The Element Of Learning How to Handle Things and Its Hope For Being More at Peace With Ourselves

picture courtesy: ehow.com

If you go on the internet, you can find instructions for anything.

A quick scan reveals:

Instructions for how to Build a Personalized Hammer for Father’s Day.

Instructions for how to Create an Edible Mustache.

Instructions for how to Tie a Tie

 

Also instructions for less interesting, but necessary, or useful tasks, such as How to Install a Printer Cartridge.

Or how to Add a Signature to a PDF Document.

Unfortunately instructions are not so easy to find for handling our relationships, or our thoughts, emotions and habits, and our ability to control ourselves.

But we have to learn to do this.

Even if we grow up without the right role models.

If we don’t, we will let someone else’s actions dictate our thoughts and actions - and determine the outcome of our lives, and our futures.

Once upon a time there was a little boy.

When he was 3 years old, his dad was plastering a wall at his house.

Innocently - and not knowing what he was doing, the boy poked a finger into the damp plaster.

His dad saw him do it from across the room and got mad.  In a rage, his dad threw a roof shingle across the room at him.

The roof shingle pierced the boy’s head and lodged in his skull.

He had to be rushed to the hospital for an emergency surgery.

The boy grew up with the memory of this terrible incident, as well as other incidents caused by his father’s rages.

Growing up, he was a constant witness to, and a victim of his father’s abuse of himself and his mother. He observed how his mother handled his father's rages with compassion.

When he became an adult, the boy chose to pursue psychology.

He has interested in anger, and the underlying causes for violent expressions of anger.

His studies and research pointed to low self-esteem being the cause of anger. People who were angry harbored severe feelings of shame and guilt - coupled with a lack of empathy for other people’s feelings.

He understood low self esteem was at the heart of many violent crimes.

He decided to dedicate his life to helping people successfully deal with, and overcome their anger issues.

His successes include some of the most hardened criminals in the justice system.

His name is Steven Stosny, or more formally, Dr. Steven Stosny.

He is a living example of how to handle childhood abuse in an enlightened way.

If someone does something to us, we should never think we have only 2 choices, one of which is to run away and seek refuge in something, the other to strike back. 

Fight or flight are not are only answers.

What Dr. Stosny teaches us (and his clients) is that there is a third way, which is developing compassion for ourselves, and for all those who make us suffer, or have made us suffer.

In 1918, when the US entered World War 1, a man enlisted in the US army as a private.

He was 38 years old and had already amassed a fortune of $75,000.

Concerned that he may not come back from the war, he gave his savings to his best friend for safe-keeping.

The war took many lives, but mercifully, his life was spared, and when he was released from duty, which was 14 months later, he was ready to begin his old life again.

One of the first things he did, on his release, was to visit his friend to get his money.

Bad news was waiting for him at his friend’s house.

His friend had committed suicide, and left his wife a widow.

His friend's widow told him, his friend had put both his own money, and the money they had, in a worthless investment, and lost it all.

The shame and grief over the loss had been too much for his friend, and he took his own life.

What do you think the ex-Army Private did?

He accepted the blame for putting “that much temptation” in his friend’s way, and made monthly contributions to the man’s widow, for the next 30 years.

The man’s name was Grantland Rice.  He was the most famous sportswriter of his time.

Even if you don't know his name, you will definitely know these words which he penned –

“For when the One Great Scorer comes
To mark against your name,
He writes - not that you won or lost -
But HOW you played the Game.”

There’s always another way to handle anything.

Leading up to the last 2 elections, and throughout his 2 terms, President Obama has had to endure a lot.  He has had to endure taunts about being black, taunts about his name, accusations he was not born in America.

Did you ever see him lose his cool over any of it?

If we are to succeed, we have to ignore the attempts of people around us to shame us, or bring us down.

We should never let people get under our skin.

We should never ever let challenges or setbacks become sentences in our life, sentencing us to feeling worthless or hopeless.

