Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life

My father died 40 years ago this week. I was 6 and my mother never touched me after that until after I got married, I became her mother. She has never let go of my father and we had a conversation about it just recently. She told me her reason for not being able to let go was that she needed a reason why he had died, why her husband had been taken from her. I waited until she had finished explaining and then I asked her to tell me a reason that would have made it all ok. A reason as to why she lost her husband that would have been fine with her. She couldn’t come up with one. She asked me what I thought the reason might be; I gently told her that there wasn’t one. There wasn’t one reason in the world that would have made it ok to loose a husband at such a young age.

I think she understood for the first time that this was true. Her needing a reason was her excuse not to let go and behave in the way she did. We talked about it for a while and she came through the conversation amazingly well much to my relief!

This is an extreme example of ‘if you keep doing what you’ve been doing, you’re going to keep getting what you’ve been getting’.

When I became my mother’s mother at 6 all I knew was that she was unhappy and it was my job to make her happy. It was 20 something years before I stopped and thought about this and I asked myself some questions… is this working for me? Is she happy? Did I succeed?

I had felt like a failure for the first 20 plus years of my life because I failed to make her happy, not my fault of course, as it is impossible to ‘make’ someone else happy. Sure you can bring them happiness but the choice to be a happy person is theirs. So my mothers thinking and choices did not work for her and mine had not worked for me.

I have found since that there have been many areas in my life that I needed to ask the question, ‘how is this working for me?’

If you have been angry with someone for many years ask yourself the same question. How is it working for you, has it changed anything about the event or events that made you angry, has it changed the person involved? Anger is a choice, what you do with the feeling is your choice. My anger only hurts me, it has no affect on anyone else except that it probably makes me not so great to be around.

Look at relationships, does the way I treat or speak to my boyfriend get the result I am looking for? Is my relationship working for me and if not what is it I need to change, (let’s leave him out of it for now,).

Is the approach I have to my boss changing anything to the way I think it should be? Is my complaining at work making any difference?

Is it my thinking about situations that is the problem?

If you keep doing what you’ve been doing you’ll keep getting what you’ve been getting!

Time to change the way you think?

Angela Sharp
Living Life Design
angela@livinglifedesign.com

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