Therefore, if I thought they harbored ill feeling toward me, it was my own thoughts I was battling, not theirs. If I look at this situation under the spotlight of reason, as opposed to the darkness of my irrationality, I will see it for what it is. When I say, “I think Sam doesn’t like me,” all I have to do is stop after the first two words in the sentence to know who is doing the thinking. I am. “I think Sam doesn’t like me.” Sam hasn’t made a comment regarding the matter, but I have assigned him the role of not liking me because it fits into my fearful way of thinking.
Even if I happen to be right, and Sam doesn’t like me, what should that matter? Sam is one person. I know I can’t please everyone, so Sam now falls into the category of people I couldn’t or didn’t please this time around. Maybe Sam has a good reason for not liking me, but that shouldn’t matter since Sam’s reasons are just that—his reasons. If Sam doesn’t like the idea that I revamped the helpline, maybe it is because he secretly wishes he had done so himself. The reason shouldn’t matter, and I need to get to where it doesn’t matter to me.
If Sam doesn’t like it, that is his problem, not mine. If at some point Sam makes it known to me that he doesn’t like what I did, I need to let him own his problem. Even though fear tells me I need to fix it, I don’t need to take on Sam’s problem or problems. Yet I’ve been known to do just that. If I have a problem with the way people treat me or the things they tell me, I sometimes allow fear to tell me that I need to fix the problem even though it may be outside my control to do so. Somewhere in the mess, I take my problem of wanting them to like me and twist it in such a way so that I think it is the other person’s responsibility to fix it, when it is still my problem. My problem is still with Sam. I want Sam to like me, even though he probably won’t. I can’t change Sam. I can only change myself and how I allow my perceptions to affect me.
I change the way I perceive things by changing the way I talk to myself.
Have you ever said something like “I have a problem with Sam,” either out loud or to yourself? I’ll bet you have. I know I have. When I say something like that, my tendency is to think that Sam is the one with the problem or that Sam is the one who needs to change. However, if I look at what I’m saying, I’ll see the truth. “I have a problem with Sam” really means that I’m the one with the problem.
If I reverse this perception, which is what I need to do if Sam has a problem with me, I find that Sam is the one with the problem.
You can look at this in two ways: “Sam has a problem with me,” or “I think Sam doesn’t like me.” The first way of looking at the situation is that the problem is Sam’s, not mine. The second way of looking at the situation is that I think Sam doesn’t like me. I may be wrong, but even if I am right, it’s still Sam’s problem. There may or may not be something I can do to help Sam; however, unless he comes to me with this problem, there is very little I can do to be of assistance.
Yet fear tells me I need to fix something that I can’t fix. In some cases, where I am aware of the issue, I may choose to change for Sam’s benefit. In other cases I may choose not to. Either way, it’s still up to Sam to handle his end of the bargain, just as it’s up to me to handle my end when I have a problem with Sam. The point is that I need to take care of me and let Sam take care of Sam, and I need to let go of the fear around the issue; I can’t be everybody’s friend anyway.
By taking a careful look at how I think about things, I can change my level of fear right off the bat. I can usually downgrade my fear by changing the way I see things or by asking a couple of discerning questions of myself, such as: “Is this something real, or is it something I think is real?” or “Is this really my problem, my issue, or should I let the other person own it?” By taking ownership of what’s mine and allowing other people to do the same, I can overcome a lot of my fears before they get a chance to overwhelm me. I can begin to look at things more clearly and learn to identify what I need to change about myself.
As I’ve learned to apply this practice of assigning ownership, I’ve found that my self-esteem has grown. I no longer worry so much about what other people think of me because most of it isn’t real anyway; it’s only what I think they think. On the other hand, if someone wants to tell me what he or she thinks of me and I consider it to be negative, then I can accept it without taking it personally. I can allow this person to have his or her opinion, and I can have mine. Sometimes, because I have learned to remain calm about their opinion of me, we can have a conversation and reveal our disagreements. Then we can make a more informed choice about how important it is to maintain the relationship. I can do so without all the anxiety I used to have regarding things like this. In order to do so, though, I need to make conscious decisions. I can’t just react to life, or to fear; I have to think about what’s going on in my own head. In working through this process I have come to see life as a series of individual choices and consequences, and this has helped me to deal with my fear as well. I used to be afraid to conquer my fear because I thought I would lose the excuses I had for all my future mistakes. After all, if I am afraid to do something, I have an excuse not to try it; if I do try it, I have an excuse for failing. I can blame failure on my fear, even if I only do this in the privacy of my own head. I’ve come to see this way of thinking as reactionary living, and I choose to live a proactive life now. Reaction results in distraction. I want a life where I take action based upon my own thoughts and ideas of how things should be. Since I changed the way I look at how life works, I’ve changed how I see fear.
When I began making my change from reactive to proactive living—from letting life happen to me to making my life happen—I began to see a shift in my thinking. I began to see my life as a series of choices and consequences. I make choices, and those choices bring me consequences. This is true whether I’m living reactively or proactively, since even if I choose not to choose (if I choose to let life happen to me), I have still made a choice. This choice, whatever it is or was, will bring me consequences. Usually, such consequences will be of the sort I see as bad or undesirable, because I didn’t take any action in the matter. This is fertile ground for fear.
I made the choice to revamp the helpline. The consequences of that choice were mostly positive. There is now an all-volunteer staff with experience in recovery answering the phones. When people call in for help, they get someone trained to help instead of a paid answering service whose employees have no idea what the organization does to help people. There are now nearly one hundred volunteers answering the phones, and their doing so provides them the opportunity to be of service to their community and to be allowed a chance to feel good about themselves for “doing their part” in the process.
The truth is that I have a hard time finding any negative consequences regarding my choice to revamp the helpline. If I stretch my imagination to find a negative consequence, it might be that I had to work many shifts until the volunteers began to trickle in; but even that was a good thing because the way I see it, I received the chance to meet new people, make new friends, and help others in the process.
If I had failed in this mission, things would have remained the same for the most part, as the helpline would have continued to employ the paid answering service. Yet, if I looked hard enough, I could have found some positive consequences in my failure. I would have learned what not to do when setting up a helpline, and I could have tried again, using my new knowledge as a guide. Even bad or undesirable consequences can be good. Therefore, I no longer fear consequences. I see them as a direct result of my choices, and probably the most amazing thing I’ve learned about this process is that consequences lead to more choices. Some say that success begets success and, thankfully, failures eventually beget success, although it may not seem like it at the time.
Success