Life! By Design_ 6 Steps to an Extraordinary You - Laura Morton [35]
Still not convinced that you may suffer from this addiction? Try wearing a tutu to your office tomorrow or trading in your sports car for a bus pass. Stop going to the gym, getting Botox injections, coloring your hair, or getting manicures. Or imagine yourself doing something radical and potentially life altering, something you’ve been thinking about for years. Go home and tell your spouse you aren’t happy and you feel that your relationship is in a coma. Walk into your boss’s office and tell him/her you want more responsibility and more room for growth or you’ll quit. And do it without worrying about the consequences.
The only way to have complete freedom from this addiction is to not care about the outcome. This is a lot easier said than done. It takes practice and courage to not place any level of importance on someone else’s opinion. Remember, an opinion is not fact. It may not even be the truth. It is merely someone else’s view about an issue that is based solely on personal judgment.
EXERCISE
How has addiction to the opinions of others shown up for you? What areas in your life are affected by what others think?
ADDICTION
ADDICTION TO DRAMA
The second addiction is an unhealthy attachment to drama, which is closely connected to addiction number three, addiction to the past. People love drama and often live for it. They can’t wait to wade knee-deep in the excitement of conflict. Their entire identity is wrapped up in living in drama.
Do you know anyone like this?
Drama is created by your reaction to something in the past or present, or projected for the future. Here’s a question for you: Now that you’ve experienced that moment, in the split second after it occurred, what did you make it mean?
I once heard the saying “Big stuff, you’re born; big stuff, you die. Everything else is small stuff.” Granted, the death of a loved one, divorce, being fired, and suffering financial setbacks are all big moments in life that can understandably cause you to feel upset. These traumatic experiences are all dependent on one thing: the story we attach to them and the meaning and emotion we associate with the events. I don’t want to diminish their significance because they are very real. However, the common mistake people make when dealing with dramatic events is to allow themselves to get stuck in them. Most people feel victimized by these experiences and then use them as excuses to take time off, wallow in their misery, throw a pity party for their loss, or, worse, accept things as they are and continue to live by default.
Do you know someone who has suffered from one of these kinds of losses who never recovered?
Here’s my stance. We’re all the lead characters in the story of our lives. So, my question for you is, are you casting yourself as the victim or the victor? Victims give away their power, blame everyone else for their problems, and take no responsibility in their own lives. They don’t see themselves as having any control over what’s happening around them. Their perception is that there’s nothing they can do. They call themselves “victims of circumstance.”
When I think of someone who could have cast himself as a victim but chose to become a victor, I think of Captain Jerry Coffee, who lived in captivity for seven years during the Vietnam War in the infamous “Hanoi Hilton.” He spent most of his time in solitary confinement, enduring unimaginable torture. Instead of breaking, Captain Coffee emerged with a strengthened faith in God, a love for his country and his fellow man, and a belief in working together for the common good. When I heard Captain Coffee speak several years ago, he described as “subtle” the