Life! By Design_ 6 Steps to an Extraordinary You - Laura Morton [51]
Miraculously, Ben ran cross-country races throughout the rest of his school years. He never competed against anyone but himself. It sometimes took Ben forty minutes to do what the other kids did in fifteen, but he did it anyway. That’s courage. When Ben sometimes fell during a race, he picked himself up and kept right on running.
I was so moved by Ben’s heroic story that I asked him to speak at one of my seminars a few years ago. I shared his story with my clients and then brought him onto the stage, where he was met by a standing ovation from the crowd of 2,500 clients. I asked Ben to share his thoughts on inspiration, where to find courage, and how to succeed against all odds.
“What’s it like when you fall down?” I asked.
Ben said, “I just know our bodies are designed to get up and keep moving forward. We’re not meant to fall down and stay there. We’re meant to get up and keep fighting the fight. I tell myself, ‘It’s just a fall. Get up and keep going.’”
I was awed by Ben’s wisdom and freedom. His body is racked with pain. It is agony for this young man to do what most of us take for granted, and yet he endures his pain so he can live his life with passion.
Fear never goes away, so you may as well learn to say, “Hello, fear, I see you but I’m going to do this anyway!”
Look, we all have a dragon that needs slaying. There is always something we will have to conquer in our lives—whether it’s cleaning up an old relationship, making a current relationship work, getting into better physical condition, or earning the money we want or adjusting our lifestyle to live with less.
So when you get down to it, what really holds you back and keeps you living by default is a combination of fear, the four addictions, and complacency. These have allowed you to accept a mediocre life as enough. Most people won’t take action to break away from those comfortable traits to risk having an extraordinary life.
Something else keeps you living by default, and this time it isn’t you. It’s the enabler in your life who gains a direct benefit by allowing or being part of your default world. An enabler empowers another person to do something. Often, these relationships are considered to be codependent. To be fair, some enablers inspire us to do good things. However, others promote negative, sometimes harmful behavior. And although life often provides each of us with countless opportunities to be one or the other, I address only enablers who hold us back, cover up for our mistakes, and empower us to pursue a life not just of wrongdoing (with drugs or alcohol, abusive behavior, dishonesty, and more) but by enabling us to be lethargic, making the wrong food choices, not addressing our financial issues, or resisting healthy relationships. I also refer to enablers who feed the four primary addictions discussed in Chapter Five.
Sharon Wegscheider-Cruse, in her work as a well-respected family therapist, suggests that 96 percent of the general population exhibits some forms of codependent (enabling) behavior at one time or another or in a fairly consistent pattern or both.
We’ve all been in a place where someone close to us was going through a rough time, perhaps finding out that a best friend was having an affair, or seeing a co-worker fall behind at the office or participate in self-destructive behavior, creating problems for our friend such as drug abuse or an abusive home situation. If you’re like most people, you’ve probably kept your mouth shut and stepped away from the situation to avoid becoming part of the drama. If that’s what you’ve done, you’ve been an enabler.