Dr. Tom Whiting, who with wife Martha lives on a tranquil mountaintop not far from Hindsville, recently forwarded an article from Redbook magazine published in 1987. Among my favorite physicians, Dr. Tom and and I have stayed in touch for years on subjects ranging from morel mushrooms to medicine and rounds of golf.
It was a yellowed story he'd clipped from the former Springdale News and sent to his own children when it appeared. "I thought about you when I happened across it the other day and wanted to send it along. It's just as relevant, maybe more so, than it was 30 years ago."
Headlined "Assuming Responsibility Can Create Joy," the story by Susan Jeffers basically says while we can create our own unhappiness, we also have the ability to convert those negative feelings into a sense of joy by simply accepting responsibility for our own lives. It's always a mistake to nurture unrealistic expectations that anyone or thing other than ourselves somehow can make such transformation happen.
I know plenty of people, and so do you, who constantly blame others for their poor decisions. It's become almost a national pastime to avoid responsibility for one's decisions that result in bad outcomes. Such warped reasoning is epidemic today, ranging even up to the pinnacle political seats of our nation.
"When you blame any outside force for how you are feeling about any of your experiences in life, you are literally giving away all your power and thus creating pain, paralysis and depression," the story reads.
Those who blame and punish themselves--"Well, there I go, messing up my life again"--fail to understand that's also the wrong approach. That kind of fault-finding internal narrative is best replaced with the realization that you have done the best you can do, given the person you are or were at a particular point in your life. It's critical to stem this cycle by learning to change negative actions into positive ones with a change of perception, the story continues.
We're advised to examine our relationships, employment and all areas in our lives and discover clues that show we aren't taking responsibility. Recognizing the signs can prove difficult, I've discovered. It requires the ability to be intellectually honest with ourselves, rather than trying to rationalize our avoidance or lapse into denial. Intellectual honesty involves taking a deeply personal and often painful look at who we truly are.
It often involves tracking a poor result back to inception and admitting if your thoughts and actions actually set those wheels into motion: Did you get married much too quickly? Did you slam into the vehicle in front and blame them? Did you fault a predecessor in your position to justify the predicaments you created?
The story offered symptoms that tend to attach to the problem, including anger, blaming, vengeance, self-pity, lack of focus, envy, feeling in limbo, joylessness, a need to control others, obsessive behavior, lack of judgment, addiction and disappointment.
Controlling your own life and finding the joy in that simply means recognizing the choice is yours in any situation.
Gaining such understanding of how we create our misery or joy in life doesn't excuse inappropriate behavior. It does help everyone realize what's actually happening when we make our endless stream of choices and how we are so much better off by owning them.
Here's my interpretation of the list Jeffers offered as a guidepost for achieving so much more joy.
• First and perhaps foremost, stop casting blame on anyone or anything else for your personal feelings about life. Nothing and no other person can control your thinking or actions unless you allow that to happen.
• Recognize you truly are doing the best you can and stop blaming yourself for falling short of the ability to exercise ideal control over all aspects of your life.
• Determine what the payoffs are that keep you stuck in your life. For example, is the reward for your chronic illness the attention and sympathy you get from it?
• Remain aware of the many choices you have when it come to your thoughts and actions.
• Realize that when you show others the respect they deserve the likelihood is that they will return it.
• Learn to recognize your greatest obstacle, that endless chatterbox in one's monkey mind. It disperses your focus and energy to sidetrack and prevent you from achieving personal dreams and desires. Substitute a positive attitude that enables you to achieve.
• Decide what you want to accomplish in your life and turn those thoughts into action. You'll be continually disappointed by waiting for anyone else to pave the way or do it for you. Make bad choices? Expect to reap negative consequences.
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Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected].
Editorial on 01/19/2016