In my early 20s, I worked for a book publisher. I loved working there, but I was also going through some very difficult times in my person life. I guess it had become obvious to others that I worked with, even though I thought that I had hid it well. One day when I came into work, this elderly man who worked there had left something on my desk. I didn’t know him well at all, but he left me a piece of paper with a post it on it and had written in fancy script, “I thought you could use this.” Confused, I looked at the paper and it was a copy of the poem Desiderata, written by Max Ehrmann. 

I had never heard of it before, and as I read it, I started to cry. It was exactly what I needed to hear, when I needed to hear it. This poem is a gentle reminder that we need to keep watering ourselves because we are growing.

Below is the poem in its entirety. Years have passed and I still go back to it every now and again to read it. It’s nourishment for the soul.

Desiderata

GO PLACIDLY amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

By Max Ehrmann © 1927

Everyone has their demons. They can take the form of addictions, procrastination, lack of purpose, maladaptive ways of relating to the world, unhealthy relationships, etc. They can consume us and erode our soul. The key to defeating these demons is internalizing that they no longer work for us and the life we want to live. It’s very simple solution, yet so hard to truly implement and let go of the things that will destroy us if we continue on that path.

We keep our demons around because we know them – for good and for bad. Even if they are completely dysfunctional and mess with our life, they are known. Sometimes we just don’t know how to be without them. And sometimes, they don’t seem to be so bad for us. These demons are super sneaky deceivers.

Here are some things to remember when trying to change behaviors and patterns that no longer serve you:

• Focus on adding the new healthy behaviors at first instead of focusing on what you shouldn’t do.
• Be compassionate with yourself. At some point these behaviors served some purpose in your life. You adapted the best way you could in the situation. But now you have more tools in your toolbox and don’t need those old, ineffective tools anymore.
• Know that as you make changes, it might get stressful. If you want to have a different life, you have to be willing to do things that you’ve never done before. And at first, it will be stressful.
• Change your people, places and things that support the changes you are trying to make in your life. Be around those who inspire you to be better and support a healthier version of you.
• Be patient with yourself. Great changes don’t happen in a linear fashion. Sometimes you take a step back, and that’s okay. Just keep moving in the right direction.

 And remember, monsters live in the dark. The things that trigger your demons don’t have to be faced alone. Have someone you can talk to who can support the changes you are making.

It’s completely human to care about what the people who we love and care about think of us. We naturally want to be liked and accepted. Where things start to go off track is when we start listening to other people’s opinions over our own.

We only have this one life while we are here on this Earth. Like Ferris Bueller says, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” We are all perishable items. We need to start living accordingly.

Think about it like this: When you were a child and you were playing in your backyard you did your own thing and you didn’t care what anyone thought. You were fully present and engaged in what you were doing.

As a child I felt like my life was limitless. I could be whoever I wanted to be, and I could do anything I wanted to do someday. I was definitely a weird child, but I knew deep in my soul that I was born to stand out from the norm. I didn’t care what anyone thought of me or who they thought I should be.

But as I got older, other people’s opinions infiltrated my heart and mind. And it happened slowly. And before I knew it, I lost sight of who I was because I was so busy trying to be who they wanted me to be.

In the book The Four Agreements, there is a term used from Toltec wisdom called mitote. Mitote is basically a fog in the mind of a thousand voices, filled with ideas and messages from the world telling who you should be based on what the world says will make you feel loved and accepted. It causes us to see things incorrectly, in a completely distorted way and causes us to deviate from our true path of who we are. We become clouded by who the world says we should be and fight against our true selves. Long story short, the people telling you who you should be are the mitote and we have to silence their voices once and for good.

Here are some things to remember when the mitote get too loud:

• Other people’s opinions of you are not your business.
• The greatest prison we will ever live in is the fear of what others think.
• If you live for other people’s acceptance, you will die from their rejection.
• Worry about your character, not your reputation. Your character is who you are, and your reputation is what others think you are.
• Your life isn’t yours if you care about what others think.

Sometimes there is just no need to engage with people to bring chaos into your life. It easier said than done when the person bringing the crazy is someone you love. But at the end of the day, we are responsible for our own state of mind. And if they are doing things that you know mess with your head or threaten your mental wellness, respect yourself enough to disengage.

We tend to go wrong with these situations when we get caught up in the vicious cycle of proving to the other person why our feelings are valid, and we desperately want them to see and hear us. If it’s a situation that is threatening our mental health, we rationalize to ourselves why we need to ride it out, thinking maybe it will get better. The problem with this kind of thinking is that it ends up becoming crazymaking.

In a previous post I talked in depth about what this kind of dynamic can look like in a relationship and how you can protect your sanity. When we find ourselves in these threatening situations, we need to ask ourselves if we are vulnerable to responding to inconsistent praise from the other person. As referenced in the post:

“The crazy maker will give you praise, and you will feel good about things, and then they quickly take it away. There have been numerous studies that show how addictive inconsistent praise can be to people and how praise from someone who doesn’t give it often, is more meaningful. It’s actually been equated to the inconsistent reward of gambling addiction.”

