Meetings

At my internship we have little hour-long meetings on Fridays, where all of the interns gather round and talk pow-wow style.  Well, not really pow-wow...but we do usually sit in a circle if that counts for anything.

In these meetings we get to trade little nuggets of wisdom about therapy and such, and in turn I have learned a lot of things to help me in my regular not crazy/no therapy lifestyle...because really..I think everybody needs some kind of therapy. Not necessarily because somethings wrong with all of us..but we all  get stressed, and you know you can't even try to fight me on that one.

So...ANYWAYS there is a point to this post..

I wanted to share some of these little nuggets of wisdom that I find pertinent.

Here they are:

1. Pain can be caused by someone else, but suffering is something you do to yourself.

Think about it.

2. It's not the event itself, in some cases, that brings pain, but what you make that event mean to you.

3. Don't ever let anyone "should" on you.

I like this one in particular very much.

I realize it might need a little explainin...("Lucy, you got some 'splainin' to do!").

Soooooooooooo many times people get so down on themselves because of things they did not do or things they did not know or things they had no control over. They think about those things and let it consume them and then thought come into their heads like "I should have known this was going to happen," " I should have had some spectacular spiritual revelation that could have prevented this from happening," "I should have been able to stop that guy from being mean to my kid."

No.

No you should not have.

You have no control over it.

"You should have been a better mom, maybe then your kid would have gone to college and not had a baby out of wedlock"

No.

You are a great mom.

"You should have worked out more, and then maybe your husband would not have left you."

No.

Not your fault.

No shoulds.

Don't let anyone "should" on you.

Sometimes things are...just because.

No ifs, ands, buts, or shoulds about it.

Even if it was your fault on some things, thinking about what you should have done is not going to change and make anything better. 

What are you going to do right now to fix things so you don't end up shoulding yourself, again, later?

That's all.

For now.