Today's meditation looks at our responses - and how they can positively or negatively effect us.
I tell you, you only have to live like a healthy person does ... living with complete confidence. What confidence? The only one worth holding, in what is trustworthy, unhindered, and can't be taken away from you - your own reasoned choice.
Epictetus
It is amazing to me how easily it is to smash confidence. I can see it with others, but I can only understand the process within myself. I am often impervious to criticism. But if the words hit just so, then I can spiral. I will clam up, freaked out that people cannot stand to hear my voice. I want to run away so badly because I am embarrassed I am alive. And it is a spiral I cannot easily pull out of.
The worse is that I can see that response as it barrels towards me, like some cloud of doom.
However, if I get a chance to think now, I can realize that whatever I did to annoy someone occurred at a state of time. I can't fully understand how we got to this point - but I don't have to bring that impression going forward. I can react from now, without dwelling (too much) on what prompted this criticism.
I'm working on it.
How it feels when I see my depression and self-doubt rushing at me |
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