Every time we have a setback, we should play the Judge and Jury Game recommended in the post, “How to Feel Good About Yourself When the Chips are Down”.

There is a better way to handle anything, even a devastating setback.

In 1990, a 22 year old student of Kenyon College, Ohio, was riding in a car - when she got an attack of nausea.

The nausea continued over days and weeks and months, and was soon accompanied by severe aches and pains - from head to toe, incapacitating her.

After months of going to doctors, they would eventually diagnose her condition as chronic fatigue syndrome.

She dropped out of college, and from then on, her life became that of a house-bound invalid.

In such a condition, many would throw up their hands, and say, “I am an invalid; that’s all my life is good for”.

But the girl did not do that.

She picked a subject that interested her - and started writing a book.

Unable to leave the house, she did all her research at home – either by going online, or via the phone.

She turned out a best-seller. Her book was on the New York Times Non-Fiction Best-Seller list for 30 weeks, and was made into a hit movie in 2003.

Still home-bound, she started to work on a new book soon after.

Her second book was also a hit,  # 1 on the New York Times Non-Fiction Best-Seller List for 52 weeks.

It was picked up by Angelina Jolie, and made into a film.

The girl’s name is Laura Hillenbrand, and the books are Sea Biscuit and Unbroken, movies of which you may have seen.

Laura Hillenbrand chose not to focus on her predicament, but to put her efforts into doing whatever she could - in her predicament. She found the answer in researching and writing.

Are you in a predicament right now?

How are you going to handle that predicament?

Can you put your weight and effort and energy into something like Laura Hillenbrand did?

What are your choices?

We always have more choices for handling a predicament, than the ones we think we have.

Fight or flight choices are not our only choices.

Look at how Grantland Rice handled the discovery that his friend had lost his entire life’s savings.

Look at how Dr. Steven Stosny handled the memory of his father’s rages.

Look at how Laura Hillenbrand handled the fact that she is housebound, and has limited options for what she can do, and what she can't do.

If you've been in fight or flight mode, this could be the turning point in your life.

This could be the moment, when you tell yourself , let’s say your name is Tom, “Tom you are going to handle things differently from now on.”

Start by creating a 10 Toughest Things to Handle List, and coming up with more enlightened, more compassionate responses to each one of them.

We each will have our own 10 Toughest Things to Handle List, but here are some tough situations, many of us will have to handle in our lives:

Someone flies off the handle at you, and says some totally uncalled for things. What’s worse, you’ve been busting your butt - and the person does this, in spite of that?

Someone does not follow your orders.

Someone goes above you.

Someone is more popular and in demand than you, though you are more talented and capable than them, or deserve to be more highly thought of than them.

Someone keeps making the same mistakes again and again.

Someone does not accept your excuse, or apology.

Someone shames you or humiliates you.

Someone rejects you.

And let’s not forget tests of your willpower. Those should go on your 10 Toughest Things to Handle List too - and you should think hard - and plan in advance - about how to deal with them, especially if they have knocked you off your game many times:

How will you handle temptation?

How will you handle greed?

How will you handle fear, or anxiety?

How will you handle shame?

When you are a young adult, and still trying to make sense of the world, you can, and probably will, experiment.

There may be many choices available to you, and you will experiment with one, or more, of them.

Eventually, you will have to learn to look at - and handle - each one of those choices.

You will have to understand what is for you, what is not for you, and what is positively against you.

You will have to learn what to keep, and what to let go, and how to handle the urges that are holding you back, or stealing your peace.

For what is wisdom, after all, but learning what to keep, and what to let go, and how to handle the thoughts or urges that are stealing our peace?

As always, thanks for reading, and have a great day and week….M….a Pearl-Seeker like you.  Thanks to Ajay, Audrey, Chris, David and Rosie for their compliments on Facebook, and thanks to the rest of you for your likes, pins and votes…..much appreciated.  Happy Father’s Day to all the Dads, both the ones I know, and the ones I don't, and compliments to you on the great job you are doing!