I can honestly say that there have been too many times in my life that I have fallen into this trap. And it was simply because I didn’t believe that I was enough on my own. My value and worth were dependent on external validation, and whether or not someone else saw me and heard me. You can only imagine how much I chased inconsistent praise and rewards! It was clearly not a sound strategy, but as you work on yourself more, you dismantle that childhood programming of needing external validation and you finally internalize that you are enough. And you deserve to vibrate on a higher frequency and protect yourself from chaos and nonsense.

What about you? Are you tolerating people or situations that threaten your peace of mind, self-respect, values, morals or self-worth? If so, what can you start doing today to protect your mental health?

We are not what happened to us or our decisions. They are things happened to us or are things we did. They are not who we are. Yet the struggles we face sometimes grip us to the point where we become our struggle.

When we go through hardships and traumas, it is appropriate take the time you need, whatever that is or whatever it looks like, to deal with it. That is an important part of the process. Where things get tricky is when we become consumed by it.

For me, sometimes I do get trapped in a place where I become consumed by it. But then I check myself and think about Jocko Willink’s motivation video, “Good.” If I can look at my struggles and say “good”, it means I’m still breathing and I’m still alive. I still have some fight left, so I can get up, dust off and reload, recalibrate and re-engage. Now I can go back into the attack and overcome my struggle. Here’s his short motivational video:

You see, we can take our struggles and let them fuel us, rather than define us. It is what we do with the hand that we are dealt that matters.

No matter what your struggle is, remember that we were never created to live depressed, defeated, guilty, condemned, ashamed or unworthy. We were created to be victorious.

Taking complete ownership of yourself and your actions is critical in forming deep, meaningful and healthy relationships with others. At the end of the day, you are responsible for your role in the relationship and how you choose to behave. When you take ownership of yourself, you are deciding not to play the blame game or play the victim. It’s taking an active role in creating a place of honesty, integrity, vulnerability and safety in the relationship. It isn’t enough for one person to take accountability – both partners have to be willing to do so for their relationship to thrive.

What does taking accountability look like?

Accountability means taking responsibility when you have accidentally done something wrong, hurt someone else, or let someone down. It’s apologizing for it, but also making a commitment to change the behavior. It’s hearing and seeing your partner and responding to their needs. It’s giving them compassion and empathy. Being accountable also means being honest and transparent with your partner. It is being open and vulnerable about your feelings, even when you feel sacred or when you have to have a difficult conversation.

When choosing ownership, you also have to be able to clearly see what is and isn’t your responsibility.

Don’t accept responsibility or blame for something that is truly not yours to carry. This is where you’ll see many unhealthy relationships with an imbalanced dynamic. One partner doesn’t take enough responsibility for themselves, whereas the other takes on too much responsibility that isn’t even theirs. I have a disposition to occasionally take on other people’s responsibility in relationships, so I have to be mindful of it and challenge myself at times. I literally ask myself if a friend told me that she was really responsible for X (and X is something that is clearly not her responsibility), what would I say to her? 

Are you accountable in your relationships? Do you have a toxic behavior that you need to change? If so, what can you start doing today to change it?

All of our experiences – the good, the bad and the ugly, shape who we are. We have to remember that our experiences are just that – experiences. What happened to us or what we have gone through does not have to define us.

Trauma creates changes we don’t choose, but how healing flips the control back to us and allows us to create the change that we do choose. Healing from our trauma allows us to take back our power. We get to choose from that point forward how things are going to go. What we can do in taking back our power becomes limitless. We get to determine what we will do with our experience and how it will shape us going forward. But more so, healing is our responsibility. While we aren’t responsible for what happened to us, we are responsible for healing ourselves.

We ultimately get to choose how we integrate those experiences, even if they are awful, into our lives. No one has the perfect life and we all have challenges. And some of us go through some horrible things. But ultimately, we get to choose how we respond to it.

When you think about it, the people who become really successful have often gone through horrific events in their life to become who they are. For example, as a child, Oprah Winfrey went through hell enduring sexual abuse. She struggled to make it on television as a journalist and was told by people in the industry that she was “unfit” for television. Oh, how wrong they were about this woman! She went on to help so many people and became known as the “Queen of All Media”.  Another example of someone who really had some horrible experiences in his life is Sylvester Stallone. Those experiences shaped him so much, he was inspired to write Rocky. Listen to Tony Robbins tell his story:

If you are struggling right now with experiences you have had, know that you are not alone. Integrating experiences into our lives takes time. And sometimes it’s okay to grieve and experience challenges because that is part of the healing process. It’s okay to fall down every now and again – just don’t stay there.