I’ve been thinking about this question—what am I doing with my time? It’s going quickly and I had to pause the other day because something happened that hurt my feelings … and I wondered, why am I wasting time on allowing myself to have hurt feelings? What is the point of those wasted minutes? And what can I do to stop wasting time?

For a brief moment I found myself obsessed over the situation that caused me pain, playing it back in my head like a bad movie. I was frustrated and felt lost in the realization of the loss of the illusion I had about the situation. I even found myself not being my normal self.  Instead, I was consumed by feeling angry, wronged, and resentful. 

We all want to be accepted, seen, and loved, but it’s hard to feel any of those things when we’re too busy feeling victimized.

Then it came to me—a quote I love by Christine Mason Miller: “At any given moment, you have the power to say: This is not how the story is going to end.”

So, I vented to some friends (thank you friends!!!) and wrote a list of what I really knew about this situation:

1. People who seek to make others miserable are miserable themselves. (hard stop)
2. I can do the right thing. We make it all worse when we get into the mud with those unhappy people. I’m going to stay clean on this one!
3. I can set boundaries. This may seem so obvious but when it’s someone in your life space, you can’t completely walk away. But you can set compassionate boundaries.
4. I can choose to only do the work that is mine. One of the toughest lessons I’ve learned is that I can’t “fix” the situation, because the situation involves a lot more than just me. And I can only do me.

It’s inevitable that other people will hurt us. We can’t avoid it, and we don’t even need to understand it entirely; all we need to do is learn to take care of ourselves when it does happen. We cannot change the actions or perceptions of other people, but we can change how we respond to them.

• We can choose not to harbor anger and resentment and waste our time; we can choose to forgive and to walk away. 
• We can focus on the things that make us feel safe and happy and devote ourselves to nurturing those relationships and hobbies.
• We can use the negativity of others to become stronger, happier, and more complete. We can rewrite our own ending.

Friends, all the time I spent feeling bad did not move me forward but it did spur me to finally publish one of my many posts that I write and always shelve! Good always comes from not-so-good. 🙂

XOXO

Jessica