SHOCKED About My Mother After Learning This

This changed me forever.

She blamed my father for her miserable life.

My mother, who passed in 1988, used what I call mantras – words she repeated so many times that I still know them verbatim.

Because of regular reiteration, I believed and didn’t question some of them. It was like repetition used to learn arithmetic tables, but these were impressed on me with far more feeling.

“When I was young, I used to be happy-go-lucky. Then I met your father.”

Because they argued intensely, she started her day with this mantra: “I wonder what that S.O.B. is going to do to make my life miserable today.”  (Note – she didn’t use initials.)

She had no idea that her daily proclamations and choice of emotions were what made her life miserable, not anything my father did or didn’t do.

She thought her suffering was my father’s fault, and I accepted it as true, too. I didn’t have an attitude about him. I liked and loved him. At the same time, I saw her perspective and believed her woeful declarations.

Then around 2002, I was talking to one my teachers about how I felt sorry for them. He knew my parents and replied,

“Your mother wanted your father to change so she wouldn’t have to change.”

What?!!??

This was a throw-a-bucket-of-ice-cold-water-in-my-face moment.

It was his fault. That was a given. Never questioned it. She lived a miserable life because of him.

Here’s the kicker.

As long as she complained about and blamed him, she didn’t have to take responsibility for her own emotions and actions. It was his fault. She was the victim. Pointing her finger at what she decided were his failings absolved her of cleaning up her attitudes, feelings and thoughts.

In a flash, I realized the blaming wasn’t true. She could’ve been happy if she stopped giving him power over the way she felt.

In a shocking moment, for the first time, I stopped feeling sorry for them.

I realized that my pity (vs. compassion) was condescending and disrespectful of their choices. They decided how to interact with each other. They had complete control over the way they felt. If they chose to argue as a way of life, and if she chose to feel miserable, those were their decisions.

As emotions create reality, she created a “living hell” for herself where she felt “like a prisoner in my own home.” Her life was a self-fulfilled prophecy.

Think about the implications in your life. Who are you blaming for what doesn’t work and how you feel?

• Do you want others to behave the way you think they should so you can feel good? In other words, do you want others or situations to change so you can feel better? Or will you decide to feel better anyway?
• As you create your future by how you feel, do you allow others to affect how you feel by reacting to strangers who drive weird, crazy acting people, politicians or past hurts?
• Are you blaming yourself? Or will you take command of your own energy because, if you don’t, you block your dreams coming true? Guilt, regrets, bemoaning your past, blaming yourself and others are false narratives… and an insult to your divine nature. Everyone’s learning. It’s okay.
• What mantras run through your head? I can’t afford it. There’s never enough. What if I run out of money or time? Nothing I do ever works out. My life would be so much better if only…

Even if they’re “wrong,” you still can choose your attitude and how you respond. As like attracts like, how you feel shapes your future.

What does this have to do with your life, business or work?

Your feelings and thoughts magnetize your experience, so don’t hand the keys of your emotions to others and “if only” things would be different. Don’t give your power away.

Allowing others to affect how you feel relinquishes the keys to your kingdom – or queendom – of success, happiness and ability to enjoy personal, financial and emotional freedom.

By the way, blame is one of ego’s greatest tools; no matter where it’s directed, it holds you back.

You choose how you react and feel.

Your now and future depend on it.

“When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don’t blame the lettuce. You look for reasons it is not doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or less sun. You never blame the lettuce.

Yet if we have problems with our friends or family, we blame the other person. But if we know how to take care of them, they will grow well, like the lettuce.

Blaming has no positive effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason and argument. That is my experience.

No blame, no reasoning, no argument, just understanding. If you understand, and you show that you understand, you can love, and the situation will change”  

Thích Nhất Hạnh

Edited excerpt from Soulgoals’ post of March 13, 2017.

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Ready to live YOUR life, let go of blaming and complaining and gain emotional mastery? 

Contact me to learn how at:

virginia@soulgoals.com
http://www.soulgoals.com

I help women to tune in to their true Selves, see clearly and live their personal and professional dreams.

Copyright © 2023 Soulgoals, All rights reserved.

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How My Client Lost His $100 Million Empire

Here’s a blurry picture that he took of me next to his Lamborghini in his parking garage. See the angled object to the left? The doors open up to reveal the steering wheel and car’s interior. It’s one powerful beast of a car to ride in.

