.” There’s always this choice. I realize that it’s way too easy to intellectualize what I am writing -- I am sure almost everyone reading this honestly believes this doesn’t apply to them. But before you condemn, realize that many of us hold on to what hurts us most because it is what we know and to let go is to jump into the unknowable. And you know what? We are never wrong if we choose to hold on to it for a period of time.

If you want to argue this point with me, I would suggest you first look into your past relationships and try to notice if there are any patterns...

When I first decided that I wanted to be a healer it was because I wanted to “fix” things (control freak! LOL). Then I discovered that I didn’t have to fix anything if I could teach people to love themselves. Because if you truly love yourself, you automatically stop creating problems for yourself. Gradually, I realized that what I really am is a conduit for this love -- this unconditional love. I have to say that my “work” has had the most impact on me.

If you doubt the power of love, think about the work of Dr. Bernie Seigel, who wrote, Love, Medicine, and Miracles. He has demonstrated that love actually has the power to stimulate the immune system. He says that the most powerful known stimulant of the immune system is love, and that love heals. Imagine for a moment if you added this dynamic to your exercise or diet regimen? That’s why we’re all here today -- we crave this love, but too often we seek it from outside of ourselves.

I was struck by this when I went to see the movie Monster about the tragic life of killer Aileen Wournus. Do you know what she wanted more than anything in the world? She wanted to be loved and accepted. She never in her dreadfully abusive life ever knew true love. As children, what we wanted more than anything was to be loved and accepted as we were. That’s still what all of us want, only we’re not going to get it until we’re willing to give it to ourselves first then to others.

After we stop criticizing ourselves, the next step is to be gentle, kind, and patient with ourselves. We’re learning new things and we can’t learn them all in one day. That’s the major drawback to diet fads: how can you expect to lose in a month or two what took you years, sometimes decades, to gain? One of the best things I heard recently was someone commenting that she lost fifteen pounds last year. To many people that doesn’t sound like a lot, but I am struck by the amount of self-acceptance embedded in her comment.

I think we also need to praise ourselves much more. Criticism breaks down the inner spirit; praise builds it. We need to love to our negative patterns because we created them to fulfill a need. Those chichos (love handles)? That cellulite? That flab? As long as you despise them, you will despise yourself and stop yourself from finding more effective means to fulfill that loving need.

Yes, we need to take care of our bodies, to treat them as the precious creations they are. We need to learn about nutrition and exercise (just because a fad diet helps you lose weight, it doesn’t mean it’s also “healthy”). We need to look at the kind of fuel we put into our bodies and the consequences of those choices. But more than anything, we need to love ourselves.

I’m a great believer in affirmations and looking in the mirror and saying to yourself, “I love you.” That works well in moving away from self-hatred. Wake up in the morning and ask yourself, “What can I do for you today? What can I do to make you happy?”

As simple as this exercise is, very few people will practice it. It never ceases to amaze me that most of my clients have never tried these things. Then I have to remind myself that people don’t come to me because their lives are filled with joy

In retrospect, I really don’t do anything for anybody. But perhaps I am a bridge -- an instrument -- to something more genuine. And I’m meeting more and more people like that; people who are finding real lasting change.

In the end, when you are dying (and we are all going to die), what will have mattered?

Love,

Eddie

Happy New Years Everybody!

¡Hola! Everybody...
Well, this is it -- the last blog of the year. Last year, I resolved to post at least one blog a day. I did it... LOL! It’s been an “interesting year -- historical, even.

I know many of you are resolving to make changes and sometimes I wonder about that...

I’m not sure about what I’ll do tonight. I like going to Times Square -- and no you fuckin hicks don’t know jack shit about New York, so stop it with the “Omigosh!” statements. Or, I might meet up with some friends and go out to some nightclub. It’s going to be really cold tonight and that makes me think twice about going anywhere. LOL!

