Bang Your Head!

  Do you ever find yourself banging your head?  I’m not talking about the hard rock, metal music that makes you swing your head forward and back.  That would be so much more desirable.  No, I’m talking about when you feel like you’re talking to a stone wall.  Why waste your breath on strung together words, because the steam you speak goes in one ear and out the other.  Let’s face it- when people get ideas in their heads, they are going to do what they want to anyway; whether it is good, bad or indifferent. 

The power of persuasion is a tough business.  Not only are we faced with it every day in our lives, but from an early age we must learn to do it with humility and civility.  Think back to when you were a kid… you wanted the toy another had, maybe it was a shiny new Barbie doll, so you took the Ken doll that nobody wanted to play with, (remember the painted on hair and if you turned his head too hard it would end up in your hand, disconnected from his body) and you masterfully “persuaded” the other kid to trade with you.  Sometimes it worked, other times you ended up having to play with the anatomically freaky doll.

If you were a brilliant persuader, seventy-five percent of the time, you’d get your way.  Yet there was that twenty-five percent that wouldn’t crack.  That is the percent I am talking about today (Don’t worry; the huge red mark from slamming your head against the wall will eventually fade).  It’s the same twenty-five percent that you will spend the rest of your life trying to change.  

But now instead of persuading them to trade their Barbie dolls, we find it important to persuade them about their beliefs, ideas and religion.  We are raised in a society that is always looking outside of ourselves for bigger and better.  We look at what other people have and either decide that we have to have it or they need what we have.  We all want to persuade people that ours is better, ours is right, and ours is exactly what they need.  Let’s face it, what it boils down to is we all want to be validated, it is human nature.  

It is when our need to change or persuade people starts to ruin friendships or taints our own morality, we need to step back and check ourselves.   Sure we all have the “train wrecks” in our lives we feel need to fix, and the “private jets” we cling too.  Those people are exactly where they are because they need to be there.  There is something they are getting out of it; some type of validity that’s making them stay where they are.  You can tell they really don’t want to be rescued.

Well guess what, I am here to tell you it is okay to leave the train-wrecks at the tracks and rip up the tickets for the private jet.  Hey now listen— before you stop reading— I don’t carry any more power than the next person, let’s clear that up right now.  I am just a voice willing to validate all those feelings you keep bottled up.  It is time to stop trying to change and chase the people around you and look within to what you want out of your life.  

Did the weight on your shoulders become a little lighter?  Did the space you gave to them in your head clear just a bit?  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not telling you to forget them or let go of their hand as they drown in their lake of poor me; not even close.  What I am saying is you don’t have to validate their definitions or beliefs anymore.  Stop trying to fix them and let them be.  Work on the vision of your life.  Step outside of your comfort zone and try doing something different.  Stop living with your back against the wall and looking at what has happened in the past.  It is time to make the decision to start living on a higher vibration and be excited about your life again.     

I don’t write this because I’ve got the formula, or I have mastered this concept.  I write this to remind myself that it is a constant work in progress and that I will never be done re-adjusting, re-identifying, and re-evaluating my life.  Because our lives will always be a work in progress, always changing and ever evolving.

Lastly, I want to thank those of you, who keep coming back to my blog, for you— I am eternally grateful.  Now get out of here and have a great week!