 

I remember the day he told me that he “got it.” While driving after a team meeting, the words he’d been hearing woke him up. His imagination creates his world, and he controls his imagination. That was his turning point.

Joining one of my first Success Teams in 1995, he was so brilliant then that I sometimes took notes when he spoke.

He started as a small business owner and then moved out-of-state where he built an empire valued around $100 million in a cutthroat industry. His personal monthly take home, not including his business profits, was $40,000 a month.

Looking to pass on techniques that created his success, he flew me in to train his salesmen. Sitting at one end of the conference table, he introduced me as the reason he achieved what he did.

There’s a 1970’s commercial that says, “When EF Hutton talks, people listen.” When he finished talking, not only did everyone turn 180 degrees to hear what I had to say, I literally heard the swish as their heads swung in my direction.

That month, he hit his first million dollar month.

However, his focus changed, and he wanted to be free to fulfill… well, anything he wanted.

After that, we lost contact for three years. It wasn’t until his lifestyle behaviors, let’s say of wine, women, song and ego gratification, created such heavy, negative consequences that he reached out to me again.

Being very conscious of his physical appearance, he worked out a lot. He told me later that he knew alcohol put on weight… so he started to use cocaine instead.

With dramatic personality changes, he felt that as long as he paid people well, including close family members who worked for him, he could be verbally abusive and treat them however he wanted.

As time went on, things became very bad. That’s when he contacted me to fly in and work for him.

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Once, while looking for validation, he said to me, “Come on, Virginia, I’m your most successful client. Right?” For him, money was the penultimate symbol of success.

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The drugs rewired his brain, and I slowly began to acknowledge that he wasn’t the same man I once knew. Too slowly. I still bought into his reasoning, his excuses.

I still saw him as the awesome man he used to be. I’d known this man for decades and saw him through that filter. Even after I bailed him out of jail. Even as I was asked to sit outside his office the next day when I went to work and discovered the law put on locks to bar entry.

His family staged clever, false, illegal strategies against him. However, the way he reacted and handled it nailed his own coffin.

There was always an explanation that it was someone else’s fault. This included when he railed against the judge in a long letter to all his clients that the judge was in cahoots with the other side.

We were shopping in Whole Foods when he told me that, earlier in the day, in a court in another state, a judge officially stripped him of it all. His $100 million empire — gone.

This occurred during the time I invited him into my home to offer a safe haven and supportive modalities to help him get back on track.

At least, that’s what I thought was happening.

That week, I watched him sit in a chair in my living room, lost in a world of his own, angrily and vulgarly name-calling siblings who did him wrong.

On the fifth day of his visit, his welcome abruptly ended when he viciously shouted at me like a repeating rifle, in my own home where he was a guest, accusing me of trying to get him killed. How much were they paying me? How could I betray him like that? Why was I lying?

With a drug-addled brain, his former good discernment was replaced with a dark and out-of-control imagination. Earlier in the week, he shared with me how he was paranoiac, afraid and suspicious of people.

It reminded me of when I walked behind a man on a sidewalk in Times Square, New York City, who was having an angry conversation with someone who didn’t exist physically but was very alive in his head, like an endless, repetitive loop of a broken record.

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My client, my friend, became a cherry on top of my life lesson of the year, ranging from business to an intimate relationship:

See people for who they are and how they’re showing up NOW — not how they used to be, not who their words tell you they are, not as a fantasy of how you’d like them to be.

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I realized how I did this in a relationship, too. I saw a man that I was dating not for how he was showing up in the world. I believed the image he was projecting to me.

The worst part is that he believed his own lies.

Once, I told him, “I don’t trust you.” He replied, “You don’t trust yourself.” 

He was redirecting my attention so I would doubt myself, but I think he believed he was communicating some insightful truth. Later I realized: yes, he was right. I didn’t trust myself that he wasn’t a man to be trusted.

Not long after he spoke those words, drama from his emotional dishonesty overflowed into my life.

When I asked one of my teachers what those experiences were all about, he told me, “People hear and believe what they want to believe.” He added to see people for how they’re showing up, not how you want them to be or their potential.

That was my HUGE wake-up call!!

People Hear and Believe What They Want to Believe. 

I wasn’t paying attention to what is but living out of past images that were!

I see the same things in today’s world.