Here’s hoping that whatever you do, you do it joyously. Felicidades

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-=[ The Perfection of Guilt ]=-

I quit high school and was hanging out, being a table pimp and shit, until my mother put a damper on all that one cold February morning. She came into my room and requested I wake up. When I didn’t listen, she came back and poured icy cold water all over me.

“Here’s carfare money, get out of my house, and don’t come back until after 5pm, like people who work do,” she informed me.

For the first couple of days, I hung out at friends’ homes until their mothers (who were just as sick of their lazy table pimp sons) let me know I couldn’t be hanging out in their homes doing nothing.

It was winter and it was cold, so it was hard to find a place to hang out. I really thought my mother was being an unreasonable bitch at the time.

Well, I came home one early day, and she gave me two options: I would either finish school and enroll in college, in which case, she’d be willing to sell her ass if need be to support me (my mother has a colorful way with language), or I went to work with my stepfather as a construction laborer. Just to show you where my head was at the time, I chose the latter.

My stepfather did not want me working with his crew. He fought, yelled, and stomped, but in the end, he had to take me to work. I knew jack shit about physical labor -- he even had to tell me to take my hands out of my pockets at the construction site. LOL!

At first, my stepfather would find menial things for me to do just so I would be out of the way. I hated the work. It was hard and it was fuckin cold outside! My stepfather was a patient man, and he took me to the side one day and told me that he was going to teach me some skills that I will always have some use for later in life.

He wasn’t lying.

I learned how to put up sheetrock and then how to lay tiles. I was smart, so my stepfather’s confidence in me grew. One day, he left me alone to do a bathroom from scratch. Now, laying tile is not as simple as it looks. But if you follow the basic rules, you can get the knack of it pretty quick. I mean, set your level, draw the line, add the gook, and start tiling, right? Well, the thing here was that at the time I loved smoking weed. Smoking weed and doing anything that takes some measure of precision is not a good thing -- not very smart. But that’s what I did and when I tiled my first bathroom, I got the leveling wrong and the tiles didn’t match when I made my way around the bathroom -- it was off by a lot, like an inch or so.

My stepfather was pissed off, but he was a patient man, and we were able to fix it up a little. The next day, he looked at me and asked if I could do the deed, and I did. This time the level was fine. The tiles looked quite good in fact, except for two tiles that were at wrong angles. Those two tiles were pissing me off and I thought I had done a miserable job. My stepfather came to inspect my work, and said it was a good job. I looked at him and asked if he was high. I showed him the two errant tiles and he turned to me and said something that I never forgot, “I see the two bad tiles, but I see the other 99% percent of the tiles that are well done.”

In this way, my stepfather taught me good craftsmanship, but he taught me a more valuable lesson. The lesson being that perhaps striving for success is better than going for perfection.

Perfection and guilt go hand in hand. When I looked at the wall, all I saw were the two bad tiles. My inner critic immediately went to work and it filtered my perception of reality. My stepfather taught to build on my successes rather than to focus on my failures. Eventually, I developed into a good tile-setter and I learned other basic carpentry skills that have stayed with me all these years. Skills that helped me get a job wherever I went.

In my work as a healer, I see this perfection/ guilt trap all the time. People end relationships because all they can see in their partner are the “two bad tiles.” Many become depressed because all we can see in ourselves are “two bad tiles.” The reality is that there is more that is good about us than we care to admit, we just can’t see those qualities. We focus too much on our mistakes. The mistakes are all we see, they’re all we think are there and so we go into an internal war to destroy all that. And sometimes, unfortunately, we destroy a good piece of work.

I hope that whatever you “resolve” to do this coming year that you focus on what’s good rather than the negative. I hope you drop the internal war and the guilt trips. Those are all traps -- prisons that keep you locked up. I actually hope that you develop a mission rather than a resolution. A mission is about being about something, standing up for something. As the saying goes, if you don’t stand for anything, you’ll fall for anything.

Love,

Eddie