When politicians’ true colors start to show, some people remain in denial. They won’t separate their wishful thinking about who they thought the politicians were from how they’re actually showing up. Evidence to the contrary be damned.

May you wake up to SEE.  May you have the courage to set aside your filters, those oh so comforting protective mechanisms, to see whatever there is in your life that would benefit from your clear sight.

 

P.S. Know someone who might enjoy this post? Please share.

Ready to find clarity
to go beyond your self-limiting
filters and live life on your terms?
Contact me for a complimentary
Do What You Love Break Free Session.

Email me at:

virginia@soulgoals.com

I work with people, at any age,
who choose to share their gifts
or business in a BIGGER way
but don’t know how, feel stuck
or would benefit from new tools
or support.

I help them be richly compensated
doing what they love by aligning
with their Soul’s goals.

Copyright © 2019 Soulgoals, All rights reserved.

That Thing that Upset You… Here’s Why!

I know. I know. There’s no way you would EVER want this experience or someone to do to you what happened.

Obviously, someone or something else is to blame. How could you have caused this? It happened outside of you, out of your control. Wouldn’t anyone feel the same way?

If I elaborate on the idea that your thoughts and feelings are things, and they shape your world, you might want to land a punch on me if I were close to you. You might believe I don’t understand this situation. I’m delusional. Or perhaps you think that you already know we attract experiences through our thinking, but you had nothing to do with causing this fill in the blank issue.

Instead, I’ll share two examples, leaving you to evaluate if this idea might have any credibility. It might make more sense if you’ve spent years being angry or blaming others or wondering why things keep happening to you… and perhaps you’re coming to the awareness that those approaches haven’t gotten you what you want.

First is a woman who had COPD and several other physical disabilities that necessitated someone to be with her 24/7. She shared with me that she used to end up being the one to take care of people. She used to say to herself, when’s it going to be my turn to be taken care of? She got her answer, although not in the way she wanted.

Another woman left a position she’d had for several years when she realized the job was literally killing her. The business she planned on starting when she left her job never took off, which was a good thing because she was unwell and extremely weak.

Having no money, she went back to work at a job she had decades before – delivering pizzas. Not her dream job at the age of 60, to say the least.

The job actually had many redeeming qualities for her. She built up her strength. Finally, she was surrounded by a supportive and caring manager and team of co-workers. She made money she desperately needed.

For a while, she did a lot of complaining. Delivering pizzas was a far cry from living her dream. “I’m too old for this. A few months ago I could hardly walk, and now I’m slowly carrying heavy boxes of pizza and soda up flights of stairs, and sometimes I don’t even get tips.” She couldn’t see well while driving at night, had a hard time on access roads and finding places, and she hated those stairs and delivering to apartment buildings. To top it off, she decided that people of her race never tipped. She saw that as a fact.

These upsetting things appeared completely out of her control.

She couldn’t govern the randomness of which orders were next in line to deliver, who they’d go to, if they were tippers and where people lived.

Everything changed when she realized she was using her imagination to dwell on annoyances instead of what she chooses to experience.

She decided to change her focus and found that her outcomes improved the more she directed her thinking to what she wanted.

This success inspired her to become very intentional, with her thinking being the only thing that changed. This is what happened on that shift.

1. All her deliveries were to houses except one to an apartment building, and they lived on the first floor.
2. She had no need to travel on any access roads.
3. Locations were easy to find.
4. People of her own race always gave her great tips.
5. She had her best night of tips ever, nearly doubling the tips she made on any good night in the entire three months she worked there.
6. Everyone was friendly and nice.

The following week, she decided to leave that job. She’s now the happiest she’s ever been. She’s confident that financial opportunities she’s considering are going to work out because she’s learned the power of using her imagination wisely.

She discovered that effectively using one’s imagination is more real than the so called “reality” of outer circumstances. 

Now, she’s no longer worried or depressed.

She’s relaxed because she knows money will come and she’ll have time to pursue her dream. Based on opportunities coming her way, she has good reason to continue to believe things will work out.

You’re bigger than anything or anyone that’s upsetting you.

Rearrange your thinking. You are the change that changes your world.

Pay attention to what you’re telling yourself, the conversations in your head, during the day.

It’s not that you won’t be aware of your outer circumstances, but don’t freak out about them! Don’t give in to thinking nothing will ever change. Instead, focus on how you choose your life or business to be.

Take a breath. Shift gears. Imagine your life, really imagine it with your thoughts and feelings, as if it’s the way you choose and that everything’s working out in divine right timing.

And remember to tip well your servers and delivery folks. That’s how they earn their living.

P.S. Know someone who might enjoy this post? Please share.

I work with people, at any age,
who choose to share their gifts
or business in a BIGGER way
but don’t know how, feel stuck
or would benefit from new tools
or support.

I help them be richly compensated
doing what they love by discovering
their Soul’s goals.

Copyright © 2018 Soulgoals, All rights reserved.

I Confess. I Didn’t Know How to Handle This… Until Now.

An acclaimed author and speaker sat across the aisle from me during a shuttle bus ride to a conference.

She was recognized by the woman sitting behind her who started a conversation between the two of them.

Just as the ride ended, with a sweet smile and feigned good intentions that she probably believed were innocent and necessary to express, she trashed the famous person with subtle (not really subtle) advice/put downs.

As an observer, I watched the powerful woman’s face drop as she didn’t know what hit her. While disembarking from the bus, I quietly told her that she didn’t do what the accuser claimed, and the other woman was making stuff up.
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After meditating about me and out of so-called concern, a woman decided to list extensively my shortcomings since the beginning of our friendship. She had a pattern of telling me these every couple of years for fifteen years. Adding insult to injury, her skewed perspective caused her opinions to have more holes than Swiss cheese. Her last sharing was her final one with me.

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Can you recall interactions that left you wondering whaa – what just happened?

Or maybe you’ve claimed the title of tell-it-like-you-think-others-should-be-or-should-know-about-themselves.

I confess. In the past, handling crazy-makers like these often left me clumsily dumbfounded and reactive. Maybe a month or a year later, I’d think of a clever yet still unsatisfactory response.

Recently during a session with one of my teachers, the sky opened and fairy dust of understanding gently rained upon me.

I’m sharing my pixie enlightenment about some reasons why others use manipulative behaviors that blind-side and what to do about it.

Also, a heads up if this is your M.O. You may choose to stop it. As Dale Carnegie wrote, the pay off is that you’ll win friends, influence more people and feel authentically better about yourself.

THE WHY:

When people are afraid, they look to fight anybody. They will attack a strong person. (You might be perceived as strong by others, even if you don’t feel that way about yourself).

The underlying, usually unconscious thinking of pointing out faults of a strong person is this: I’m insecure. Let’s see if I can take you down to my level.

It’s someone else’s fault, and they’re going to point it out. “Others” are doing something wrong.

Those who use passive-aggressive behavior look for weak parts and take aim at those frailties. 

1. It can create self-doubt in the other person and throw them off-balance.
2. It can invert the strong person’s attention onto themselves and away from the aggressor’s shortcomings.

However, the problem actually rests within them. They don’t want to work on their own issues, so they blame others. Again, the focus is on others and their faults so the perpetrators don’t have to look at themselves.

It reminds me of what Eckhart Tolle said regarding people who complain about others, including other drivers.  Disapproval of others makes their ego feel “morally superior,” even to strangers driving in cars.

Passive-aggressiveness is a self-esteem boosting technique born out of feelings of inadequacy or helplessness. It’s one way to get attention and have people listen, which they might not have experienced in their past. 

In short, one way passive-aggressiveness works is to criticize how others are wrong in order to feel better about themselves, enhance superiority or get something they want. 

WHAT TO DO:

Don’t agree or argue with them. Tell them, “I appreciate what you’re saying, but I don’t agree.”

They want you to defend yourself or argue. If you don’t, they look like an idiot.

Eventually, they’ll stop trying to attack because you offer no resistance. Their attempts to get you to provide fuel to fill up their tank of self-esteem isn’t working (instead of finding it within themselves).

Also, they can’t understand you if you talk with them logically when they’re seeing things emotionally. You’re both on different wavelengths. You can’t hear an FM station when you’re tuned into AM.

People blaming “the others,” be it personally, politically, in business or otherwise, is a scapegoat from looking at their own issues.

Does any of this fairy dust bring clarity to you, your business or work?

With gratitude,

Virginia

P.S. Know someone who might like this? Please forward.

I work with people who choose to share
their gifts or business in a BIGGER way
but don’t know how or feel stuck.

I help them ignite their Soul’s goals
and be richly compensated doing what
they love.